PSHE

Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education at Ysgol y Rhos

We aspire to develop well-rounded, caring, and responsible individuals who can think critically and make informed choices about themselves and society. Deliberate cultivation and practice of resilience and character in individuals is an integral part of the PSHE curriculum. This includes character traits such as belief in achieving goals and persevering with tasks, as well as personal attributes such as honesty, integrity, courage, humility, kindness, generosity, trustworthiness, and a sense of justice, underpinned by an understanding of the importance of self-respect and self-worth. Ysgol y Rhos supports the development of these attributes by providing planned opportunities for young people to undertake social action, active citizenship, and voluntary service, as well as receiving and participating in PSHE, RSE, and incorporating the Sweet and Achieve Programme.

Aim

The focus in KS2 is on teaching the fundamental building blocks and characteristics of positive relationships, with reference to friendships, family relationships, and relationships with other children/adults. At Key Stage 3 and 4, students build on the knowledge and understanding, skills, attributes, and values they have acquired and developed during the primary phase. By KS3 and 4, our aim is to continue to build on their relationship education, ensuring the progression to relationship and sex education is seamless, giving young people the information they need to help them:

• Develop healthy, nurturing relationships of all kinds, not just intimate relationships.
• Pupils should understand the benefits of healthy relationships to their mental wellbeing and self-respect.
• Enable them to know what a healthy relationship looks like and what makes a good friend, a good colleague, and a successful marriage or other type of committed relationship. It should teach what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior in relationships.
• Be empowered to identify when relationships are unhealthy. They should be taught that unhealthy relationships can have a lasting, negative impact on mental wellbeing.
• Understand that relationships can progress to include physical intimacy. Understand how and why intimate relationships establish. Resisting pressure to have sex (and not applying pressure).
• Knowledge about contraception, safer sex, and sexual health to ensure that young people are equipped to make safe, informed, and healthy choices as they progress through adult life.
• Understand the law about sex, sexuality, sexual health, and gender identity in an age-appropriate and inclusive way.
• Feel that the content is relevant to them and their developing sexuality. Sexual orientation and gender identity should be explored at a timely point and in a clear, sensitive, and respectful manner.
• Understand key aspects of the law relating to sex, which should be taught include the age of consent, what consent is and is not, the definitions and recognition of rape, sexual assault and harassment, and choices permitted by the law around pregnancy.
• Understand the definition of grooming, sexual exploitation, and domestic abuse, including coercive and controlling behavior. This should be addressed sensitively and clearly.
• Understand the physical and emotional damage caused by female genital mutilation (FGM). They should be taught where to find support and that it is a criminal offense to perform or assist in the performance of FGM or fail to protect a person for whom you are responsible from FGM.
• Supporting pupils to recognize when relationships (including family relationships) are unhealthy or abusive (including the unacceptability of neglect, emotional, sexual, and physical abuse and violence, including honor-based violence and forced marriage) and strategies to manage this or access support for oneself or others at risk.
• Understand the rules and principles of internet safety. This will include how to recognize risks, harmful content and contact, and how and to whom to report issues.

When teaching about these topics, it must be recognized that young people may be discovering or understanding their sexual orientation or gender identity. There should be an equal opportunity to explore the features of stable and healthy same-sex relationships. This should be integrated appropriately into the RSE program, rather than addressed separately or in only one lesson.

We must be mindful that most of our pupils have witnessed or experienced unhealthy or unsafe relationships at home or socially, and school and Unique Care homes have a particularly important role in being a place of consistency and safety where they can easily speak to trusted adults, report problems, and find support. PSHE, Sweet and Achieve are delivered in a sensitive manner with special consideration and adjustments made, with guidance sought wherever necessary from clinicians and individual therapists when discussing specific content.

Vision

Pupils will be well informed about the full range of perspectives within the PSHE and RSE program, and within the law. They will be well equipped to make decisions for themselves about how to live their own lives, while respecting the right of others to make their own decisions and hold their own beliefs.