At Summer Lane Primary School, we are passionately committed to providing our pupils with the best possible start in life. We are driven to ensure that we support pupils' spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development and help them to become a resilient responsible and happy individual that will allow them to be able to adapt to the changing world in which we live in. Through teaching PD & RSHE, our pupils gain vital understanding of the world around them and learn how to thrive as individuals, family members and members of society. We believe that all children deserve to succeed and our ultimate goal is to have nurture-articulate, well informed children and to help them prepare for life’s many opportunities and challenges.

Our approach to the PD & RSHE (Relationship, Health & Sex Education) curriculum ensures that it is taught discretely to ensure depth and rigour. The PD & RSHE curriculum has been developed from the National Curriculum and statutory guidance for RSE in primary schools, which ensures it supports pupils' spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development and prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life. We feel it is important that it develops the qualities and attributes pupils need to thrive as individuals, family members and members of society.

At Summer Lane, the PD & RSHE Curriculum sets out learning opportunities for each key stage, in each core theme, organised under subheadings. These learning opportunities should be used flexibly to plan a programme according to pupils’ development, readiness and needs, and taking into account prior learning, experience and understanding.

Learning from one area may be related and relevant to others. Whilst this framework distinguishes three separate core themes, there will be extensive overlap, so when planning schemes of work, teachers may draw from more than one theme. For example, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) falls within both ‘Health and Wellbeing’ and ‘Relationships’, as sexual health should always be considered as an element of health education but also taught within the context of healthy relationships. Similarly, whilst they are specifically addressed where appropriate, assessing and managing risk and managing life online are integrated throughout all three core themes.

PD & RSHE education contributes to personal development by helping pupils to build their confidence, resilience and self-esteem, and to identify and manage risk, make informed choices and understand what influences their decisions. It enables them to recognise, accept and shape their identities, to understand and accommodate difference and change, to manage emotions and to communicate constructively in a variety of settings. Developing an understanding of themselves, empathy and the ability to work with others will help pupils to form and maintain good relationships, develop the essential skills for future employability and better enjoy and manage their lives.

We have created supplementary guidance on sex education which is additional, but non-statutory content that parents have a right to withdraw their child from.

At Summer Lane, PD & RSHE education addresses both pupils’ current experiences and preparation for their future. The spiral curriculum design allows children to develop knowledge, skills and attributes, where prior learning is revisited, reinforced and extended year on year. This is grounded in the established evidence base for effective practice in PD & RSHE education.

During Key Stages 1 and 2, our PD & RSHE curriculum offers both explicit and implicit learning opportunities and experiences which reflect pupils’ increasing independence and physical and social awareness, as they move through the primary phase. It builds on the skills that pupils started to acquire during the Early Years Foundation stage (EYFS) to develop effective relationships, assume greater personal responsibility and manage personal safety, including online. PD & RSHE education helps pupils to manage the physical and emotional changes at puberty, introduces them to a wider world and enables them to make an active contribution to their communities.

The Accelerated Learning Cycle, based on the work of Alastair Smith, is applied in all lessons. It stems from the idea of a supportive and challenging learning environment. The cycle has active engagement through multi-sensory learning, encourages the demonstrating understanding of learning in a variety of ways and the consolidation of knowing.

We ensure we provide opportunities for children to personally develop by immersing themselves in our three core themes that are at the heart of the our PD & RSHE curriculum offer and a revisited within a spiral curriculum throughout the year.

We provide to the children through developing their understanding of the fundamental British values of: democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law and mutual respect and tolerance in order to develop responsible, respectful and active citizens who are able to play their part and become actively involved in public life as adults in the 21st Century.

We take particular pride in approaches with our children, drawing on insights from recent advances in neuroscience, attachment theory and child development to provide a powerful way of working with children and young people that supports optimal social and emotional development. We ensure staff are able to access CPD and we provide support and interventions to children to promote the personal development of all children, particularly those with additional social and emotional needs.

Our curriculum is designed with a core focus on retrieval practice, recognising its pivotal role in helping students know more and remember more. This intent is done through a dual approach: integrated retrieval within individual lessons and a structured, subject retrieval practice rota. In-session retrieval activities are carefully crafted to reinforce key concepts and knowledge, promoting immediate recall and application. Complementing this, our weekly retrieval practice rota systematically revisits content across various subjects, ensuring spaced repetition and interleaving of crucial information. This comprehensive strategy aims to strengthen neural connections, facilitate the transfer of knowledge to long-term memory and build increasingly complex mental models. By embedding retrieval practice as a fundamental aspect of our curriculum, we strive to enhance our pupils' ability to retain, recall and apply their learning effectively, thereby fostering deeper understanding and more robust academic progress.

Our curriculum is ambitious for all pupils, including those children with SEND. Curriculum designers and teachers have high expectations of what SEND pupils can achieve and the curriculum is not diluted or unnecessarily reduced for SEND pupils. Every pupil is different and so what works for each pupil varies. Pupil’s individual needs are considered and adaptations are planned to ensure the success of pupils in all subjects.

PD & RSHE is largely assessed formatively by the class teacher. By knowing the class well and establishing ground rules early on, the class teacher creates close, positive relationships with the children in which they are able to assess the understanding of the children during each topic. Teachers will provide written and verbal feedback based on reflections of the children to challenge their thinking and extend them further. In Early Years Foundation Stage, we assess children’s knowledge and understanding according to the relevant aspects of the Development Matters. The information gathered will inform subsequent teaching and learning.

As a school, we believe that reflection time is an important step in pupil learning and progress. We ensure that our pupils are given time to reflect upon their learning. Reflection helps us to recognise what and how we have learned and what we need to focus on in the future. Reflection should be about valuing and encouraging pupil involvement – getting them to share ideas, listen to each other and develop the confidence to join in.

The curriculum document for PD & RSHE is regularly reviewed to identify any gaps or misconceptions to be addressed. This allows children to acquire complex skills that depends on the fundamentals of their prior knowledge in a well designed curriculum sequence.

Parent Guide