INTENT
At Forest Academy we are committed to providing an excellent educational experience for every child. The curriculum is underpinned by the school’s aims and these are inextricably intertwined with the BLP (Building Learning Power) dispositions.
Our personal, social and health education (PSHE) curriculum brings together citizenship with personal well-being, relationships, economic well-being and life education whilst promoting our school values. PSHE is taught through timetabled lessons and is also integrated into our subject curriculums.
It is reinforced throughout the wider curriculum such as; assemblies, immersion days, educational visits and extra-curricular clubs too. We offer a consistent whole-school approach where every year group is taught from the 1Decision scheme which enables our children to become healthy, independent and responsible citizens.
We ensure that PSHE is closely linked with Physical and Mental Wellbeing and Building Learning Power.
At Forest Academy we aim to help children to be:
- Ready to learn: Children have a positive, confident attitude to learning. They are both physically and emotionally ready to learn.
- Resourceful: Children show initiative, ask well thought out questions and are prepared to use a variety of strategies to learn.
- Reflective: Children are curious, able and willing to learn from their mistakes and can describe their progress
- Resilient: Children are prepared to persevere and stay involved in their learning, even when the process is challenging.
- Reciprocal: Children are prepared to help each other and work as a team.
Our PSHE curriculum promotes and coincides with the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of our pupils which helps when preparing them for the wider world. Children at Forest are encouraged to explore, clarify and if necessary, challenge their own and others’ values, attitudes, beliefs, rights and responsibilities.
At Forest Academy we follow statutory government guidance for teaching Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) as part of PSHE. This is taught age appropriately, for every year group, in the second half of autumn term. Parents are provided with letters prior to Relationships and Sex Education being taught. High quality Relationships and Sex Education helps create safe school communities in which pupils can grow, learn, and develop positive, healthy, behaviours for life. It is essential that children learn to:
- Develop interpersonal and communication skills
- Learn scientific names for body parts
- Have value, care and respect for their bodies
- Develop loving, caring relationships based on mutual respect
- Be prepared for puberty and the emotional and physical effects of body changes
IMPLEMENTATION
In EYFS:
The provision is planned to ensure development in Physical, Social and Emotional Development (PSED), which occurs on a daily basis. In provision, children will explore the ideas of relationships, feelings and appropriate behaviours, self-confidence, self-awareness, rules and routines. This is still taught from the 1Decision scheme.
In KS1 and KS2:
We use the 1Decision scheme to inform our curriculum planning. Topics included in the programme of study are: keeping and staying safe, keeping and staying healthy, relationships, growing and changing, being responsible, feelings and emotions, computer safety, our world, the working world, a world without judgement and hazard watch.
At Forest Academy, PSHE is covered in many different ways, such as Circle Time, School Council Meetings, One Life Suffolk Sessions, discussion groups or through specifically themed weeks, such as Mental Health Week and Anti-Bullying Week. Our children experience a wide range of teaching and learning experiences using the detailed and in depth lesson plans that the 1Decision scheme provides.
IMPACT
For PSHE we use a variety of strategies to assess what skills, knowledge and awareness the children have attained each term, including the following:
- Questioning
- Lesson Observation
- Pupil Voice