Intent
At St Mark’s, our PSHE curriculum including the RSHE curriculum is taught using SCARF, a whole-school approach promoting positive behaviour, mental health, wellbeing, resilience and achievement. SCARF represents the values for children of Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience and Friendship. The programme meets the DfE requirements for statutory Relationships and Health Education, and is mapped to the PSHE Association's Programme of Study.
We aim to equip children with essential skills for life; we develop the whole child through carefully planned lessons that develop the knowledge, skills and attributes children need to protect and enhance their wellbeing. Through these lessons, children will learn how to stay safe and healthy, build and maintain successful relationships and become active citizens, responsibly participating in society around them. A Growth Mindset approach is used to help children be confident, capable learners. We feel we are preparing children for life in society now and in the future. We also provide children with age appropriate teaching of essential safeguarding issues and ways to stay safe; developing their knowledge and confidence of when and how they can ask for help.
Implementation
Our PSHE scheme of work (SCARF) is designed to be taught over six core units:
Each unit consists of between six and eight lessons, with supporting materials and a range of interactive teaching activities. These units are taught over a 2 year rolling program to accommodate our mixed age classes. The spiral curriculum cycles through Year R, Key Stage 1, Lower Key Stage 2 and Upper Key Stage 2 every two years. This enables children to recall and build upon previous learning.
We hold two focused weeks: Anti-Bullying Week (Autumn 2) and Healthy Week (Summer 2). Parents are notified of the units being taught and invited to view the sessions if they wish. The right to withdraw from Sex Education is highlighted to parents and opportunities to discuss any matters that are of concern are offered, including the reviewing of materials used in taught sessions. The Headteacher will grant a request by a parent to withdraw a pupil from any sex education delivered at St Mark’s, other than as part of the science curriculum. (This follows the guidance set out in Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education updated 13 September 2021) There is no right to withdraw from Relationships or Health Education.
The PSHE units are designed to be delivered in a creative manner, using many approaches such as role play, discussion and games with groups of various sizes. Opportunities are provided where appropriate for the children to reflect and express their thinking in different ways. These activities enable children to build confidence and resilience. Children are confident to express their opinions in a safe and welcoming environment.
Assessment opportunities are built into each unit with informal pre and post assessment activities. This can be tracked across the units over the course of the year using the assessment plan. Assessment in PSHE is a combination of teacher assessment and personal reflection.