The PSHE Curriculum

at St Robert Bellarmine

“We are God’s work of art”

At St Robert Bellarmine, through a high-quality PSHE education, we aim to support our children to develop into reflective, resilient, open-minded and compassionate people who can contribute to our local, national and global communities by tackling many of the moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up. It is designed to engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge, language and experiences to develop emotional intelligence and the ability to articulate their feelings as well as develop their sense of self-worth so they can play a positive role in contributing to school life and the wider community. Our intention is to give pupils every opportunity to develop their ability, nurture their talent and interests, express their ideas and thoughts about the world, as well as learn about inspirational people across cultures and through history. As they progress through school, through PSHE teaching, our pupils should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of their rights and responsibilities and appreciate what it means to be a member of a diverse society.

We will assure that the statutory guidance for PSHE is met by ensuring that all of our pupils experience a wide breadth of study that includes: high-quality mediation, reflective discussion, scenario-based enquiry, problem solving, making links to personal experience and the generating and developing of questions, ideas and opinions.

Our Intended PSHE Curriculum

Our PSHE curriculum will develop the ‘whole child’ by teaching them how to be both physically and mentally healthy, how to build positive relationships, how to self-regulate and how to respect our differences.

We aim for the PSHE curriculum content to be remembered in the long term as our basic principles are that learning only takes place if there is a change in the long-term memory.

The ‘key knowledge’ that we want our pupils to know and remember forms the basis of our long-term planning for progression. This includes the three ‘substantive concepts’ of: ‘Living in the Wider World’, ‘Health and Well-being’ and ‘Relationships’ which together ensure that all statutory requirements are met.  These concepts are vertically integrated, ensuring that all essential knowledge is coherently and sequentially taught so that the children revisit them in different contexts deepening their knowledge and understanding of them in each year group as they progress through school

Curriculum breadth for PSHE outlines the core knowledge for each topic around which teachers have developed a coherent and deliberately sequenced curriculum to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge and understanding by building upon prior knowledge.

Curriculum depth in PSHE allows for children to grow in their knowledge by first remembering more, progressing to knowing more which they can then draw on as they discuss, reason and explain their own thoughts and opinions.

We understand how important academic and subject specific vocabulary is in the acquisition of knowledge. Consequently, teachers ensure that this is planned for and taught rigorously throughout PSHE topics.

We determine progress as 'remembering more and knowing more'. We believe that when new knowledge and existing knowledge connect in pupils’ minds, this gives rise to understanding. 

We look for children, as their knowledge and understanding develops, to show that they can make connections, draw parallels and use increasingly sophisticated explanations which draw upon their PSHE knowledge.

Our Enacted PSHE Curriculum

Our curriculum design is based upon evidence from cognitive science. Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction are fundamental in the day-to-day teaching of lessons. The main principles that underpin this are:

• regular reviews and the revisiting of prior learning
• continual checking of understanding through effective questioning
• strong teacher modelling and guided practice
• carefully sequenced lessons that use ‘chunked learning’, allowing new learning to be retained
• precise feedback for our children

In addition, we also understand that learning is invisible in the short term. Cognitive science tells us that if pupils are to have a greater depth of understanding it will take time.

A coherent and deliberately sequenced PSHE curriculum ensures that we revisit the substantive concepts repeatedly so children gain a better understanding of them, and so that they don’t forget them.

Our Learnt PSHE Curriculum

 The impact of our curriculum can be measured through two main questions

• How well are our pupils coping with the curriculum content?
• How well are they retaining previously taught content?

The vast majority of pupils, on progression through school, remember more and know more. Activities are planned for pupils to build upon this remembered knowledge with the opportunities to create, reason and demonstrate their depth of understanding. We regularly monitor pupils to ensure that they are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.

To explore how this curriculum area is taught in your child's class please refer to their class page.