Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE)

What is PSHE?

PSHE stands for Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education.  It can also be known as RSHE, where the ’R’ stands for Relationships, or PSHCE , where the ‘C’ stands for Citizenship.

As a subject, PSHE aims to provide children with the knowledge and skills to keep themselves happy, healthy and safe, as well as to prepare them for life and work. PSHE aims to give children the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to lead confident, healthy and independent lives.

Navigating our complex world can be challenging, and parents and teachers play an essential role in preparing children for the future. As such, PSHE aims to equip children to:

- Take individual responsibility for their physical and mental wellbeing;

- Understand risks and how to stay safe online;

- Develop resilience, independence and responsibility;

- Develop the personal and social skills required to succeed in commerce and industry;

- Identify misleading information and be critical of misleading news or views they might encounter. 

Is PSHE a statutory subject?

According to the National Curriculum, every school needs to have a broad and balanced curriculum that:

- promotes the spiritual, moral, social, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school;

- prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life;

- promotes British values.

Since September 2020, it is a statutory requirement for primary schools to provide the Relationships Education and Health Education aspects of PSHE education. At Discovery, we also cover non-statutory content relating to economic wellbeing and careers. The Department for Education and the PSHE Association advise all schools to deliver a whole-school PSHE curriculum for primary school years 1 to 6, covering all objectives outlined in the statutory guidance. To see Discovery's PSHE overall curriculum, please click here.

How is PSHE taught at Discovery?

Every class has a weekly PSHE lesson.

The three core elements of PSHE and Citizenship taught are:

- Relationships

- Health and Wellbeing

- Living in the Wider World 

Lessons include a range of activities from role-play, debates and discussions to quizzes, labelling diagrams and designing posters.

The PSHE school curriculum covers sensitive subjects. These are taught using distancing techniques to allow children to safely explore topics and ask questions, without needing to discuss personal experiences or provide personal responses. Children might talk about fictional characters in certain scenarios and think about what these characters could do. Ground rules are established in PSHE lessons, to ensure children are respectful of one another’s views and ideas.

PSHE and Citizenship has some links with other subjects in the primary curriculum, including science, geography, computing and PE. However, the PSHE school curriculum compliments these subjects rather than duplicates content covered in them. For example, e-safety will be touched upon in the computing curriculum but more in-depth learning of digital wellbeing and online relationships will be taught through the Relationships and Health Education curriculum.

PSHE Hub for Parents

Here are some helpful resources linked to PSHE. If you click the links below you will find lots of useful ideas and resources.

https://www.camhs-resources.co.uk/websites

https://emotionallyhealthyschools.org/latest-news/pshe-matters-free-resources-for-families-of-primary-age-children/

https://www.childnet.com/resources/looking-for-kidsmart/

https://www.bbc.com/ownit