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Personal, Social and Health Education

Our framework for Personal, Social and Health Education (P.S.H.E.) reflects the school ethos and demonstrates and encourages the following moral values:

  • respect for self
  • respect for others
  • responsibility for our own actions
  • responsibility for our family, friends, school and wider community

Regular class discussion – Circle Time – enables us to articulate and reinforce these values and what is important to us.  We wish to foster self-awareness, responsibility, self control and co-operation based on respect for the feelings of others.

To embrace the challenges of creating a happy and successful adult life, pupils need knowledge that will enable them to make informed decisions about their wellbeing, health and relationships and to build their self-efficacy. To aid this, the government issued new relationships and sex education guidance that came into effect from September 2019. The new guidance makes relationships and health education compulsory for all pupils. Relationships education at Welwyn St Mary’s focuses on teaching children to recognise and cultivate healthy relationships. Health education aims to teach children about making good decisions with regards to their wellbeing.

Sex education at Welwyn St Mary’s is a term used for all the learning we need in order to gain understanding of our own bodies, instincts and feelings in order to be prepared for the responsibilities and joys of permanent relationships in the future.  As a church school, we believe that sex education should be presented within a framework that embraces Christian values, love, faithfulness and forgiveness. Sex education is mostly taught through the science curriculum as part of the Human Body. Parents are informed about PSHE lessons that include sex education and have the right to withdraw their child from lessons which are not part of the science curriculum.

We have adopted the Jigsaw scheme of work in our PSHE lessons to ensure we are reaching all parts of the new guidance. These lessons are age-appropriate and cover a range of topics to give our children the tools they need to be healthy and happy. Teachers deal with children’s questions sensitively as they occur, answering them as fully as possible while also considering the child’s level of understanding.

Our Sex and Relationship Education policy is available to view in the parents section of the website under policies and agreements.

We follow the Jigsaw programme – please contact our PSHE lead or your class teacher to see our progression documents.