PHSE

Subject Purpose

At our school, Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education, incorporating Relationships and Health Education (RHE), serves as the cornerstone of pupils’ personal development, safety, and wellbeing. The primary purpose of the curriculum is to equip children with the vital knowledge, skills, and emotional resilience they need to navigate modern life confidently and responsibly. By centering our teaching around safeguarding, the curriculum explicitly enables pupils to distinguish right from wrong, accept responsibility for their actions, and cultivate a deep respect for diversity and fundamental British values. Ultimately, this framework prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities, and lived experiences of modern society.

Curriculum Journey

Substantive Knowledge

The factual framework is systematically built upon nine core modules across Years 1 to 6:

• Keeping/Staying Safe: Mastery of road safety, household danger warning signs, cycle safety protocols, and water hazard awareness.
• Keeping/Staying Healthy: Knowledge of hand hygiene, dental care, balanced nutrition, medicine safety, and the physical risks of smoking, vaping, alcohol, and drugs.
• Relationships / Growing and Changing: Identifying positive friendship qualities, understanding boundaries, recognising bullying behaviours, tracking puberty changes, and learning human reproduction mechanics (only in Year 6 for one lesson after a parent meeting).
• Being Responsible: Managing personal responsibilities, accidental spillages, goal setting, distinguishing borrowing from stealing, and understanding domestic rules.
• Feelings and Emotions: Naming personal emotions, tracking bodily responses, exploring complex feelings like jealousy and anger, and navigating grief or loss.
• Computer / Online Safety: Identifying digital risks, managing cyberbullying, safe image sharing, interpreting app age restrictions, and tracking online financial spending.
• Our World / The Working World: Understanding basic human lifecycle needs, environmental care (reducing, reusing, recycling), career aspirations, and financial literacy.
• A World Without Judgement: Unpacking fundamental British values, including democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law, and mutual tolerance.
• Fire Safety / First Aid: Understanding emergency services, the dangers of arson or hoax calling, and performing practical first aid up to CPR execution.

Disciplinary Knowledge

The critical skills and cognitive behaviors pupils cultivate to evaluate, process, and apply their understanding include:

• Risk Assessment: Evaluating situations to detect, weigh, and minimise physical or emotional danger across online and offline spaces.
• Critical Evaluation: Analysing alternative choices within story-led dilemmas to project immediate and long-term consequences.
• Perspective and Empathy: Interpreting body language cues and decoding scenarios from alternative points of view.
• Boundary Formulating: Establishing, articulating, and enforcing safe personal boundaries while respecting the parameters of others.
• Strategic Self-Regulation: Applying practical coping mechanisms to combat peer pressure, intense emotional triggers, or stressful life transitions.

Implementation

• Regular Timetabling: Delivered via weekly, dedicated lessons across all year groups by class teachers to ensure absolute coverage.
• Story-Led Framework: Utilises the structured 1decision scheme to build clear learning journeys centered around real-world, relatable situations.
• Distancing Techniques: Employs fictional character animations and media to allow children to process high-stakes choices safely without forced personal disclosures.
• Ground Rules Culture: Establishes clear, collaborative classroom agreements at the beginning of every single session to reinforce confidentiality and safety.
• Dynamic Adaptation: Empowers teachers to use professional judgment alongside 1 Decision and CUSP units to address localised trends or emerging concerns instantly.
• Cross-Curricular Synthesis: Deepens retention by matching themes with Science curriculum components, Computing modules, and whole-school assembly schedules.

Assessment

• Baseline Diagnostic: Executed at the start of every topic block to uncover existing ideas, common misconceptions, and baseline starting points.
• Formative Tracking: Recorded through continuous observation of group discussion dynamics, structured reflection logs, and active lesson participation.
• Retrieval Practice: Utilises 'Ask Me a Question' prompts within 1decision Knowledge Organisers to systematically test vocabulary retention and conceptual understanding.
• Summative Evaluation: Conducted via module-ending pupil self-assessments and mapped learning journeys to chart individual progress milestones.
• Impact Over Paperwork: Prioritises the tracking of real-world pupil voice and behaviour shifts over extensive written folders.

Inclusion

• Universal Representation: Celebrates a diversity of family dynamics, backgrounds, and personal characteristics.
• SEND Scaffolding: Maximises accessibility via clear, minimalist visual design, repetitive language patterns, and broken-down developmental steps.
• Regulatory Compliance: Adheres fully to the Equality Act 2010 and maintains clear, structured communication channels for statutory parameters.

What Success Looks Like

By the end of Year 6, pupils:

The aim is for children to know:

• A variety of environmental, domestic, and situational hazard warning signs.
• The physical, social, and legal risks and consequences tied to smoking, vaping, alcohol misuse, and illegal substances.
• Correct scientific names of male and female reproductive anatomy.
• Practical financial management terms, digital spending mechanisms, and budgeting vocabulary.
• The conceptual definitions underpinning each fundamental British Value.

The aim is for children to understand:

• The effects that individual behavioral and financial choices can have on families and wider communities.
• The underlying safety logic dictating age restrictions across modern digital applications.
• The potential differences between digital personas and true identities in online communication spaces.

The aim is for children to be able to:

• Navigate high-pressure situations by applying verbal refusal strategies to resist negative peer influence.
• Conduct an accurate primary survey and confidently administer critical first aid procedures.
• Build functional individual budgets and detect hidden marketing tricks or accidental in-app purchases.
• Actively look for and prevent physical danger when around open water, roads, or domestic hazards.

Communicate:

• Articulate personal choices and emotional states confidently.
• Formulate clear requests for assistance from trusted adults or professional emergency networks without hesitation.
• Express anxieties or worries constructively, particularly when processing major lifestyle changes like secondary transitions.
• Engage in classroom debates respectfully, listening to opposing views without passing unfair judgment.

Subject Non-Negotiables

• Curriculum Integrity: Teachers must execute the fully sequenced 1decision pathway chronologically without omitting foundational modules.
• Mandatory Ground Rules: Lessons must never commence without establishing or reviewing ground rules.
• Strict Terminology: Staff must use accurate anatomical terms uniformly; euphemisms are strictly prohibited to ensure safeguarding clarity.
• Immediate Safeguarding Routing: Any vulnerability, risk pattern, or disclosure flagged during delivery must instantly trigger the official school safeguarding policy.