At Ordsall Primary School PSHCE is taught within each year group from Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) to Year 6. In Years 1 to 6, teachers follow the PSHCE Programme of Study as published by the PHSCE Association and, within EYFS, objectives are taken from the EYFS framework.
PSHCE in our school deals with the diverse beliefs, values and attitudes that individuals and societies hold, their understanding of the world and their ability to communicate their feelings and values. Developing these skills allows children at Ordsall Primary School not only to develop their cultural capital but it gives them both the theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding of Fundamental British Values so that they can become a confident and informed member of their community.
The PSHCE curriculum programme is spilt into three core themes:
Through these themes the aims of PSHCE at Ordsall Primary School are to provide children with:
The school’s PSHCE curriculum is rooted in the consensus of the school’s leaders about the knowledge and skills that pupils need in order to take advantage of opportunities, responsibilities and experiences in later life. The long-term plan for PSHCE ensures that the three core themes of PSHCE are taught in a progressive way. Each year group develops their contextualised plans which identify which areas of the programme are being taught and how it links into the ‘Big Question’ each half term. In this way, the PSHCE curriculum aligns closely to the overall vision and intent for the curriculum at Ordsall Primary School.
The opportunities planned in the contextualised plans provide a context for the children’s work in PSHCE. Our curriculum plans reference the connections that PSHCE has across subjects including Science, Computing, Physical Education, Religious Education, and Design Technology for example, when the children’s learning is set in a context such as the Enterprise Fair. Through this approach, we aim to allow our children to be able to transfer key knowledge to long-term memory and apply it fluently in a range of contexts.
Due to the nature of the subject PSHCE requires a lot of discussion, debate and conversation. PSHCE at Ordsall Primary School is about empowering children to have the confidence and knowledge to ensure they have the skills needed to act appropriately to new or uncomfortable situations. In order to achieve this, key skills and key knowledge for PSHCE are planned so that they build on what has been taught before and move developmentally towards clearly defined end points or “milestones”. The milestones for the end of each term and each year ensure progression between year groups so that learning is always “built upon”.
Learning in PSHCE is delivered in different ways. It can be as discrete lessons or through cross-curricular links and, in EYFS, during Child Initiated Play (CIP). A discrete lesson in PSHCE is learning that takes place that is focussed on a particular theme, such as Stereotyping whereas a block of lessons are delivered over a number of consecutive days, for example when looking at bullying or e-safety. Our third approach is a sequence of lessons, which are often cross-curricular, and delivered across a number of weeks such as when learning about being healthy and living a healthy life. In PSHCE at Ordsall Primary School however, whichever approach is used, we aim to ensure that learning builds systematically on prior learning. In this way, the teaching staff are aware of what pupils should ‘know’ by the end of each term, year and key stage.
At Ordsall Primary School, we plan events to support learning in PSHCE such as School Council Elections and the Enterprise Fayre and take part in National Events events such as Anti-Bullying Week, E-Safety Day and Remembrance Services when we attend services held within the local community. We also plan and implement contextualised PSHCE that focuses on contextualised safeguarding factors. This reflects the school’s setting and the unique local factors which face our children and their families, such as living close to the east coast mainline, open water and electricity provision. We believe that this is innovative and unique to the PSHCE curriculum at Ordsall. We partner with a number of outside agencies to address this including Nottinghamshire Police Service, who delivered learning about knife crime because of the increase in knife crime in Nottinghamshire and the DARE programme due to the increasing incidents of drugs related offences and County Lines. We have also worked in partnership with the NSPCC who worked with our parents and carers and also spoke to the children about staying safe, different forms of abuse, understanding the ‘PANTS’ rule and where to go for help and support. These are alongside our work with the Safer Schools APP as part of our E-Safety learning.
In school, we have also introduced the ELSA programme, which provides Emotional Literacy Support to children in our school. The ELSA team work with individual children to give them a range of skills, strategies and techniques to help them deal with everyday situations such as low self-esteem, identifying and dealing with their emotions and behaviour, friendship issues and loss and bereavement.
Learning, Playing and Growing Together in PSHCE at Ordsall Primary School provides the children with exciting learning opportunities that they can commit to long-term memory and apply fluently. It is our intention that the PSHCE curriculum at Ordsall Primary School will be both stimulating and motivating in order to capture the children’s curiosity so that they can enjoy acquiring and developing the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to keep themselves healthy and safe, and prepare for life and work in modern Britain.
If you would like to see some of the work that we share in PSHCE please see our Twitter feed @Ordsallschool or our website, which are both used to share the work that we do with parents and carers, the local community and the wider community of Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire, the region and the United Kingdom.
If you would like to know more about the PSHCE curriculum at Ordsall Primary School please see the documents below. If you have any questions about the work we do in PSHCE please contact the PSHCE Subject Leader at the school.