PSHCE education is a planned, developmental programme of learning through which our students acquire the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to manage their lives now and in the future. It prepares students to manage the most critical opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities they will face growing up in such rapidly changing and challenging times.

The ambitious and dynamic spiral curriculum is designed to provide active learning opportunities to enable students to connect and apply the knowledge, understanding and skills they learn to practical, real-life situations, through which they can engage critically with and explore diverse ideas, beliefs, cultures and identities and the values we share as a school community and citizens in the UK. The content of the units of work is selected to ensure they provide information that is realistic and relevant to our students, and which reinforces positive social norms. The themes and issues therein, are used as a context to develop the qualities and attributes students need to thrive as individuals and meet the challenges of life.

The curriculum intention is to nurture our students’ personal development, by helping them to understand and value themselves to develop positive self-esteem, self-efficacy, resilience, and the confidence to take increasing control of, and responsibility, for their lives. We want our students to embrace change, to be able to identify and manage risk, make informed choices, and understand what influences their decisions. We want them to be able to manage emotions to develop and maintain positive relationships and to be optimistic about the future and life’s possibilities. The curriculum aims to safeguard and support their happiness, successes and wellbeing and develop the essential skills for future employability so that they can play an active part in their own communities, as family members, members of society and global citizens and enjoy healthy, safe, responsible and fulfilled lives.

The overarching aim for PSHCEE education is to ensure students develop self-awareness, have positive self-
esteem and confidence in order to:

• Build healthy lifestyles – health education promotes the physical, mental, emotional health and wellbeing of our students. It provides students with the skills, language and strategies they need in order to live healthy, safe, productive, fulfilling, capable, fulfilling, responsible and balanced lives and contributes to their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
   
• Know how to keep themselves and others safe – students learn how to identify and manage risk, make informed choices, and understand what influences their decisions and behaviours. They develop the key skills and attitudes needed to self-regulate and know how to access help, advice, and support.
   
• Form healthy and positive relationships – we support students to be able to manage and maintain diverse, healthy, worthwhile and fulfilling relationships with a wide range of people, developing the ability to work with others and understand empathy, so they can make positive contributions to their families, schools and communities.
   
• Respect equality and diversity – students explore similarities and differences between people within a range of social and cultural contexts and communities. They discuss social and moral dilemmas; developing their language skills and strategies to challenge stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination and other cultural and social barriers, fostering a culture that celebrates equality and diversity.
   
• Develop independence and responsibility – students are taught how to deal with challenges, manage difficult situations, and respond positively to, and embrace, change. They are encouraged to foster a ‘can-do’ attitude, providing the drive to create and implement new ideas and ways of doing things. They learn to be prepared to, and accept failure while building resilience, resolve and grit.
   
• Cultivate an understanding of themselves – opportunities are provided to explore, reflect on and clarify their own values and attitudes, beliefs, rights and responsibilities, enabling students to recognise, accept, and shape their identities. They learn to, value themselves, feel positive about who they are and recognise, develop and communicate their own qualities, building knowledge, confidence and self-esteem, to make the most of their own abilities and capabilities.
   
• Play an active role as a member of a democratic society – students learn about their rights, responsibilities, duties and freedoms, and about laws, justice and democracy. They are equipped with the skills, knowledge and understanding of citizenship, to become effective and responsible members of their communities
   
• Make the most of changing opportunities in learning and work – careers education, information and guidance (CEIAG), develops essential skills for future employability and supports them in making positive career choices. It raises awareness of changing career opportunities and develops the knowledge and skills to make informed decisions and understanding of the nature of the world of work, the diversity and function of business, and its contribution to national prosperity.
   
• Establish economic wellbeing and financial capability – students develop an understanding of business and the economy. They learn to be enterprising and develop the ability to handle uncertainty. It helps students to become questioning and informed consumers and they learn how to manage their money and finances effectively.
   
• Build and develop digital resilience – Students learn to balance the benefits offered by technology with a critical awareness of their own and other’s online behaviour, so that they can deal effectively with the increasing influence of peers and the media and develop effective strategies for staying safe and making a positive contribution online, in an ever-increasing connected world.
   

• PSHCE education is taught through a ‘spiral programme’. Learning is organised into three core themes: Living in the Wider World, Relationships and Health and Wellbeing, which students experience every year. At each encounter, the level of demand increases, and learning is progressively deepened.
   
• In addition to their PSHCEE lessons, students participate in two ‘Learning for Life Days’ and two half hour Coaching sessions per week, which underpin the PSHCEE programmes of study.
   
• In lessons clear ‘ground-rules’ are established, the concepts of confidentiality and anonymity are covered at the start of lessons and/or units of work, providing a safe and supportive learning environment.
   
• Lessons are designed to be challenging, dynamic, engaging and exciting, offering a wide variety of learning and teaching styles, with an emphasis on interactive learning and the teacher as facilitator.
   
• An evidence-based approach establishes flexibility in the units of work, so that subsequent lessons can be planned and adapted, continuity, progression and differentiation can be built in, enabling the needs of all students to be met, and integrated within a broad, balanced and age-appropriate curriculum.
   
• Assessing learning in PSHCE education combines teacher assessment and student self and peer assessment. Ipsative assessment; pre and post-assessments compares where a student is at the end of a lesson/series of lessons, against where they were before. The benchmark against which progress is measured is the student’s own starting point.
   
• Student voice is used to update the curriculum in line with students’ views. 
   
• The curriculum complements and is supported by the school’s wider policies on behaviour, inclusion, equality and diversity, bullying and safeguarding.
   

• Students are proud to be a part of the Co-op Academy community, they work hard to ensure that their environment is vibrant, welcoming, positive and equitable, students have a strong sense of fairness and justice.
   
• The personal impact PSHCEE issues and topics make are evidenced through personal reflection, pledges, changes and developments in students’ behaviour, attitudes and opinions.
   
• The provision of planned opportunities for students to undertake social action and active citizenship regularly sees students initiating, volunteering, supporting, and making valuable contributions to community engagement initiatives.
   
• The impact of external visitors, workshops, drama performances and key speakers from ‘Learning for Life Days’ are measured and reflected in effective learning, understanding, personal development and enjoyment.
   
• Observation feedback evidenced: informed and analytical discussion and debate around challenging and sensitive issues demonstrating students’ ability to articulate confidently their opinions and challenge those of others with confidence.