Intent

At Okehampton Primary School, personal, social and health education (PSHE) enables our children to become healthy, independent, and responsible members of a society. It aims to help them understand how they are developing personally and socially, and tackles many of the moral, social, and cultural issues that are part of growing up. We provide our children with opportunities for them to learn about rights and responsibilities and appreciate what it means to be a member of a diverse society. Our children are encouraged to develop their sense of self-worth by playing a positive role in contributing to school life and the wider community. The intent of PSHE is also to provide a starting point for our children to develop their oracy skills. This is in the hope of children becoming more confident and competent in their ability to express and explain their opinions regarding school, local and global matters.

Intent of RSE: At OPS we also aim to run a comprehensive relationships and sex education programme. Our relationships education is taught both explicitly in RSE lessons as well as implicitly throughout our annual PSHE programme. We also teach Sex education lessons to ensure that children understand their bodies and how they will change so they can act appropriately in respecting others as well as having the knowledge to safeguard themselves from potential exploitation.

Implementation

To achieve our stated goals in PSHE we follow the PSHE Association curriculum for Primary Schools. 

Using this curriculum, we are able to cover a wide range of topics under three main umbrella topics. In the Autumn term we look at the PSHE around the individual and their immediate family and friends. During this term we cover topics such as personal responsibilities, privacy and the individual’s health and wellbeing.

In the spring term we cover the individual’s relationships and safety within their community. This term we cover important issues such as healthy friendships and topics such as bullying

In the summer term we go on to cover the individual’s responsibility within the wider world. This allows children more time to study topics focused on British values and understand their role in other important issues such as the environment.

We implement our RSE programme during Autumn two using the MEDWAY RSE curriculum written in conjunction with the PSHE association.

Impact

We are aware of the way that PSHE supports many of the principles of safeguarding and links closely to schools Safeguarding, SMSC and British Values Policies. We are all aware of the important role the PSHE curriculum has in supporting school to implement the 9 protected characteristics of The Equality Act 2010.

At Okehampton Primary School, we aim to develop children’s understanding so that they:

• develop confidence to make the most of their abilities, through recognising their own worth.
• develop confidence, oracy skills and self-esteem which enables them to put forward their own views but also understand the views of others.
• work well with others through a process of collaboration.
• prepare to play an active role as citizens in a diverse society.
• develop a healthy and safe lifestyle with the ability to take appropriate risk assessments.
• develop good relationships and respect the differences between members of the school and the wider community.
• make a positive contribution to the life of the school.
• have the confidence to question when something is wrong.

Through our PSHE curriculum, we recognise our duty to ‘actively promote’ and provide opportunity for children understand the fundamental British values first set out by the Government in the ‘Prevent’ strategy in 2014, of:

• democracy
• the rule of law
• individual liberty
• mutual respect
• tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs in order for them to become fair, tolerant and confident adults in a forever challenging world.

Through our RSE curriculum we hope to impact the children by

• Giving them the technical vocabulary associated with their body parts.
• Giving them the knowledge to safeguard themselves from exploitation.
• A clear understanding of how their bodies will change throughout puberty.
• Ability to understand positive and negative relationships.
• The ability to seek help should ever need to do so.
• Understanding of the PANTS rule.