“Today’s children and young people are growing up in an increasingly complex world and living their lives seamlessly on and offline. This presents many positive and exciting opportunities, but also challenges and risks. In this environment, children and young people need to know how to be safe and healthy, and how to manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way. This is why we have made Relationships Education compulsory in all primary schools.”
(DfE 2019, updated 2021)
The very complexity of today’s society and its highly varied structures and processes means that the areas of Relationships, Sex and Physical and Mental Health are almost inextricably linked - our RSE and H Policy acknowledges this. Indeed, the government recognises the importance of all three of these elements and the necessary freedom that schools have to deliver them – in considering their own age-range, context and circumstance. Our intention in this policy is not only to define each area but to also acknowledge the necessity of teaching them together, explicitly through the subjects of Science and PSHE (see the curriculum below), but also through whole school events such as Diversity Week, Mental Health Days and Weeks, among other important initiatives.
We aim to provide a curriculum which is balanced and broadly based and which promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of our pupils. We want a curriculum that prepares our pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences that happen in the next stages of their lives and a key part of this is promoting the core values of respect, love and care, in line with our school values of respect, resilience, responsibility, happiness, kindness and pride.
Citizenship weaves through not only our PSHE curriculum, as part of the Kapow scheme of work, but is part of our way of life at UPS.
Below you will find our RSHE Policy, the Kapow RSE/PSHE mapping document and how the elements of Citizenship, set out in the DfE's guidance for Citizenship in KS1 and 2, are covered, taught and learnt at our school.
