PSHE - Life Skills

The DfE released a statutory 'Relationships and Health Curriculum' in 2020 and was updated in 2021. Shared across the academies in the Trust, our curriculum includes the statutory learning objectives from the Relationships and Health Education document by the DfE for Year 1-6.

In addition to the statutory curriculum, we have added content on personal safety (e.g. road safety) and economic education (e.g. the dangers of gambling) to ‘upgrade’ the curriculum from just Relationships and Health, to a full PSHE curriculum, in line with the recommendations of the PSHE Association.  The Trust curriculum has due regard for the statutory Relationships and Health Curriculum and the Equality Act 2010.  We have not included the non-statutory sex education material from the DfE at this stage, although this may be consulted on in the future for individual academies. This is the only part of the curriculum that has a ‘legal right to withdraw’ for parents, and so our current PSHE curriculum does not allow pupils to be withdrawn.

PSHE stands for Personal, Social, Health and Economic education, which covers the statutory curriculum and more as detailed above. However, after consulting with parents we have stopped using PSHE as a term with the children and have changed it to 'Life Skills', which is simpler to understand than a series of letters. So when you hear the children talking about 'Life Skills' lessons, this is what they are referring to.

Our curriculum has three key strands:

• Relationships- Family and Friends
• Living in the World- Being Safe
• Health and Wellbeing- Healthy Body and Mind

We will teach about Puberty in Year 4, in order to ensure that the vast majority of children will have this learning at an age-appropriate time before they start going through the changes themselves.