PSHE & RSE
If you walked into a PSHE or RSE lesson at King Athelstan, you would see a positive and open environment where children feel safe to contribute, listen to others and explore different ideas. Lessons are built around mutual respect, inclusion and collaboration.
Using the Jigsaw PSHE programme, we have developed a broad and carefully sequenced curriculum which is adapted to meet the needs of our pupils and school community. From EYFS to Year 6, children develop self-awareness, an understanding of others and the confidence to make informed choices. These are important building blocks for developing and maintaining healthy, respectful relationships.
Learning builds from concrete, familiar experiences in the younger years towards increasingly complex real-life situations and issues as children move through the school. Teachers know their classes well and adapt teaching to meet pupils’ needs. At times, additional lessons or discussions may be used to respond to issues that arise, ensuring that our approach remains flexible, relevant and responsive to pupils’ pastoral needs.
Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)
Relationships Education begins in EYFS with age-appropriate learning about friendships, families, feelings, personal boundaries and keeping safe.
Children learn about personal boundaries and consent in an age-appropriate way, including simple language they can use if they feel uncomfortable, such as “Please stop, I don’t like that.” Our Boundaries Song provides a memorable and child-friendly way for younger children to practise expressing their boundaries. We also use the NSPCC PANTS rule to reinforce learning about private parts, appropriate and inappropriate touch, saying no and speaking to a trusted adult if something worries them.
As children move through the school, learning develops progressively to include changing relationships, body changes, puberty and consent. In Year 5, children learn about puberty and the physical and emotional changes that take place as they grow. In Year 6, this learning is revisited and developed further, alongside age-appropriate learning about conception and human reproduction, making links with the Science curriculum.
Parents and carers have the right to request that their child is withdrawn from sex education that goes beyond the statutory Science and Relationships Education curriculum. Parents and carers who would like to discuss this should contact the school.
PSHE Across School Life
PSHE extends beyond discrete lessons and is woven throughout school life and the wider curriculum. We make links to the wider world and current issues and draw on whole-school approaches such as Zones of Regulation, which supports pupils to recognise and manage their emotional responses, and PRIDE – Perseverance, Respect, Imagination, Diving Deeper and Excellence – which underpins our expectations for learning and personal development.
Pupil voice is an important part of our approach. Children are encouraged to share their views, contribute ideas for school improvement and take increasing responsibility within the school. Our Junior Leadership Team (JLT) gives pupils opportunities to represent others, take on leadership roles and contribute positively to the school community. These experiences help children develop confidence, responsibility and an understanding of democracy, their local community and the wider world.
Online Safety
Supporting pupils to stay safe online is an important part of both our PSHE and computing curriculums. Children learn that the same expectations around respect, consent, kindness and healthy relationships apply online as they do face-to-face.
Through age-appropriate discussions and scenarios, pupils explore cyberbullying, sharing images, online boundaries and consent, healthy technology use, peer pressure, online relationships and the influence of digital content. As they get older, this develops to include more complex issues such as online grooming, exploitation and responsible use of social media and technology.
Children are taught how to recognise when something does not feel right, how to report concerns and how to seek support from trusted adults. By revisiting these themes throughout their time at King Athelstan, we aim to give pupils the knowledge, skills and confidence to navigate both their relationships and the wider world safely and responsibly.
Click here to see our PSHE Curriculum
Click here to see our RSE Curriculum Map
Jigsaw Parent/Carer Leaflet
