Personal Development- PSHE and RSE
Our curriculum
At Endeavour Primary School, we have always recognised the crucial role Personal, Social and Health Education plays in the children's education. It has always been an integral part of our curriculum, taught both as stand-alone sessions and through our integrated curriculum.
In order to ensure that all the statutory requirements are covered throughout the school in a sensitive and age-appropriate way, we follow an online framework, provided by 'Coram Life Education' called 'SCARF' (Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience, Friendship). This framework does not only ensure that the statutory objectives are taught but also combines them with additional PSHE objectives, ensuring our children are given the tools to become, lifelong learners and acquire personal skills and attributes to help them in their future lives.
At Endeavour Primary School, we use the SCARF online planning tools, alongside our integrated curriculum approach, where we are able to create a bespoke curriculum for our pupils. We will be delivering the curriculum through our year group projects where appropriate, or discreetly. This allows us to adapt the delivery to meet the needs of our children. We have created a long-term plan that incorporates six units. Each unit is delivered in every year group to demonstrate a clear progression of knowledge and skills:
Me and My Relationships
Explores feelings and emotions, develops skills to manage conflict, helps identify our special people and equips children to recognise the qualities of healthy friendships and how to manage them.
Valuing Difference
Includes a strong focus on British Values, supports children to develop respectful relationships with others, recognise bullying and know their responsibilities as a bystander.
Keeping Myself Safe
Covers a number of safety aspects from statutory Relationships Education including being able to identify trusted adults in their lives, what to do when faced with a dilemma and recognising appropriate and inappropriate touch.
Rights and Responsibilities
Explores broader topics including looking after the environment, economic education and the changing rights and responsibilities children have as they grow older.
Being My Best
Includes a focus on keeping physically healthy, developing a growth mindset to facilitate resiliency, setting goals and ways to achieve them.
Growing and Changing
Has age-appropriate plans to cover the physical and emotional changes that happen as children as they grow older, including changes at puberty and how to approach this with confidence. Age-appropriate lessons on relationships and sex education are also included.
Learning intention and skills documents
We have provided a learning intention and skills progression document for you to see the summary of key learning in each Year group under the six units. We have also provided a vocabulary progression document which is split into key units for each year group. You will be able to see the language that we will be using as we deliver different aspects of the curriculum at school. Please click on the links below to view these:
Protected Characteristics
At Endeavour is important that all children gain an understanding of the world they are growing up in, and learn how to live alongside, and show respect for, a diverse range of people. We use SCARF and our integrated curriculum approach to promote equality and pupils’ understanding of the protected characteristics. Protected characteristics are characteristics that we are all protected from discrimination by under the Equality Act 2010:
- Age
-Disability
-Gender Re-assignment
- Marriage and civil partnership
-Pregnancy and maternity (parental leave)
- Race
- Religion of belief
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
SCARF and our integrated curriculum approach covers - in an age-appropriate way - the foundations of education to discuss a variety of topics. For example, the term 'gender reassignment won't appear in lessons taught to our pupils but the principles that underly this of understanding, kindness, celebrating difference, tolerance and respect for others are.
Please find attached below where we teach these protected characteristics and some example lessons. If you have any further questions about this please speak to your child's class teacher.
Relationship and Sex Education
As of September 2020, Relationship and Sex Education and health education has become compulsory for all schools to deliver and is a statutory subject. At Endeavour we believe that children should learn about relationships as well as the emotional, social and physical aspects of growing up, human sexuality and sexual health in an age-appropriate way. This goes beyond learning about relationships, to include puberty, how a baby is conceived and born, body ownership, and safeguarding. Although we refer to our resources as our Relationship Education programme, they also include elements of Health Education as well as non-statutory sex education. Therefore we often refer to this as RSE: Relationships and Sex Education. Our Relationships and Sex Education lessons support children at Endeavour to be safe, healthy and happy, both as they grow, and in their future lives. These lessons help to meet safeguarding, and emotional wellbeing requirements, as well as ensuring that schools cover the requirements of the DfE RSHE guidance.
4-5 year-olds: being the same and different, our special people, different families, different homes, our feelings, being unique and special, being kind, caring and friendly, keeping safe, keeping healthy, resilience, life stages and growing from young to old.
5-6 year olds: explores themes around families and their special people, the importance of respecting others including those that are different from us, recognising that genitals are private and their correct names; develops understanding of the difference between surprises and secrets (good or bad secrets) and when not to keep bad adult secrets; helps develop judgement of what kind of physical contact is acceptable or unacceptable and how to respond to this (including who to tell and how to tell them).
6-7 year-olds: looks at the process of growing from young to old and how people’s needs change; explores the opportunities and responsibilities that increasing independence can bring, recognising that they share a responsibility for keeping themselves and others safe.
7-8 year-olds: introduces themes about change, including menstruation and bereavement, healthy and unhealthy relationships (friendships), how images in the media do not always reflect reality and the impact of this on people’s thoughts and feelings; the nature and consequences of discrimination; the importance of protecting personal information online; understanding risk and building resilience; making informed choices; resisting pressure and recognising when and how to ask for help.
8-9 year-olds: builds on the themes covered in previous years, looking more closely at body changes as they approach and move through puberty including: menstruation and human reproduction; conflicting emotions; what positively and negatively affects their physical, mental and emotional health; understanding good and not-so-good feelings; recognising and challenging stereotypes; consequences of their actions; pressures to behave in an unacceptable, unhealthy or risky way and that marriage is a commitment freely entered into by both people.
9-10 year-olds: builds on the themes covered previously and in greater depth, looking more closely at: body changes and feelings during puberty; how their changing feelings can affect those they live with; what makes relationships unhealthy; exploring risky behaviour in more detail; different types of bullying including homophobic and transphobic; how to keep their personal information private online (and why this is important), and how to use social media safely.
10-11 year-olds: builds on and reinforces all the themes of the previous years, with new content built into the lesson plans looking at: body image and the media; forced marriage; female genital mutilation (FGM); sexual intercourse; HIV; and managing pressure online.
Please click the link below for more information about RSE and what is taught in each year group:
Examples of Relationship and Sex Education Lessons
Please click on the links below to see some example relationship and sex education lessons from each year group. These are not stand alone lessons but are part of a series. These are all statutory parts of our curriculum. These lessons will be amended to suit the needs of all pupils in the class.
Frequently asked questions:
Is Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) compulsory?
It’s compulsory for primary schools to teach Relationships Education and Health Education.
The Department for Education (DfE) also strongly encourage schools to teach Sex Education (which we cover in Year 6). Here at Endeavour, we consulted parents in developing and reviewing our RSE policy. We have ensured that the policy meets the needs of pupils and parents and reflects the community we serve.
Does SCARF cover non-statutory Sex Education?
There is very little in the SCARF programme that is non-statutory. We interpret sex education to mean puberty, conception, reproduction and birth. All of these themes, with the exception of conception, are statutory and included in either Health Education or National Curriculum Science.
The statutory guidance states that sex education should ensure children know how a baby is conceived. We interpret 'how a baby is conceived' as referring to what happens during sexual intercourse before an egg and sperm meet (reproduction). We therefore include sexual intercourse as well as IVF in our Year 6 Making Babies lesson.
We’ve also been asked whether teaching about HIV at Primary level is statutory. HIV is included in the SCARF programme as it helps schools to meet their statutory requirements under Health Education (in the Health and Prevention category) for all children by the end of year 6 to know:
- About personal hygiene and germs including bacteria, viruses, how they are spread and treated, and the importance of hand washing.
SCARF is a spiral curriculum and so previous lessons would have covered hygiene, bacteria and the importance of hand washing, this naturally leads on to discussions about different viruses, of which HIV is important to understand. The purpose of this particular SCARF lesson is to raise awareness and reduce stigma and misconceptions surrounding HIV. Although talking about viruses is statutory, talking about HIV, specifically at primary level, is not.
The teachers at Endeavour are best-placed to assess our pupils’ needs and SCARF is flexible, so teachers can adapt content to meet these needs.
The statutory guidance aims to provide a balance between what must be taught by the end of Year 6, alongside decisions about how and when the school delivers the content. We worked with our parents in our parental consultation to help us strike a balance that’s appropriate to the needs of our children.
When will my child’s school be delivering Relationships and Sex Education?
We started delivering RSE from September 2020. Parents in Year Groups 4,5 and 6 will receive a letter before the teachers start teaching RSE (Summer Term). We will communicate with parents what the children will be covering and when. As RSE is a statutory school subject your child will participate in all RSE/PSHE learning. If you would like to withdraw your child from the sexual intercourse lesson in Year 6 please speak to your child's class teacher. If you have any questions about our curriculum or what we are delivering please book an appointment to see your child's class teacher where they will be happy to discuss your concerns.
What can I do to support my child’s learning at home?
The statutory guidance is clear in recognising that a parent/carer is a child’s primary educator in these matters. There are a many things you can do to support your child’s understanding and encourage them to ask questions. Here are some
- If you feel it is time to talk to your child about growing up and the changes they are likely to experience it’s best to offer it in small chunks, rather than do it in one go, often known as ‘The Talk’. This gives children time to digest the new information and ask you further questions as they develop more understanding.
- If your child asks you questions try to stay calm, and not worry if you don’t know the answer. There are plenty of websites that you can use together to help you find the answers to their questions in a factual, honest, age appropriate way (see details below for resources on our website).
- Use everyday opportunities to bring up the topic; things you see on TV or hear on the radio can be great conversation starters to talk about topics such as relationships, sex and body image. Reading books with your child is also a great way of introducing topics and helping children to understand themselves, their bodies and the world around them.
- If you do have family names for genitals, ensure your child also knows their scientific names too. Nobody likes to think their child is at risk of abuse, but knowing the correct words for their genitals will help them report abuse if it did ever happen.
- By showing your child that you are comfortable with them asking you questions now, you are helping to develop a relationship with them where they can seek your advice and support in their adolescent years.
- Visit the specially created Coram Life Education SCARF webpage for more information including a list of books and websites that will support both you and your child along with some activities you to support their learning.
My child has Special Educational Needs. How will they access the learning?
Teachers will differentiate the learning based on the needs of the individual children in class. This can be through the support your child receives, the task design or in the learning outcomes for your child. Each child will be different and your child's class teacher will ensure your child is learning what they need to know next based on their starting points for that lesson.