Intent
The PSHE (Personal, Social, Health, and Economic Education) curriculum at St. Sebastian’s embraces each child, offering all a safe opportunity to explore themselves, their health and wellbeing, relationships and the wider-world around them.

As a Trauma & Attachment informed school, we recognise that pupils learn best when they feel happy, safe, secure and regulated. Our PSHE curriculum enables our children to develop a deepening knowledge of their health and wellbeing, including their mental and physical health. PSHE provides a safe space in which we equip children and young people with information, skills and values to understand and to be able to cope with the physical and emotional changes. Inclusivity is at the heart of teaching strategies, ensuring that every child's individual needs are met. Adaptive teaching strategies are employed to cater to diverse learning styles and abilities, allowing all pupils to access and progress in.

Our children learn the core skills to identify a range of different safe and unsafe relationships allowing them to recognise when issues arise, knowing how to seek support as early as possible from appropriate sources.
Within PSHE, we explore values held by different cultures and groups within our local community, and promote the development of positive attitudes. The range of aims and activities covered also help our children to appreciate the diverse communities in which we live contributing to their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Implementation
Our broad and balanced PSHE curriculum, has been designed in line with the PSHE Association, our pastoral lead and senior mental health lead. Our children partake in regular emotional literacy assessments, which allows our staff to plan not only age-appropriate, but cohort specific subject content that covers aims based on the core areas of the curriculum.

As a Catholic school, our Relationship Sex & Health Education curriculum is delivered separately through the Archdiocese programme ‘Journey in Love’, in accordance with the Church’s moral teaching.

Using a thematic, progressive approach, different year groups will work on the same themes at the same time (Relationships, Living in the Wider World and Health & Well-being). Thus allowing the content of the lessons to directly reflect the core knowledge and skills, the needs of their cohort and the context of the school and local community. The thematic approach allows for effective retrieval practice allowing our children to secure their knowledge. Lesson plans also outline areas in which PSHE complements other national curriculum subjects allowing them to be seamlessly integrated into teaching, whilst opportunities to fulfil our wider curriculum are also offered through links with Philosophy for Children (P4C) and Zones of Regulations.

We ensure that all pupils:

• Grow in self-respect, aim high and celebrate who they are, showing resilience when faced with challenging situations and knowing how / where to seek help
• Understand the rights of the child and laws / rules in place to enjoy a happy, healthy and safe childhood.
• Acquire the skills necessary to develop and sustain positive relationships, focusing on family and friends, including online.
• Understand how to live a healthy lifestyle including a balanced diet, physical and mental health including effects of common drugs.
• Recognise the risks around gambling.
• Appreciate and respect differences, valuing the contributions others make to our society.

Impact
We believe our children will:

• Voice their opinions with confidence, appreciating other points of view.
• Value the importance of a healthy, active lifestyle to both their physical and mental well-being.
• Mature into respectable, well-rounded citizens of their local and global community, knowing how to make positive contributions.
• Understand how to self-regulate their emotions, develop resilience and effectively know how to undertake challenges.
• Embrace the challenges of creating a happy and successful adult life.

Primary National Curriculum - PSHE