Intention

The aim of St Thomas of Canterbury Primary School is to provide opportunities for children to develop as independent, confident and successful learners who know how to make a positive contribution to their community and wider society. We focus on developing children’s moral, spiritual, social and cultural understanding, as well as actively promoting the British Values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs to prepare our pupils for life in modern day Britain. 

We use the Zones of Regulation to aid children with understanding their emotions and feelings, as well as thinking about how to deal with these emotions and feelings. 

Relationships and sex education are part of the Personal, Social and Health Education curriculum in our school joint with our Religious Education curriculum. It is about understanding the importance of healthy relationships for family life, stable and loving relationships, respect, love and care. While we use our RSE curriculum to inform children about sexual issues, we do this with regard to matters of morality ad individual responsibility, and in a way that allows children to ask and explore moral questions, as well as a way for children to understand changes that will happened to them. 

Implementation

We implement our PSHE curriculum through the use of the resource Life to the Full. This allows us to cover all the statutory requirements of Relationships and Health Education based on the structure of the Model Primary RSE Curriculum from the Catholic Education Service. We supplement this with our own planning to cover elements of ‘Living in the Wider World’, such as: Digital Literacy, Shared Responsibility, British Values and Aspirations. Alongside this, we also ensure we cover important events throughout the year such as: Anti-Bullying Week, Black History Month, Children’s Mental Health Week and Remembrance Day. 

Through this curriculum, children are taught: to develop their self-esteem, confidence and self-awareness to make the right choices, to develop their social skills and social awareness, to make sense of their personal and social experiences, to maintain responsible attitudes towards the maintenance of good physical and mental health, supported by a safe and healthy lifestyle, to develop effective interpersonal relationship and a caring attitude towards others, to develop a caring attitude and a sense of responsibility about the environment, to manage and understand their feelings, to understand how society works and the rights and responsibilities involved. 

At St Thomas of Canterbury Primary School, our RSE policy and scheme of work is based on the guidance provided by the Diocese of Brentwood Education Service.  At the core of RSE is the belief that: 'Every child is created in the image of God and loved by God.'  RSE is taught following the advice given from Brentwood Diocese and will be taught using the scheme 'A Journey in Love'. The scheme focuses on the Emotional, Physical and Spiritual side of RSE and will be term over one half term.

Impact

We have many areas of PSHE that occur in our school regularly. These include (but are not limited to): school trips, sports tournaments, PSHE lessons, exposing children to a wide variety of literature and asking them to see things from different perspectives, key stage Assemblies, various classroom visitors, our school council etc. We are confident our children are developing their PSHE skills both in and out of lessons at every possible opportunity. Our Life to the Full scheme also offers us the opportunity to evaluate children’s understanding at the end of a topic through questioning.