William Reynolds Primary School and Nursery

Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) Education & Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE)

At William Reynolds Primary School and Nursery, we are dedicated to nurturing children who are happy, healthy, and fully equipped for life in modern Britain. Through our Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education and Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE), we aim to empower every pupil to grow into a confident, resilient, and respectful individual.

Our curriculum fully meets the Department for Education’s statutory RSHE requirements (2020). This programme is carefully designed to be inclusive, age-appropriate, and responsive to the needs of our diverse school community.

Our PSHE & PSHE curriculum also fulfils the National Curriculum requirement to teach PSHE (‘All schools should make provision for personal, social, health and economic education) and goes beyond the statutory requirements by referring to the PSHE Association  Programme of Study (recommended by the Department for Education.)

🎯 Aims of the PSHE & RSHE Curriculum

We believe that a whole-child approach is essential. PSHE & RSHE are vital to developing well-rounded individuals who are emotionally intelligent, respectful, and able to make responsible decisions. These lessons help children to:

• Equip children with the skills and knowledge needed to live happy, healthy lives.

• Foster self-esteem, respect, and emotional literacy.

• Promote positive relationships with peers and adults.

• Support children in understanding and respecting diversity and differences.

• Ensure students can make informed decisions about their health, relationships, and well-being.

Our curriculum is designed to be interactive, engaging, and relevant to the world your child is growing up in. It focuses on creating a safe space where students can explore topics such as emotions, friendship, personal hygiene, puberty, relationships, online safety, and more, through a variety of teaching methods and resources.

🧠 Why PSHE and RSHE Matter

Our PSHE and RSHE lessons empower pupils with the knowledge and skills they need to navigate life confidently and responsibly. Through these lessons, students learn to:

• Understand their emotions and relationships

• Stay physically and mentally healthy

• Keep themselves and others safe

• Celebrate differences and challenge stereotypes

• Explore responsibilities as citizens in modern Britain

By equipping children with these essential tools, we help them thrive both inside and outside the classroom, building a foundation for a positive and fulfilling future.

The Kapow PSHE and RSHE scheme of work for EYFS, KS1, and KS2 closely aligns with the school’s core values of honesty, collaboration, challenge, ownership, and courage.

Through engaging lessons, students are encouraged to practise honesty by discussing their feelings, making decisions based on integrity, and developing a strong sense of self-awareness. Collaboration is fostered through group activities and discussions that promote teamwork and empathy. The scheme challenges pupils to step outside their comfort zones, exploring difficult topics and building resilience in the face of adversity. Ownership is emphasised as students take responsibility for their learning and their actions, making choices that positively impact their well-being and the community. Finally, courage is embedded throughout the curriculum as pupils are supported in expressing their views, standing up for others, and making confident decisions in a safe and nurturing environment. These values are interwoven into every aspect of the scheme, promoting a holistic approach to personal, social, health, and relationships education.

📚 Kapow’s Six Key Areas

Kapow structures the PSHE & RSHE curriculum into six core strands that are revisited and built upon each year. This structured approach ensures that children receive age-appropriate content and develop a deeper understanding of these essential life skills.

1. Families and Relationships

2. Health and Wellbeing

3. Safety and the Changing Body

4. Citizenship

5. Economic Wellbeing

6. Identity (Year 6 only)

By structuring the curriculum into these six core areas, Kapow ensures that children have a comprehensive, progressive understanding of PSHE and RSHE, helping them develop essential life skills for health, relationships, citizenship, and wellbeing. Each key area builds on the previous year’s learning, ensuring that by the end of Year 6, children are well-equipped to navigate the challenges of adolescence and adulthood.

📚The Curriculum

Our curriculum is based on a progressive framework, ensuring that topics are revisited and developed in more depth as students grow older, gaining the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to navigate the challenges of growing up. 

Key Elements of the Curriculum Plan:

1. Progression: The curriculum ensures that learning builds from EYFS to KS1 and KS2. Each year group receives tailored content that is appropriate for their age and developmental stage.

2. Thematic Planning: The curriculum is broken down into thematic units that cover topics such as Health & Well-being, Relationships, Living in the Wider World, and the changing body. These topics are revisited across different stages, reinforcing students' knowledge and understanding.

3. Statutory Requirements: All lessons are planned in alignment with the Department for Education’s statutory guidance for RSHE (2020), ensuring that we meet the required standards for teaching relationships and sex education. This includes teaching about puberty, consent, mental health and reproduction at appropriate ages.

4. Cross-curricular Links: The RSHE curriculum is closely aligned with the Science curriculum (specifically in KS2), as well as Literacy, Personal Development, and Citizenship. This ensures that the learning is contextualised and reinforces the concepts taught in other subject areas.

📘Curriculum Content

🧒 Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS):

In Reception, PSHE is taught through the Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED) strand of the EYFS curriculum and supported by Kapow Early Years resources. Pupils learn to:

• Manage feelings and behaviour

• Build friendships and empathy

• Recognise and communicate emotions

Examples of how this can be taught:

• Feelings Faces: Children explore different emotions using pictures or cards depicting happy, sad, and angry faces. 

• Role-Play: Using dolls, puppets, or toys, children can act out different social situations to learn about kindness, turn-taking, and conflict resolution.

• Hygiene Stations: Practical activities like washing hands, brushing teeth, and learning about germs using fun songs and videos.

📗 Key Stage 1 (Years 1–2):

• Friendships, kindness, and conflict resolution

• Basic hygiene, food, and physical activity

• Understanding rules and safety at home and school

• Recognising feelings and asking for help

• Differences between boys and girls and respecting personal space

Examples of how this can be taught:

• Circle Time: Children sit in a circle and share their thoughts on topics like kindness, fairness, and personal safety.

• Healthy Habits Sorting Game: Pupils sort cards into categories like “healthy foods” and “unhealthy foods,” discussing why each belongs where it does.

• Family Tree Project: Pupils create simple family trees and discuss the different types of families they know.

• Storytelling: Teachers read stories about friendships and managing emotions, encouraging children to discuss the characters’ actions and how they could do things differently.

📘 Key Stage 2 (Years 3–6)

• Positive relationships and dealing with peer pressure

• Managing emotions and promoting mental wellbeing

• Internet safety and staying safe in the real world

• Puberty and changes to the body 

• Human reproduction and sex education 

• Understanding rights, responsibilities, and democracy

• Budgeting, saving, and financial decision-making

How this can be taught:

• Interactive Scenarios: Teachers provide real-life situations for children to act out, such as handling a conflict with a friend, identifying feelings, or addressing bullying.

• First Aid Workshop: An external expert can come in and demonstrate basic first aid skills.

• Cyberbullying Role-Play: Pupils practice safe and respectful online interactions through role-play. They explore what to do if they witness or experience online bullying.

• Reflection Journals: Children keep a journal where they write or draw about their feelings, their reactions to challenges, and what they learned from the lessons.

• Puberty and Body Changes Workshop: Teachers present puberty in a sensitive, factual manner, using diagrams and videos to explain physical changes.

• Financial Education Games: Students play “money management” games where they must budget for a project or save money for something important, learning about spending, saving, and managing debt.

• Transition to Secondary School Preparation: Students reflect on their emotions about leaving primary school, discussing what to expect and how to manage the transition.

🌍Lesson Plans

Progressive Sequencing:

• Lessons are mapped across the school year in a logical order, ensuring a smooth progression from simple to more complex ideas.
• Repetition of key themes over time ensures deep learning and skill development, while new knowledge is layered in appropriately for each key stage.

Clear Learning Objectives and Outcomes

• Each lesson has precise learning goals, designed to match the developmental stage of the pupils.
• Outcomes often include both knowledge and skills-based targets—such as being able to explain a concept and demonstrate an ability.

Adaptable for Mixed-Age and SEND Settings

• Lessons are differentiated and often include scaffolded tasks to support children at varying levels.
• Alternative versions or suggestions are offered to ensure inclusion and accessibility.

Interactive and Creative Resources

• Kapow integrates videos, role play, storybooks, worksheets, and discussion prompts. Activities are designed to be interactive, reflective, and discussion-based, encouraging children to explore their thoughts and feelings in a safe space.

Assessment for Learning

• Built-in formative assessment opportunities help teachers track understanding throughout a lesson or unit.
• End-of-unit reflection activities support pupil self-assessment and can help with reporting or identifying next steps.

Teacher Guidance and CPD Support

• Lessons include detailed teacher notes, key vocabulary, suggested scripts for sensitive discussions, and ideas for further extension.
• Kapow also provides CPD videos and background reading for staff, particularly for sensitive or complex topics like puberty, gender identity, or online safety.

Links to British Values & SMSC

• Each lesson contributes to pupils’ Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development (SMSC), British Values, and Protected Characteristics as outlined in the Equality Act 2010.
• Topics such as respect, diversity, equality, and democracy are woven into all strands.

Key Curriculum Documents:

Long-Term Plan (PDF)

Statutory Guidance Mapping (PDF)

Progression Document (PDF)

Intent, Implementation and Impact Document (PDF)

PSHE & RSHE Policy (PDF)

Additional Learning Opportunities and Wider Opportunities:

In addition to PSHE & RSHE, at appropriate times in the year, we celebrate themed weeks or days such as: Anti-Bullying week, Safer Internet Day, Global Awareness Days, charity events and World Mental Health Day. School assemblies support British values, the protected characteristics and The William Reynolds Way Behaviour Curriculum which enables pupils to gain an understanding of the world they are growing up in, and learn how to live alongside, and show respect for, a diverse range of people.

The impact of our curriculum is that all pupils:

• have healthy, respectful relationships with people at school, at home and online
• know how to stay safe, including online, in our ever-changing world
• know how and where to seek support if they need it
• can recognise and talk about their own, and others, emotions
• know how to stay healthy and know ways to prevent illnesses, including their own personal hygiene
• know key facts about puberty and the changing adolescent body
• know how to consider the effect of their online actions
• are ready for their next stage of their education

🌍 Sex Education, Statutory Guidance & The Science Curriculum

All the content outlined above is statutory and therefore all children should be taught it. As with any other subject teachers will ensure that the lesson is taught in a way which means children of all abilities will learn. The government is very clear that they want children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to be included in these lessons.

As a parent you do not have the right to withdraw your child from any of the statutory content on either relationships or health. You only have the right to withdraw your child from the sex education content that we choose to teach, apart from National Curriculum Science. It is recommended that you talk to us about this before making a decision.

Parents and carers are sometimes concerned about the conversations children may have in RSHE lessons, but teachers have lots of ways to make sure children are safe in these lessons. For example, they will have ground rules to make sure children feel confident to share their ideas, they will use things like puppets and stories, so children are discussing a made up characters’ experiences rather than their own. They also know the children in their class well and will have a sense of their needs and what they teach will be age appropriate.

It is important to balance what children know already and to prepare them for the future. Discussing issues in the safe learning environment of the classroom before they experience them in real life is very valuable for children.

Sex Education and Statutory Guidance (2020):

In 2020, the UK government introduced statutory guidelines for RSHE. This guidance ensures that all schools in England teach essential content that supports the emotional, physical, and mental well-being of children. The RSHE curriculum is designed to help children develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to navigate a complex world, build healthy relationships, and make informed choices about their health.

Key Principles of Statutory Guidance:

• Age-appropriate: It is taught in a sensitive, age-appropriate manner, ensuring that pupils understand the topics when they are ready to do so.

• Respectful Relationships: Emphasis is placed on teaching pupils the importance of mutual respect, consent, empathy, and how to form positive relationships with others.

• Personal Boundaries and Safety: The curriculum covers understanding personal boundaries, the importance of personal space, and how to recognise and respond to situations that feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

• Health and Wellbeing: Pupils learn about emotional health, self-esteem, healthy lifestyles, and mental health.

As part of the statutory requirements, we teach Sex Education through a combination of dedicated lessons and embedded teaching within other subjects like Science and PSHE.

Sex Education in the Science Curriculum:

In addition to the RSHE curriculum, key aspects of Sex Education are also taught as a statutory part of the Science Curriculum in Key Stage 2, as part of National Curriculum requirements. This ensures that children receive a sound understanding of the biological aspects of human reproduction and puberty, in line with scientific knowledge. Children must be taught this content.

Key Stage 2 Science Curriculum:

The Science curriculum covers key aspects of human biology, focusing on human development, puberty, and reproduction in a factual, objective, and respectful manner. This approach ensures that students understand the scientific facts behind these topics, while the RSHE curriculum complements this with a focus on emotions, relationships, and personal wellbeing.

In Year 5, the Science curriculum introduces topics related to animal life cycles, puberty and the human body. Students learn about the physical changes during puberty, such as growth spurts, the development of sexual characteristics, and how the body matures.

In Year 6, the focus expands to include more detailed information about puberty (including personal hygiene), and human life cycles and reproduction.

Our Approach to Teaching Sex Education:

We ensure that all of these lessons are taught with sensitivity and respect, keeping in mind the emotional and developmental needs of the children. We strive to create an inclusive, safe, and respectful environment where all pupils feel comfortable asking questions and exploring these important topics.

• Age-appropriate materials: We use resources such as books, diagrams, videos, and interactive activities to ensure that the content is accessible and engaging for each year group.

• Open discussions: We encourage children to ask questions, and we answer them in a way that is respectful, clear, and accurate.

• Respecting family values: We are mindful of the diversity of family backgrounds and beliefs, and we encourage an open dialogue between school and home to support students' learning.

How Parents Can Support at Home:

We believe that open communication between school and home is crucial for ensuring that children understand and internalise the lessons taught. Here are some ways you can support your child's learning at home:

• Reinforce the lessons: Discuss the topics your child is learning about in school, including body changes, puberty, and relationships.

• Use age-appropriate books and resources: There are many excellent books and resources available for discussing puberty, reproduction, and relationships in an age-appropriate way.

• Be open to questions: Encourage your child to ask questions, and answer them honestly in an age-appropriate manner.

• Respect their privacy: Make sure your child understands that they can ask questions or seek support from a trusted adult, either at home or school, whenever they need it.

If you ever have any concerns about how Sex Education is being taught or if you want to discuss any specific aspects of the curriculum, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We value your input and want to ensure that we are working together to provide the best support for your child's development.

📚 Resources for Parents

Key Documents:

• RSHE Parent & Carer Guide (PDF)
• Parent / Carer Presentation (PowerPoint)
• Parent/ Carer Letter (PDF)

Contact/ Further information:

If you have any questions or would like to discuss the content of the PSHE and RSHE curriculum at William Reynolds Primary School and Nursery, we encourage you to first explore the resources available on this webpage.

For more detailed information, please feel free to contact your child’s teacher, who is well-versed in delivering the curriculum content. If they are unable to provide sufficient information at the start or end of the day, they will be happy to arrange a meeting to discuss any queries.

If you require additional support beyond what the class teacher can provide, please contact our PSHE & RSHE Lead:

Emma Shankland
Assistant Headteacher: Strategic Lead for Inclusion (SENDCo & DSL)
Email: emma.shankland@taw.org.uk or A2158@telford.gov.uk
Phone: 01952 388280

Please note that you will need to book an appointment in advance.

We are here to support both parents and students in navigating these important areas of learning.