Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education

Intent

At JSTC, we strongly believe in the importance and benefit that PSHE education brings to our students. Our intent is to prepare students for the range of challenges they may face, not just throughout their time at school, but beyond their secondary education too. We aim to do this by providing students with the skills and knowledge to understand themselves and others, manage their wellbeing, create and sustain healthy relationships and ultimately make informed decisions about various aspects of their lives.

As of September 2020, the Department for Education published new Statutory Guidance, for Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education, which sets out what schools must cover as part of their PSHE education provision. Our PSHE provision goes beyond the guidance to ensure that our students are also gaining knowledge and skills surrounding: economic wellbeing, careers, enterprise and personal safety, including assessing and managing risk. Furthermore, our curriculum is selected to meet the needs of our students and the area of Lincolnshire that we are situated in.

Implementation

Good PSHE education addresses both students’ current experiences and preparation for their future. We, therefore provide a spiral curriculum to develop knowledge, skills and attributes, where prior learning is revisited, reinforced and extended year on year.

There are three main strands to our curriculum:

- Health and Wellbeing

- Living in the Wider World

- Relationships

In KS3, students will cover each strand twice throughout the year. Many topics may fall under more than one strand meaning that students may learn about some topics more than once. This is important as it highlights to students the cross over between different aspects of their lives. It further supports reinforcing the knowledge, skills and attributes throughout the year. In KS4, each strand is covered at least once, however, the same retrieval principals are followed as in KS3.

We have a good teams of teachers responsible for teaching PSHE education lessons. Lessons are designed to be engaging and allow students to put their different skills into practice. A proportion of many lessons includes discussion opportunities. By voicing opinions and having constructive discussions and debates, it allows students to understand that each person will have individual views, but more importantly, students learn how to respond to opinions, particularly when they may disagree.

In addition to the lesson based curriculum, we are also developing a series of events where external organisations come into the school to deliver high quality workshops from experts in their fields. These currently include the Lincolnshire Stay Safe Partnership, Prison A Reality and the Smashed Project.

KS4 Curriculum

In KS4, PSHE education is delivered during one designated lesson per week for two terms. PSHE education is only taught for two terms as during KS4, is it on rotation with Religious Studies (referred to as PRS on timetables). Due to this rotation, groups will be taught topics at different times, therefore, the curriculum overview is not based on terms as with KS3. Our KS4 curriculum can be viewed by clicking the image below.

KS3 Curriculum

In KS3, PSHE education is delivered during one designated lesson per week throughout the year. Our KS3 curriculum can be viewed by clicking the image below.

Promoting the 9 Protected Characteristics

The Equality Act became law in 2010. It covers everyone in Britain and protects people from discrimination, harassment and victimisation. Everyone in Britain is protected. This is because the Equality Act protects people against discrimination because of the protected characteristics that we all have. Under the Equality Act, there are nine Protected Characteristics:

Age
Disability
Gender reassignment
Race
Religion or belief
Marriage or civil partnership
Sex
Sexual orientation
Pregnancy and maternity

The 9 Protected Characteristics are actively promoted in school through:

Our school ethos
Our school core values
Our school behaviour policy
Conscious role modelling by all adults in the school community
Active engagement and communication with parents and carers
Assemblies
British Values themed activities
Discussion within curriculum subjects, taking a cross-curricular approach
Promoting articulation by building appropriate language and a coherent vocabulary
Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE) sessions
Religious Education (RE) lessons, RSE lessons, LGBT discussions and Protected Characteristic talks
Sporting, Art and Cultural Events
Pupil Voice and History Club
Educational visits
Real-life learning outside the classroom
Guest speakers
Developing links with local, national and international communities
Extra-curricular activities, after-school clubs, charity work and work within the local community

Embedding Protected Characteristics into the whole ethos of our school:

Self-esteem, self-knowledge and self-confidence
Respect for democracy and support for participation in the democratic process
Acceptance of responsibility for their own behaviour
Respect for their own and other cultures
Understanding of how they can contribute positively to school and home life and to the lives of those living and working in the locality and further afield
An understanding of Equality, Human Rights and Protected Characteristics
An understanding of how citizens can influence decision-making through the democratic process
An appreciation that living under the rule of law protects individual citizens and is essential for their wellbeing and safety
An understanding that the freedom to choose and hold other faiths and beliefs is protected in law
An acceptance that other people having different faiths or beliefs to oneself (or having none) should be accepted and tolerated, and should not be the cause of prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour
An understanding of the importance of identifying and combating discrimination