St Mewan CP School - PSHE
Intent
At St Mewan, our intention is to enable children to navigate their adult lives with the knowledge, skills and understanding to successfully play an active role in society. We want all our children to reach their full potential, achieving their aspirations with confidence, believe in themselves and have the skills and understanding to independently motivate themselves and persevere through any difficulties they may face in life.
We strongly believe that their spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development should be greatly emphasised and celebrated and provide opportunities for this through our PSHE curriculum. Our PSHE curriculum aims to send all our pupils into their adult life with strong foundations in their mental health, physical health and emotional wellbeing and to develop pupils who are passionate about leading happy lives. We believe this is vital for a successful and happy future for them all. We promote and practise mindfulness in order to encourage and allow children to explore their emotional intelligence and develop their independent ability to manage and regulate their feelings. We ensure that our PSHE provision is completely inclusive and accessible for all pupils regardless of their academic ability. An important part of our PSHE curriculum is ensuring that pupils have the knowledge to seek help; the understanding of themselves and others to know what is right and wrong for them and the vocabulary and skills of communication to express their thoughts and feelings. Our PSHE curriculum aims to model and explicitly teach the behaviours pupils need to learnt to have a successful time socially as they grow. It aims to provide them with experiences they may meet in their future which could pose challenges, in a safe space where they can explore their thoughts and feelings with support. Through these opportunities they are encouraged to reflect and think critically.
The aims for our pupils in PSHE are:
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Develop confidence in opening up and talking about how they feel, their thoughts and opinions.
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Develop a range of skills and attributes that keep themselves safe.
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Develop an understanding of how to lead a healthy lifestyle.
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Develop a positive attitude towards being a global citizen and member of a local community and learn how to contribute in a positive way.
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To show tolerance and understanding of others’ beliefs, religions and life choices.
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To build positive relationships made through their choices and challenge what they are uncomfortable with.
Implementation
Although teaching the entire scope of PSHE is not a statutory requirement for Primary Schools in England, we feel deeply passionate about this being an extremely important subject to consistently cover across all year groups through teaching, discussion and questioning.
The Department for Education (DfE) has stated:
“Personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education is an important and necessary part of all pupils’ education. All schools should teach PSHE, drawing on good practice, and this expectation is outlined in the introduction to the proposed new national curriculum.”
With this in mind, we follow the whole school approach through the JIGSAW scheme, which offers a comprehensive programme including statutory Relationships and Health Education, in a progressive spiral through a fully planned scheme of work.
Jigsaw states that:
“Jigsaw holds children at its heart, and its cohesive vision helps children understand and value how they fit into and contribute to the world.
With strong emphasis on emotional literacy, building resilience and nurturing mental and physical health, Jigsaw 3-11 properly equips schools to deliver engaging and relevant PSHE within a whole-school approach. Jigsaw lessons also include mindfulness allowing children to advance their emotional awareness, concentration and focus.”
We deliver this through six lessons (known as pieces) per half-term, through six topics (known as puzzles) which are:
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Term 1: Being Me in My World
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Term 2: Celebrating Difference (including anti-bullying)
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Term 3: Dreams and Goals
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Term 4: Healthy Me
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Term 5: Relationships
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Term 6: Changing Me (including Sex Education)
We deliver these through a range of activities that are inclusive for all and differentiate where necessary for the individual needs of the pupils. Each lesson addresses the learning intentions - Relationships and Health Education (found in pink on the Progression of Skills document) and Emotional Literacy and Social Skills (found in blue on Progression of Skills document). At the age-appropriate level, each year group covers the same broad topics (with different foci) at the same time in the year and these are built upon in the following year.
Each lesson is designed to enhance collaborative learning, encourage a peaceful and positive environment, engage and stimulate the mind, consolidate and apply learning and allow the teacher to praise the positive attitudes throughout the learning. This is done through a clear structure in each lesson:
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Connect us
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Calm me
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Open my mind
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Tell me/Show me
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Help me reflect
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Closure
Beyond the planning from Jigsaw, teachers have the freedom to plan PSHE work outside of the scheme according to the needs of the class. Additional resources are available from the curriculum provided by Cornwall and Isle of Scilly scheme of work and the RSE resources from the Christopher Winter Project. These are readily available to teachers to access to support their planning and lessons.
Impact
This meaningful and effective curriculum aids the children in becoming happy, confident and open-minded people. We know our children leave St Mewan School as individuals who positively contribute to society and demonstrate a great sense of community awareness and respect for British values.
This is demonstrated through a number of ways:
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Becoming head boys or girls and prefects in their secondary schools.
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Taking on leadership roles such as Sport Leader Awards at secondary school.
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Leading charity fundraising days at their secondary schools.
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Contributing to their local communities through litter picks, food collections and charitable giving.
Guiding and helping the children grow into well-rounded adults is the key of our intentions and ensuring that they are supplied with all of knowledge to enrich their successful and fulfilling future is a pleasure of ours. We are confident that they will have been provided with the tools that they need to approach a wide range of situations and apply their skills, whilst making connections to navigate forwards in life. Sending our healthy, happy and confident St Mewan pupils with a zest for life, into the world is something that we are very proud of.
