PSHE / RSE
PSHE/ RSHE at St Gerard's
.jpg)
Here at St Gerard's the PSHE provision supports the school’s aims of developing confident citizens and successful learners who are creative, resourceful and able to identify and solve problems. PSHE is at the centre of our learning and embedded throughout our curriculum during whole school, class activities and events. There is also a large link between the PSHE programme and religious education and we deliver a considerable amount through prayer and liturgy, assemblies and RE lessons.
PSHE
We currently use the curriculum framework from Coram life, called SCARF. This provides the framework for a whole-school approach to improving children’s wellbeing and progress, based on five values:
Safety
Caring
Achievement
Resilience
Friendship
SCARF provides a whole-school teaching framework centred on the ‘Growth Mindset’ approach – promoting positive behaviour, mental health, wellbeing, resilience and achievement. The SCARF values are brought to life through stories of Harold the giraffe and his friends, songs, films, and thought-provoking and fun activities. As children get older, while they still cherish Harold, themes about wellbeing and relationships are explored in greater depth and resources are tailored to their age group.
SCARF provides a strong foundation for children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural education and development, it is at the heart of the SCARF curriculum. SCARF provides a robust framework for promoting a positive ethos and values cross the school community, contributing significantly to British Values education, both explicitly and implicitly.
The focus across the three themes of:
* Health and Wellbeing
* Relationships
* Living in the Wider World
These themes help foster and develop children’s responsibility for their own actions; respect for the actions and beliefs of others; an understanding of how each individual is protected by the rule of law; and how everyone can make a positive contribution to society through the democratic process.
Throughout the course of the year the PHSE curriculum is enhanced through participation in whole school awareness days/weeks, e.g. Anti-Bullying Week, Children’s Mental Health Week etc.
RSHE
Our School’s mission embraces the spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional, moral and social development of children and young people.We believe that it is important to promote the development of the whole child, so that children can grow in virtue, wisdom and stature. We want to enable children to have an understanding of the emotional, social and physical aspects of growing spiritually, as well as moral aspects of relationships within a context of a Christian vision for the purpose of life. For our main teaching of RSE, we use the Archdiocesan recommended programme 'A Journey in Love' from Nursery to Year 6.
The Scarf programme of study further enables our RSE teaching by ensuring that all RSE objectives are covered from Nursery to Year 6. This ensures that children of all ages are exposed to key teaching about relationships, safety, health and wellbeing at an age-appropriate level throughout each school year. In addition to this, we use the 'No Outsiders' programme to provide additional teaching about families, equality and celebrating diversity. It uses high quality texts which highlight various subjects, and allow children to ask relevant and meaningful questions about the world in which they live.
Our RSE curriculum is mapped out within our RSHE policy to highlight how and where the key objectives will be taught throughout the school. In addition to the teaching mentioned above, our RSE teaching is also delivered through other curriculum areas such as Science, PE, Computing and DT. Our Family Support Worker delivered Kidsafe sessions across the school and we also use external agencies such as Halton Borough Council and Cheshire Police to further enhance our RSE curriculum.
As part of our commitment to ensuring that our RSE curriculum is suitable for our children, we will share our RSE policy and resources with parents and carers at the beginning of each year. Parents will be given the opportunity to discuss the programme with a relevant member of staff if they wish to do so. As parents, you have the right to withdraw your child from the sex education lessons that are taught as part of statutory Relationships, Sex, and Health Education (RSHE). However, you cannot opt out of Relationships Education, Health Education, or the science curriculum components that cover reproduction and human development.
Our spiral curriculum for PSHE and RSHE is based around recurring themes. The aims of it are to:
1. Give pupils the knowledge and develop the self-esteem, confidence and self-awareness to make informed choices and decisions.
2. Encourage and support the development of social skills and social awareness.
3. Enable pupils to make sense of their own personal and social experiences.
4. Promote responsible attitudes towards the maintenance of good physical and mental health, supported by a safe and healthy lifestyle.
5. Enable effective interpersonal relationships and develop a caring attitude towards others.
6. Encourage a caring attitude towards and responsibility for the environment.
7. Help our pupils understand and manage their feelings; to build resilience and be independent, curious problem solvers.
8. understand how society works and the laws, rights and responsibilities involved.
