'Love your neighbour as yourself.' Mark 12:31

Our PSHE with RSE lead is Miss Pearson.

At St Marys, Personal, Social, Health, Economic education (PSHE) is at the core of everything we do to ensure all our children can flourish. PSHE with RSE aims to develop the pupil’s knowledge, skills and attributes that are needed to manage their lives, now and in the future. This will help children and young people to stay healthy, safe and happy while also preparing them for life and finding their place in a wider community. The PSHE with RSE that our school delivers helps pupils to develop and build their character and resilience from Early Years to Year 4. This will enable them to continue the next steps of their learning journey, and into their adult lives, as a global citizen leading a happy, healthy and safe life.

We are committed to developing the pupil’s knowledge, skills and understanding to lead confident, healthy, independent lives and become respectful, active and responsible global citizens. We do this primarily through our PSHE curriculum, which incorporates three core themes: Health and Wellbeing, Relationships and Living in the Wider World. 

Click here for information about Relationship and Health Education from the Department for Education. 

PSHE Curriculum  

To ensure full coverage, PSHE (with RSE) is addressed in two ways: through designated curriculum time on a weekly basis within discrete sessions and through links with other curriculum areas such as Science, English and R.E. These cross-curricular links are always made to make learning more meaningful and impactful e.g. online safety to be also taught during Computing and on awareness days like Internet Safety Day. 

Our student’s needs, attitudes and experiences at home and in their community are carefully considered so that we don’t just contextualise, but instead personalise and localise learning, helping students to realise that they have resources that can be applied in their own lives now and in the future. Parents have been involved with initial consultations and our curriculum and units to be covered are shared regularly therefore parents are encouraged to be actively involved.

Early Years 

Early Years are guided through PSHE sessions using colourful Rainbow Drop characters that encounter 'Dilemma Drops'. Throughout sessions, Rainbow Drops go on many adventures, learn a lot about the wider world that they live in and are posed with 'real life' dilemmas e.g. Red Visits the Dentist. Red is losing a baby tooth. When it’s time for his regular check up at the dentist, he worries about what the dentist might say.

The children discuss the 'dilemmas', develop the skills and knowledge to support the characters and their peers to respond to appropriately and begin to consider what is important to themselves. Our Early Years PSHE topics include: 

Key Stage 1 

During Years 1 and 2, PSHE education offers both explicit and implicit learning opportunities and experiences which reflect pupils’ increasing independence and physical and social awareness, as they move through the phases. It builds on the skills that pupils started to gain during the Early Years Foundation stage (EYFS) to develop effective relationships, build greater personal responsibility and manage personal safety, including online. 

The children have key skills that they will revisit throughout each unit and each year as part of a spiral curriculum e.g. knowing how, when and where to seek advice or help from through regular sign posting like identifying trusted adults, exploring safe and reliable online resources or discussing how to ask dentists about looking after oral health. We also introduce 'ask-it baskets' where children can anonymously ask questions about issues raised during PSHE sessions and have high quality texts during sessions and beyond for the children to access to learn about topics we have discussed. Our Years 1 and 2 topics include: 

Key Stage 2 

In Years 3 and 4, PSHE 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. We offer learning opportunities and outcomes for the children to develop their own knowledge about personal, social, health and economic related issues (e.g. legal age for smoking), the practical skills to understand and respond (e.g. a chance to practise and develop strategies to deal with peer pressure and the vocabulary associated) and attributes to successfully explain their views (e.g. self-confidence). These can and will be varied from child to child so, our aim is to provide practical opportunities to develop their own strategies and attributes using knowledge they attain. 

We use a range of resources and prompts for discussion and use 'real life' contexts for the children to give purpose to their learning where possible e.g. using age appropriate videos or NatWest Money Sense resources to work within a weekly budget. 

PSHE beyond the curriculum  

Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development (SMSC) & British Values 

Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development (SMSC) is also threaded throughout our school ethos, values and curriculum. We prepare children for life in modern Britain, developing and deepening their understanding of fundamental British Values of democracy, individual liberty, rule of law and mutual respect and tolerance.

We explore a British Value in depth each half term and our classroom rules are based around each of the values. For more information about how we explore British Values each half term please click here to see our curriculum maps. 

Promoting the Protected Characteristics at St Marys 

We also work to ensure that our children understand that everyone is different so we celebrate our differences and understand that we are all equal in our differences. 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

At St Mary's, we promote these in our curriculum and work to embed them into our ethos. We also share texts over the course of the year to encounter protected characteristics and we strive to create an environment where children can share their opinions and ask questions.

Becoming active citizens 

Children are encouraged to develop their sense of self-worth by playing a positive role in contributing to school life and the wider community through our School Council and a range of leadership roles across the school including our Prayer Space Ambassadors and Playground Leaders thereby preparing children for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences in later life. 

We have been awarded the Christian Aid Global Neighbours Award and recognise that being a good global neighbour is more than just feeling bad for people who are suffering misfortune – it is about making a difference in their lives. One way this can be done is through courageous advocacy. The children have been developing their advocacy skills by directly engaging with decision-makers and raising awareness about a range of issues we feel strongly about. Our Global Neighbours report highlighted this strength and saw that there was a "Commitment to raising awareness of environmental issues and exploring appropriate action for change is at the heart of school life and is reflected in their Platinum Green Schools award. Excellent use of visitors from Greenpeace acted as a stimulus to raise awareness of exploitation of the natural world. This became a springboard for appropriate, pupil led action, including letter writing and a fruitful audience with their local MP. This work was important in showing pupils that they have a voice and can use it to make a difference." 

Our school council asked to raise money for a special charity that means a lot to lots of people in our St Mary’s family. We made a fantastic £110 for the charity. Thank you to everyone who came to our MacMillan coffee morning in September.

During RE some of our KS2 children investigated charities around the world and locally. They surveyed children throughout school to choose a group in need of support and the charity chosen was Children In Need. Our children felt that we are in a lucky situation and have a lot to be grateful for so would like to improve the lives of other children in anyway we can. We explored children around the world using the Christian Aid resources in our Prayer Space and raised a donation for a certain yellow fluffy visitor!

We recently won an award from the Archbishop of York Young Leaders Award which helped to build the pupil's leadership and character skills, grow confidence, teamwork, resilience and care for others and empowered our children to serve the community through a social action project of their own choice. The children chose to work with a local group called the Memory Laners, visiting them, inviting them into their school and organising a range of different activities and events throughout the year. They learnt from the Memory Laners about Berwick in the past and talked with them about what they had been learning about in school. They created music together and taught each other dances including the Charleston and the floss! The children helped the Memory Laners with Christmas quizzes and at Easter to support their celebrations. For a summer celebration the children and Memory Laners had a summer show.  

The work of the children was shared through social media to enable the whole community to see the positive impact that children working with the older generation can bring. The children's project was also recognised and published on the Young Leader's Website below: 

Click here for the link to our feature on the Archbishop of York Young Leader's website. 

Awareness Days 

One of the ways we enhance our PSHE with RSE curriculum beyond PSHE sessions is through exploring awareness days including Internet Safety Day and Children's Mental Health Week. 

For Internet Safety Day in February, the children talked about the importance of staying safe online. In Years 1 and 2, the children shared the story #Goldilocks and talked about the importance of not sharing things online. They talked about all the ways we use the internet, all the things the internet is amazing for but the importance of using it safely e.g. with na adult and what to do if we see something that upsets us or we are not sure of. The children designed their own apps and games inspired by age-appropriate apps they enjoy using and playeed E-Safety games. In Years 3 and 4, the children wrote their names on pieces of paper and passed them around the room adding kind comments below each time. They talked about how this made them feel and then explored different social media posts and created emojis to represent how they might have made us feel if they were about us. They listened to the story 'Trolls Stink' and played different scenarios games. 

For 2024, the theme for Children's Mental Health Week was 'My Voice Matters.' To explore this, the children discussed what their understanding of what mental health is and the importance of talking about our mental health. The children also highlighted the need to look after their own mental health and the mental health of others. Next they wrote down feelings and emotions they experience when their voice matters or they are heard. They wrote these down on pieces of paper, scrunched them up and threw them across the room then realised that while they couldn't find their own feeling again, knowing how someone else felt was just as important. Finally, they turned their emotions into word clouds to show how important we all feel when our voices matter.

Visitors and Workshops 

Another ways to enhance our PSHE with RSE curriculum is through visitors and workshops.

Year 2 were recently visited by the NPSCC who introduced us to Buddy, a green speech bubble who reminds children that they have a right to speak out and stay safe if they are worried, unsure or upset about themselves or someone else. The children learnt about the different ways that people can be physically and emotionally hurt and the importance of having safe, trusted adults to speak to. The children also completed their own Buddy Kits including their 'dream places' that make them feel calm and safe and created their own Buddy puppets too. 

The children also took part in workshops delivered by the NHS to celebrate Careers Week as part of the Step into the NHS project.  
We learned about all of the career opportunities in the NHS. Did you know there are around 350 different careers in the NHS? Obviously, some roles are in direct contact with patients, however, there are many that are not. We also met Kade who is a clinical scientist. We learned about how he will test blood and tissue samples in a lab so doctors and consultants can diagnose patients. The children also entered a national competition to promote jobs within the NHS.

Click on the links below for some PSHE information and activities you can share at home.

Keeping Safe Online

NSPCC Buddy Zone

RNLI - Water Safety Passport

BBC - Let's Meditate