Introduction

Today’s children and young people are growing up in an increasingly complex world both on and offline. This presents many positive and exciting opportunities, but also challenges and risks. In this environment, children and young people need to know how to be safe and healthy, and how to manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way.

Our Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) policy and curriculum is designed to help children from Reception to Year 6 develop healthy, respectful relationships, whilst presenting children with important knowledge to make informed choices in an age appropriate and a sensitive multi-faith way.

Our approach is underpinned by the concept that as human beings we are unique but also share similarities and takes into account our religious character as a Church of England school.

Our Relationships, Sex and Health (RSHE) Curriculum

We believe Relationships, Sex and Health Education are interconnected and closely related to children’s Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural development (SMSC).

With this in mind, our RSHE curriculum from Reception to Year 6 reflects and incorporates social, moral, spiritual and cultural development to form part of the curriculum we call personal or character development.

We feel having all these areas under one umbrella illustrates a joined up holistic approach to children’s personal development.

Personal or character development is an important part of our curriculum which also reflects our religious character and recognises the importance of the whole child.

‘So God created humankind in his image. In the image of God, He created them’.  (Genesis I:27, NRSV)

The Church of England has set out a bold Vision for Education that is deeply Christian, serving the common good. This is set out in several strands.

These strands include Hope, Aspiration and Courageous Advocacy (Strand 3), Community and Living Well Together (Strand 4) and Dignity and Respect (Strand 5) and all have been built into our RSHE curriculum.

We recognise that character building and character virtues underpin positive relationships and as such, ‘character’ is not exclusively developed solely through curricular opportunities, but also through interactions with other human beings.

This means all adults who work in our school are in the privileged position of shaping our children’s thoughts, values, virtues and attitudes by their own interactions.

Further details can be seen in our Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) policy and curricular plans which we have included below :