Staffing & Delivery
Mr M. Clough (PSHE and CEIAG Co-ordinator)
All Form Tutors deliver PSHE (with specific careers sessions embed in the curriculum) to their form group once per fortnight on a rolling timetable. We have been an early adopter school for the revised statutory RSE curriculum. This is built into the current PSHE rolling lessons. RSE additionally has separate half-hour sessions, delivered by form tutors, each Thursday during form time. Finally, there is PSHE Enrichment which is a timetabled taught lesson once per fortnight with designated teachers.
PSHE Overview
‘’Today’s children and young people are growing up in a rapidly changing world, full of opportunities but with few guarantees. PSHE education is the school subject which prepares them for life and work in this changing world, helping to keep pupils safe, healthy and boosting their life chances.’’
Jonathan Baggaley, PSHE Association Chief Executive, December 2017.
PSHE at Woodhey is mainly taught by an experienced team of form tutors and training is offered for more specialist aspects of the curriculum. It promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences that they will need for later life. This also supports Woodhey High School values which underpin SMSC and Fundamental British Values. In addition, PSHE and related activities have a significant role to play in delivering the national curriculum for citizenship.
The UK Youth Parliament Campaign for 2018 centered on the need to have a Curriculum for Life. One element of this campaign was PSHE in schools to include all that pupils needs to know to actively participate in life, including: finances, relationships and sex, cultural awareness and community cohesion, sustainable living and citizenship. A success of this campaign has been that through the Children and Social Work Bill, Relationship and Sex education will be compulsory from September 2019. Pupils have been one of the driving forces behind shaping a PSHE curriculum that prepares them for life.
It is well acknowledged that a well-taught PSHE curriculum benefits both pupils’ academic and non-academic success. At Woodhey, PSHE is taught through the three strands recommended by the PSHE Association: Health and Wellbeing; Living in the Wider World; and Relationships and Sex Education (meeting the 2020 guidelines). Our PSHE curriculum incorporates inter-dependent topics and equips pupils with transferable skills that they can apply to different areas of their lives. Lessons are engaging and topical and delivered by form tutors with additional activities that are followed up in form time, further deepening developing the pupils’ relationship with their form tutor. In addition, themes are explored during weekly themes, assemblies and related form time activities.
“The need for education and discussion of issues such as pornography, body image and online grooming and abuse is greater now than it was a decade ago… By making PSHE education a statutory entitlement, with an expectation that schools will incorporate local issues of key importance to their pupils, we believe that schools would both re-prioritise PSHE education and retain the flexibility they need to meet pupils’ needs.”
October 2013: UK Youth Parliament publishes landmark report calling for ‘a curriculum for life’
PSHE KS3 Intent
At Woodhey, PSHE is taught through the three strands recommended by the PSHE Association: Health and Wellbeing; Living in the Wider World; and Relationships and Sex Education.
Prior learning at primary schools is varied. This will change as the statutory guidelines for RSE are implemented in primary schools. In Year 7 the curriculum begins by delivering lessons under the Relationships and Sex Education strand in order to aid pupils’ transition from primary school. This moves on to look basic finance, encouraging pupils to consider their wants and needs through the Living in the Wider World strand. Health and Wellbeing lessons in the final term build on knowledge gained through their Food lessons at Woodhey and they also consider puberty and how it affects them.
Year 8 continue their Health and Wellbeing theme in the first term, considering other factors affecting health to broaden their knowledge from Year 7. Living in the Wider World lessons incorporate an introduction to Careers education and then they develop their Relationships and Sex Education by considering themes more commensurate with their age and experiences.
Year 9 continue their Health and Wellbeing theme in the first term, building on the drug and mental health education gained in Year 8. Relationships and Sex Education encourage a deepening knowledge and understanding of issues they are experiencing in today’s society. The last term focuses on developing skills already touched on in the Living in the Wider World themes from previous years.
PSHE KS4 Intent
In Years 10 and 11, PSHE continues to be taught through the three strands recommended by the PSHE Association: Health and Wellbeing; Living in the Wider World; and Relationships and Sex Education.
In Year 10 PSHE lessons start under the Living in the Wider World strand, encouraging pupils to link their GCSE subjects to life beyond school and to possible careers and further study. Health and Wellbeing lessons include lessons on developing pupils’ inter-and intrapersonal skills. The lessons they take part in through the Relationships and Sex Education strand tackle some crucially relevant issues in today’s society.
Year 11 Relationship and Sex Education builds on previous learning throughout Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 and encourages application of learning to their own personal preferences and situations. Living in the Wider World themes equip pupils with more of the skills they will need once they have left school. In the final term pupils consider their Health and Wellbeing in the lead up to their GCSE examinations.
CEIAG Overview & Intent
Woodhey’s CEIAG program is primarily embed in the PSHE curriculum throughout all years, with a focus on KS4. Career based lessons focus on workers rights, trade unions, labour market information, further education opportunities, CV writing, understanding the workplace, and employability skills. The primary intent is to allow students to explore the multitude of opportunities available to them in the labour market and in further education.
Alongside the embed career lessons within the PSHE curriculum, Woodhey offers students a variety of additional CEIAG points of contact:
- Work shadowing with parents in Year 8
- Individual one-to-one meetings with independent career advisors from OurFutures at KS4.
- Year 11 students have assemblies with guest speakers from different local colleges. These speakers have then been invited to school on multiple occasions to offer drop-in sessions for student support in their applications.
- Guest speakers come in regularly to discuss and present assemblies on different job sectors with students.
- In October 2022 there are plans to have our first speed networking event with local businesses and colleges.
- In March 2023 there are plans for our first Careers Fair during Careers Week.
- Planned for the school year starting September 2022, there are plans to replace PSHE Enrichment with a careers led sequence of lessons that focus on labour market information and opportunities for students in further education and business.