Students receive a broad range of lessons across six core themes:  

• Staying safe online and offline,  

• Rights, responsibilities and British values, 

• Celebrating diversity and equality,  

• Relationship and sex education,  

• Life beyond school,  

• Health and wellbeing.  

The spiral curriculum builds on their knowledge and provides opportunities for students to expand their knowledge, skills and attributes. This programme introduces new and more challenging learning, while building on what has gone before, which reflects and meets the personal developmental needs of the children and young people. 

RSHE gives pupils the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to keep themselves healthy and safe and prepare them for life in modern Britain.  

RSHE lessons are broken into small activities that all students can access. With the use of debate encouraged to staff, all students are encouraged to use their voice and participate in lessons orally. Formative assessment is used throughout lessons to ensure students are learning. Staff are encouraged use reactive teaching to support all students learning in the lesson.  

Staff develop positive relationships with students to create a safe space for discussion and disclosure. Staff are appropriately trained in safeguarding and are aware of topics that may pose a risk of disclosure and safeguarding concerns. Positive mental health and wellbeing is promoted throughout the curriculum. 

Staff take a positive approach which does not attempt to induce shock or guilt but focuses on what children and young people can do to keep themselves and others healthy and safe and to lead happy and fulfilling lives full of openness and honesty.  

Through RSHE students learn skills to help them develop and thrive at each stage of development as they are exposed to and educated on the wider world, choices and consequences. 

Students complete a silent reflection every lesson. Many topics covered with RSHE can raise many more questions for students and their reflections are a place for them to identify their thoughts, feelings and further questions. Due to the nature of RSHE, discussion and debate is encouraged and this is an opportunity for students to be open and raise any concerns they have as well as asking about school, outside school or life in general. 

RSHE supports the careers curriculum at the Lower Academy through the spiral curriculum. Each unit has career paths linked to it whilst some of the units within this are focused on life after school, choosing further and higher education as well as career paths. In RSHE we use the Unifrog platform to allow students to explore a variety of careers and explore how their personalities, likes and dislikes can lead to a career they have yet to explore.  

Academy values are embedded throughout the RSHE spiral curriculum with students being supported to challenge misconceptions, prejudice and end discrimination. Students complete units on diversity and equality and are provided with opportunities to ask about the student values and guided about how to show support for these.  

Literacy and numeracy are used throughout RSHE with different activities using these skills throughout the different units. Examples of this are, writing letters to Members of Parliament and learning to budget effectively. Staff check student booklets for literacy, reminding students to correctly use capital letters and other grammar as well as supporting students with spellings. 

In RSHE, we have clear expectations with a focus on positive praise and rewards. We offer a wide variety of teaching and learning styles within RSHE education, with an emphasis on the teacher as facilitator of discussion and debate. We focus on an immersive and engaging learning environment with displays linked to current learning.  

Each half term is a new unit following our spiral curriculum. Focus is continually shifting to learn and develop new skills to help students prepare for life. Lessons have a strong focus on self-reflection from students with them completing one of these at the start and end of each lesson allowing students to judge their progress each lesson.  

Students are offered opportunities to stretch their thinking throughout the curriculum whilst also having access to experiences such as outside agencies visiting groups of students. 

Students are encouraged to be reflective each lesson and monitor their own progress honestly. In lessons, staff take a positive approach which does not attempt to induce shock or guilt but focuses on what children and young people can do to keep themselves and others healthy and safe and to lead happy and fulfilling lives full of openness and honesty.  

Lessons are adapted to suit the needs of the class; we focus on reactive teaching and fitting the lessons to suit the needs/questions that arise during the lesson not continuing with a topic until students have developed their understanding of the topic in hand.  

As RSHE is so heavily discussion based, formative assessment is used continuously. Questions that arise and reacted upon with staff using hinge questioning as well as using techniques to ensure the whole class understands the topic. 

RSHE teachers are familiar with the TAG groups within their classes and how this may impact on the lessons they teach. They are reactive to adapting lessons where necessary to suit student’s individual needs. High expectations are consistently enforced with the use of RSHE respect rules and encouraging students to take pride in the work they produce. Considerations made for SEND students who may need adjusted lessons to accommodate a different emotional maturity as well as students in Wellbeing.  

RSHE is not an assessed subject. Students’ progress is represented by the development of their personal understanding and preparation for life. Staff do provide effort grades for each unit students complete throughout the year, and this is reported home.

RSHE lessons are engaging, discussion based and support student development in other aspects of their academic journey by engaging them with the process of learning, development and success. Success may look different depending on the student. Success for some students is progressing on the self-reflection tasks at the beginning and end of the lesson whereas for others it is truly grasping a topic and developing a skill.  

British values are identified within the SOW. Students are made aware of them as part of an immersive environment and they are explicitly referenced during lessons. Staff are aware of the values, their importance, and how to successfully use them within their lessons. Students learn skills to support them in life after school and, through the spiral curriculum will have learned a variety of skills that will continue to support them outside of school.  

The skills and coping mechanisms learned in RSHE encourage students to continue learning what can support them in life. RSHE strives to ensure students are inquisitive and want to challenge things they see outside of school.