What is our vision for RSHE at All Souls?
At All Souls Catholic Primary School, our main focus is to provide all our pupils with the initial building blocks necessary to embrace the challenges of a happy and successful adult life. Our PSHE and RSE Curriculum sets out the steps to do just this. Our curriculum works to provide pupils with invaluable knowledge that will help them to make informed decisions about their wellbeing as well as to teach them the fundamental attributes of healthy relationships. Relationships and sex education encompasses learning about the emotional, social and physical aspects of growing up, relationships, and health. Some aspects are taught in science, others are taught as part of personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) and some as part of the Relationship and Sex Education (RSE). This curriculum is central to all aspects of learning here, in the classroom and beyond. It is taught both as timetabled, planned lessons and across the school day in every aspect of school life.
From September 2020, the Health Education and Relationships Education (primary) aspects of PSHE education became compulsory in all schools. Our PSHE and RSE curriculum has been adapted to meet individual pupil needs. It takes a gradual approach, working to give the children the opportunities to revisit topics at a deeper level at each key stage or year group, whilst rehearsing, emphasising and embedding the essential skills and attributes young people need to manage their lives, both now and in the future.
Our PSHE and RSE curriculum enables our children to become healthy, independent and responsible members of society. Its key aim is to help them to understand how they are developing personally and socially, and tackles current moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up. At All Souls, we strive to provide our children with learning opportunities across and beyond the curriculum, in specific lessons, school projects and other activities that enrich the pupils’ experiences. This allows pupils to learn about their own rights and responsibilities as well as appreciate what it means to be a member of a diverse society. Our children are encouraged to develop their own sense of self-worth by playing a positive role in contributing to school life and the wider community. We embrace the content that PSHE and RSE supports, especially in the many of the principles of safeguarding and its close links to the SMSC, the Catholic Schools Pupil Profile and British Values.
How do we achieve this vision?
At All Souls we use Ten:Ten ‘Life to the Full’ Programme, as our chosen teaching and learning programme and then tailor it to our children’s needs. This programme supports the majority of the PSHE and RSE curriculum whilst staying true to our Catholic ethos and values that we hold as a school. Anything not covered by the Ten:Ten programme is implemented and supported by a range of resources to ensure our curriculum has full coverage including money management. This combination of content helps to enable children to understand and respect who they are, empowers them with a voice, and develops their resilience, thereby equipping them for life and learning.
The programme is set out into three modules:
- Created and Loved by God
- Created to Love Others
- Created to Live in Community
Within these modules there are various units that seek to teach the children about how their
- Religious Understanding
- Me, my body, my health
- Emotional well-being
- Life cycles
- Personal Relationships
- Keeping Safe
- Living in the Wider World
At All Souls, we teach these units in their entirety with a whole-school approach from EYFS through to Year 6 to promote respect for all, worth of self and value for every individual student. We prioritise children’s understanding of the need for these lessons, teaching points and discussions and work with the children to create a safe environment to ensure that children feel comfortable sharing and feel included. Establishing such an environment for both pupils and teachers is important for these lessons to explore values, attitudes, expression of views and opinions as well as asking challenging content with supportive adults.
The school’s programme pathway delivers the full programme over 3 terms on a two year cycle. This means that the content from the programme overview, below, has been carefully mapped across each Key Stage to fit with other RE and curriculum content. Units and sessions are therefore delivered once during children’s journey through each Key Stage.
Some of the sessions will not have a written outcome or activity at all but are instead completely immersive and reflective with discussions, questions, prayer and songs being used as the main outcome or focus of learning. Lessons are taught by the Class Teacher, all of which have had training on implementing and teaching the programme. These explicit lessons are reinforced and enhanced in many ways including:
- Collective worship (whole school assemblies)
- Prayer times within the classrooms
- Modelling of relationships between adults and between adult and child and the support of peer-to-peer relationships (as well as child-to-child relationships in different years across the school.)
- Pupil Leadership groups
- Values and virtues focus throughout the year (CSPP)
- Our school house point reward system
- Additional sessions facilitated by outside agencies including our School Nursing Team for focused sessions on handwashing, brushing our teeth, keeping our bodies clean, healthy bodies, mindfulness and relaxation sessions
- We also invite the School Nursing Team into school during Year 6 to support children with addressing any further questions they may have about their changing bodies and staying safe and healthy.
How does this impact our children?
At All Souls we are proud to confidently say that through our PSHE and RSE Curriculum our children learn how to develop and maintain healthy relationships with their peers. Through our implementation of the PSHE and RSE curriculum, we have been able to develop the children’s understanding of their own feelings, relationships and emotions and those of their peers. PSHE and RSE are central to our curriculum; they help children grow and develop as individuals and as members of families and communities. Our lessons allow the children to have open discussions, encouraging curiosity, independence and gaining a better knowledge of the world around them.
The personal and social development of pupils underpins all aspects of school life here. Through our carefully chosen, planned programme, supported by all who work in or with the school, we successfully embed all areas required; ensuring that our children leave All Souls school with the necessary tools they need to help them be emotionally and socially ready for their next steps and to be ready for life beyond our classrooms.
Life to the Full Programme Overview:
Our RHE Pathway at All Souls:
Our current RSE Policy can be accessed here.
