At Rushey Mead Academy, we are committed to providing a high-quality educational experience for all students. Our curriculum underpins the whole ethos of our school and our Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) curriculum brings together citizenship with personal well-being and our Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural provision whilst promoting fundamental British values.
PSHE is taught across the school during tutor time, assemblies, school events and Stop the Clock sessions. Students in year 9 also have a weekly timetabled lesson, in addition to the lessons taught through our tutor time programme. PSHE is integrated into all areas of our school life through our SMSC provision, our behaviour curriculum and it also underpins all activities, assemblies, educational visits and extra-curricular clubs at the Academy.
We offer a cohesive whole-school approach which enables our children to become healthy, independent and responsible members of society.
At Rushey Mead, children are taught to develop the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to manage their lives now and in the future by giving them:
- Opportunities to explore, clarify and challenge their own and others’ values, attitudes, beliefs, rights and responsibilities.
- The skills, language and strategies they need in order to live healthy, safe, fulfilling, responsible and balanced lives.
- Opportunities to develop positive personal attributes such as resilience, self-confidence, self-esteem, and empathy.
Our PSHE curriculum is cohesively planned and covers the following three strands:
- Relationship and Sex Education
- Living in the Wider World
- Health and Well-being.
From September 2020, Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) became statutory aspects of the curriculum, along with Health Education. Our students will explore the ideas of relationships, feelings and appropriate behaviours, self-confidence and self-awareness, rules and routines, empathy and justice and sexual education in line with the Sept 2020 new RSE Curriculum.
We use the PSHE Association to inform our curriculum planning, ensuring that our programme will offer a holistic PSHE learning journey spanning the students’ secondary school career, with a progressive, spiral curriculum that addresses real needs in a rapidly changing world.
Our PSHE Curriculum embeds the requirements of The Education Act of 2002 that all schools need to, ‘promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and prepare pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life’, while having a duty to keep students safe.
The Equality Act 2010 places duties on schools not just to address prejudice-based bullying but also to help to prevent it happening, and in doing so to keep protected characteristic groups safe. The DfE’s Character Education guidance released in Nov 2019 is followed and the PSHE Curriculum has specific lessons to comply with these new requirements.
Rushey Mead Academy strongly believes in the importance of a PSHE curriculum which gives pupils the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to keep themselves healthy and safe and to prepare them for life and work in modern Britain.
Faculty Staff
Ms S Harriman