Personal Social Health Citizenship and Economic Education (PSHCE)
Intent
The PSHCE curriculum at Burnham Grammar School is designed to
- Support students in acquiring the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to make well-informed and safe decisions about their future.
- Make a positive contribution to our students’ behaviour, both at school and in the wider community.
- Help students make positive learning and career choices in order to achieve personal and economic wellbeing in the future.
- Support students in developing: an understanding of themselves developing their personal attributes such as resilience, self-confidence, self-esteem, empathy; and the skills to work with a diverse range of people, both at school and in the future.
- Provide opportunities for students to explore, clarify and if necessary challenge, their own and others’ values, attitudes, beliefs, rights and responsibilities whilst at the same time supporting the schools aims.
- Explore the ideas of relationships, feelings and appropriate behaviours, rules and routines.
- Use student voice to shape the topics we cover, in order to make it relevant and worthwhile for our students.
Implementation
Our curriculum is supported by the guidance given from the PSHE Association and is taught in one-hour slots every fortnight across all year groups.
The main areas covered across all year groups in an appropriate age-related manner are
- Relationships and Sex education
- Financial Education
- Drug Education
- Physical Activity Education
- Citizenship and British Values
- Careers
- Mental Health
- Enterprise
- E-safety
- Safe Guarding.
We use Assessment for Learning strategies in our PSHCE lessons. This can include:
- Sharing lesson objectives and success criteria;
- Finding out the students’ ‘starting points’ / baseline knowledge at the beginning of a topic or lesson;
- Providing feedback to students to let them know how they are getting on;
- Providing opportunities for reflection using plenaries at the end of lessons and topics;
- Differentiating tasks where appropriate.
The delivery of PSHCE is provided by highly passionate teachers from different subjects across the school providing the students with a unique opportunity to build strong cross curricular links with their other subjects. This includes
- Enterprise skills; where students are challenged to be creative and innovative by designing products and then pitching it to an audience.
- Literacy; where students get the opportunity to develop their verbal and written communication skills.
- Numeracy; where students get the opportunity to consider salaries of different jobs, budgeting, student finance for university and the cost of living, all of which involve some maths work.
Impact
Our curriculum will enable students to:
- Embrace challenge and become responsible learners
- Prepare for external assessments and for the future
- Become caring and active citizens equipped to demonstrate and apply the British Values of Democracy, Tolerance, Mutual Respect and Rule of Law.
- Remain healthy, happy and safe in and out of school and know how to seek for help when they need it.
Student progress is measured in terms of how they develop throughout the year on a lesson by lesson basis where they are given time to self-reflect on different topics. Students will be able to
- Analyse a range of information from a wide range of resources and use this to construct arguments;
- Thoroughly explain and justify their viewpoint;
- Respond to other peoples’ counter arguments, referring to evidence to support their own opinion.
- Make significant contributions to discussion showing they have reflected on the ideas of others and thought carefully about what to say, when to say it and how best to express themselves.
Furthermore, the impact of the curriculum can be seen in the day to day school environment via student social interactions, the number of students taking on the role of being a mental health mentor or school council representative.
BGS KS3 & KS4 PSHCE Curriculum Map 2024/2025
BGS PSHCE Sixth Form Introduction - Year 12
BGS PSHCE Sixth Form Introduction - Year 13