PSHE at Holy Redeemer
Mission Statement:
Through the Holy Redeemer, we seek to grow in faith and love, to become great people who make a difference in our world.
Our aim:
We provide a nurturing, safe space for children to grow and develop their understanding of themselves and their place in the world. We aim to provide opportunities to develop essential life skills and life-long health and well-being habits, modelled and supported by staff, so that our children can be happy and healthy and live out our school mission statement. All of this is underpinned by our whole school focus on Building Learning Power and on developing higher order thinking, with a particular focus on spoken language and vocabulary and on resilience and risk-taking; identified as key needs within our school context.
Intent
PSHE education is an area of our school curriculum through which pupils develop the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to keep themselves healthy, safe, and prepared for life. At Holy Redeemer this is at the core of our foundations for all aspects of school life and we recognise the importance of this for all our children. We foster a child centred approach and aim to provide a safe and secure environment where children feel happy, enjoy their learning and where their voices are actively heard. Our PSHE curriculum equips children with relevant and meaningful content for them, which is supported through a strong emphasis on emotional literacy, building their learning power (BLP) and nurturing their mental and physical health. Weaving through the heart of all of this is a commitment to enhancing and promoting our Catholic values and faith.
Implementation
Our holistic PHSE curriculum is shaped by our school vision, which aims to enable all children, regardless of background, ability or additional needs, to become great people who make a difference in our world.
Statutory aspects are taught using a national programme for Catholic primary schools; Life to the Full. From September 2020, Relationships and Sex/Health Education (RSE) became statutory for all schools and this programme teaches this within the context of a Christian understanding and rooted in the wisdom and teaching of the Catholic Church.
Our RSE curriculum covers EYFS, KS1 and KS2 and is based on three core themes within which there is abroad overlap. It is adaptable to the age and ability of the pupils which teachers take responsibility for. The three themes are:
• Created and loved by God (this explores the individual) The Christian imperative to love self, made in the image and likeness of God, and shows an understanding of the importance of valuing and understanding oneself as the basis for personal relationships.
• Created to love others (this explores an individual’s relationships with others) God is love. We are created out of love and for love. The command to love is the basis of all Christian morality.
• Created to live in community – local, national & global (this explores the individual’s relationships with the wider world) Human beings are relational by nature and live in the wider community. Through our exchange with others, our mutual service and through dialogue, we attempt to proclaim and extend the Kingdom of God for the good of individuals and the good of society.
Each theme begins with a statement of the virtues which are necessary to living well in relationship with themselves and others. These virtues underpin the teaching and also emerge as a consequence of it. Virtues are habits which are learned from experience and are gained through imitation; the same virtues being modelled by those who teach. They express the qualities of character that we seek to develop in our pupils. These virtues reflect our Christian tradition but they are also, of course, fundamental human virtues which are universally shared.
We also adopt and teach elements of a programme of study from the PSHE Association, which covers non-statutory aspects of our PSHE curriculum. This follows an enquiry based approach that is structured around an overarching question. These begin in Key Stage 1 as ‘What?’ and ‘Who?’’ questions and build throughout Key Stage 2 into ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ questions. The core theme covered by this is ‘Living in the Wider World’. Lessons are planned according to the age and needs of the pupils, with developmentally appropriate learning objectives given to respond to each key question.
At Holy Redeemer we provide a wide range of additional teaching, learning and support for children’s physical health and emotional wellbeing. This includes regular circle time, celebration assemblies, sports clubs, Change 4 Life Team and a qualified support worker who delivers the Thrive programme, who works with children and families who need it. Building Learning Power is introduced to children in Reception Class and progresses throughout each class. This empowers children in understanding how they learn and enables them to work with their strengths and develop the areas needed; responsibility, resourcefulness, reciprocity, resilience, readiness and reflectiveness. This inclusively creates a positive approach in the classroom, which cultivates habits and attitudes that enable our children to become more confident learners; who face difficulty and uncertainty with calmness, confidence and creativity. We highly value children having their voices heard and there are many different councils in our school, with representatives from each class. This includes our School, Eco, Sports, BLP, Values and Leadership councils.