St Julie's Catholic Primary SchoolRSHE/PSHE Parental Consultation
Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) and Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) Consultation
The consultation begins on Thursday 25th March and closes on Monday 19th April
As a part of your child’s educational experience at St Julie’s Catholic Primary School, we aim to promote personal well-being and development through a comprehensive taught programme of Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education that gives children and young people the knowledge, under-standing, attitudes and practical skills to live healthy, safe, productive and fulfilled lives, both now and in the future.
As you may already be aware, the Department for Education has announced changes to relationships and sex education following nationwide consultation. These changes will come into effect from September 2020 and all schools will be required to comply with the updated requirements. Due to COVID 19 schools have been able to delay this until the summer term 2021.The statutory guidance can be found at:
The new guidance focuses on healthy relationships and keeping children safe in the modern world. It also covers a wide range of topics relating to physical and mental health, wellbeing, safeguarding and healthy relationships.
Learning about the emotional, social and physical aspects of growing up will give children and young people the information, skills and positive values to have safe, fulfilling relationships and help them take responsibility for their own well-being.
Consequently, from September 2020, Relationships, along with Health Education, will be statutory, and form part of the National Curriculum. For Secondary schools Sex Education will also become statutory. However, the DfE continue to recommend that all primary schools should have a sex education programme tailored to the age and the physical and emotional maturity of the pupils. Where schools provide sex education at key stages 1 and 2, parents will have the right to withdraw their child from sex education but not from statutory Relationships Education, Health Education or what is taught in the Science National curriculum.
This means that we have been reviewing our RSHE (Relationship, Sex and Health Education) curriculum and policy so we can be sure our RSHE provision is appropriate for our pupils based on their:
• Age
• Physical and emotional maturity
• Religious and cultural backgrounds
• Special educational needs and disabilities
Whilst I am sure that there will be differences of opinion about this, we hope that consulting with you will help to inform our schools’ decisions on when and how certain content is covered and enable us to reach a general consensus. Consequently, as part of our curriculum review, we would appreciate your views on our draft policy for Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) and our draft policy for Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE)
What is taught, and how, is ultimately a decision for the school and consultation does not provide a parental veto on curriculum content as schools are legally required to teach the National Curriculum. The right to withdraw children from some lessons is explained within the policy.
As a school community, we are currently in unprecedented times which makes it a little more challenging to consult with you. To help you understand the curriculum requirements, I have placed information on our website which I would encourage you to read. On our website under RSHE and PSHE Consultation, I have included:
- Our proposed draft Policy for Relationships, Sex and Health Education( RSHE)
- RSHE – presentation for parents
- RSHE – Journey in Love – Overview for parents
- DFE guidance – RSHE- primary schools guide for parents
- A FAQ sheet
- RSHE overview 2020-2021
- Our proposed draft Policy for Personal, Social, Health and Emotional (PSHE)
- PSHE programme of study
- PSHE long term plans (links with RSHE – Journey in Love)
- Consultation Responses
I would like to thank all parents and carers who took the time to submit responses and completed the questionnaire. The responses gathered from parents were highly positive about the proposed changes to our curriculum and the overwhelming consensus was that these changes reflected modern family living, and current & respectful thinking. They also provided us with valuable information in order to assist the implementation of the new national guidelines that came into effect at the start of this term.
The outcome of the consultation has informed us to take the following additional measures:
· Additional details of curriculum content will be made available and presented to parents/carers
· Year group specific communication will be sent prior to delivery of curriculum content. This will include a list of vocabulary that will be taught and questions that may be raised. We hope that this will enable parents to support learning and conversations that might occur at home, following any teaching
Finally, please note full curriculum documents will be available on our school website so that parents and carers are able to view them as appropriate.
Thank you for your continued support.