At South Wilford Endowed Primary School we use the SCARF (Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience, Friendship) scheme of work to plan and support our PSHE and RHE. It is centred on a values-based and ‘Growth Mindset’ approach. SCARF lessons promote positive behaviour, mental health, wellbeing, resilience, and achievement. SCARF provides us with a comprehensive scheme of work for PSHE and RHE with over 350 lesson plans, which are mapped to the National Curriculum and cover all of the DfE’s statutory requirements for Relationships Education and Health Education, and the PSHE Association’s Programme of Study recommended learning opportunities. PSHE learning is also supplemented by special events such as Anti-Bullying Week, Children’s Mental Health Week, Healthy School Week, and Safer Internet Day.
Each year group covers the same six core themes:
1. Me and My Relationships
2. Valuing Difference
3. Keeping Myself Safe
4. Rights and Responsibilities
5. Being at My Best
6. Growing and Changing.
SCARF is a spiral curriculum, which means that the children cover these same six themes every year, and each time they encounter a theme, it increases in complexity and reinforces previous learning. This continual revisiting with a changing focus ensures that learning becomes embedded and children continue to build upon and deepen their knowledge and understanding in all PSHE and SRE areas.
We are using 'VotesforSchools' and 'PictureNews' in our oracy assemblies to help us learn about current affairs and issues in the world around us. We learn about British Values, the protected characteristics, and practice democracy through debating and voting about a news story each week.
Some aspects of RHE overlap with the national curriculum for Science, such as the main external body parts, the human body as it grows from birth to old age (including puberty), and birth and reproduction. Therefore, children cannot be withdrawn from these lessons. Conception is the only part of RHE which isn’t part of the Science curriculum, and so the only small amount of non-statutory sex education that is included in SCARF is covered in a Year 6 ‘Making Babies’ lesson.
We have a wonderful PSHE representative on our school curriculum council, made up entirely of pupils. Eva attends some PSHE lesson visits across school, is up to date with the action plan, helps with PSHE displays and provides pupil voice feedback. She has created a lovely piece of work summing up PSHE to share with everyone here on our website.
We spent a week in school working on our physical and mental wellbeing, with a different focus each day. Activities included healthy eating, aerobics and dancing, Drumba and fitness circuits, and a fun run. Children were also invited to complete healthy eating, exercise and mental wellbeing challenges at home each day. Parents, carers and teachers all joined in with running a daily mile, dancing and doing aerobics in the playground before school each morning.