Positive relationships in schools are central to the wellbeing of both students and teachers

and underpin an effective learning environment.

– Sue Roffey

Curriculum Intent:

At St Peter’s CE Academy, we strongly believe that PSHE has a fundamental role to play in education, pupils’s mental health and own self-regulation. We hope to create reflective, well adjusted members of society with the ability to affect positive change in their communities.

This is aligned with the current Ofsted school inspection toolkit and the revised statutory RSHE guidance, effective from 1 September 2026.

At St. Peter’s CE Primary Academy, our PSHE curriculum supports our long held ambition to develop good people who have a positive impact on their community. Rooted in our Christian ethos, it equips every child with the knowledge, vocabulary and practical skills needed to lead a safe, healthy, confident and responsible life.

Our curriculum is ambitious, inclusive and carefully sequenced from EYFS to Year 6. It builds progressively across relationships, health and wellbeing, living in the wider world, economic understanding, citizenship and online safety. Important concepts are deliberately revisited so that pupils develop secure knowledge, apply it in increasingly complex situations and understand how their learning relates to their own lives.

Through PSHE, pupils learn how to:

• recognise and build healthy, respectful relationships;
• understand and manage emotions, change and challenge;
• keep themselves and others safe, including online;
• make informed decisions about their physical and mental health;
• recognise unsafe, harmful or inappropriate behaviour and know how to seek help;
• respect difference and challenge discrimination and prejudice;
• understand rights, responsibilities, democracy and the rule of law;
• develop financial awareness, aspiration and readiness for their future lives.

Our curriculum reflects the needs of our pupils and the context of our community. It is accessible to all, including pupils with SEND and those who may be disadvantaged or vulnerable. Teaching is adapted without reducing ambition, ensuring that every child gains the essential knowledge needed to protect themselves, form positive relationships and participate fully in school and wider society.

As a talk-rich school, we provide regular opportunities for pupils to discuss, question, debate and reflect. Carefully chosen scenarios, stories and real-life contexts allow children to rehearse decision-making in a safe environment. Learning is strengthened through collective worship, pupil leadership, visits, visitors, enrichment and wider opportunities to contribute to school and community life.

Curriculum Design (Implementation):

PSHE is embedded through weekly PSHE  sessions. Our PSHE & RSE curriculums, supported by KAPOW, are tracked through a progression grid. In addition to this our PSHE curriculum is supported through a number of school wide activities including:

• Mind Shift Sessions including; Talk Assemblies - whole school, Mindfulness -Yoga/meditation, art, Theology and Philosophy and Vocab development – don’t say it, Talk assemblies, Book Clubs
• Focus on social justice and civic duty in line with school vision and values
• Pupil Parliament– further encouraging pupil voice, positive relationships and understanding living in the wider world.

Within our dedicated PSHE times, circle times are used to promote pupil voice, putting a focus on self–regulated problems or concerned, still roughly following the theme of PSHE lesson learning. Our PSHE weekly sessions closely follow the progression document, but can be flexible to adjust to individual and class needs.

Curriculum Impact:

By the time pupils leave St. Peter’s, we intend that they will know more, remember more and be able to do more. They will understand themselves and others, recognise when something is wrong, know where to seek help and have the confidence to use their voice. Above all, they will be respectful, resilient and compassionate young people, well prepared for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life in modern Britain.