Personal Development
Working in partnership with parents/carers and the wider community to enable pupils to feel safe, included, happy and prepared for life beyond school
Our Personal Development Curriculum intends to:
Enable pupils to make effective choices.
Teach pupils to be mindful of British Values.
Develop pupils into positive citizens of modern-day Britain.
Why Learn Personal Development?
Personal Development (PD) equips pupils to live healthy, safe, productive, capable, responsible and balanced lives. It encourages them to be enterprising and supports them in making effective transitions, positive learning and career choices and in achieving economic well-being. A critical component of PD education is providing opportunities for children and young people to reflect on and clarify their own values and attitudes and explore the complex, and sometimes conflicting, range of values and attitudes they encounter now and in the future. Personal Development education helps pupils to cope with the changes at puberty, introduces them to a wider world and enables them to make an active contribution to their communities.
The curriculum for Personal Development is led by our Designated Safeguarding Lead Practitioner (All-Through), Year Leaders and nominated colleagues in our primary phase. This ensures that the content is always age appropriate. Ground rules are used in all lessons to ensure that this aspect of our curriculum is facilitated in an emotionally safe way. All teachers are supported to deliver PD lessons in an appropriate way through a CPD programme and individual support by the Year and Assistant Year Leaders. Specialist teachers are used to deliver some aspects of the curriculum.
This aspect of our curriculum is delivered by class teachers with specialist input and assemblies where appropriate.
Personal Development offers explicit and implicit learning opportunities based on key themes that are considered throughout all key stages. Different teaching methods are used, such as direct teaching, discussion and debate, research, books, stories, visiting speakers and workshops. The schemes of work and lessons are planned to implement the curriculum intent and are flexible, reflecting pupils’ needs, with adaptations to take on board pupils and parental feedback, ideas and topical issues in society.
During Key Stage 1 pupils learn about themselves as developing individuals and as members of their communities, building on their own experiences and on the early learning goals for personal, social and emotional development.
Throughout the Primary Phase, each class uses a large Personal Development journal to evidence our curriculum. The core themes of the curriculum are Health and Well-being, Relationships and Living in the Wider World.
1. Health and Well-being:
Pupils learn about Healthy Lifestyles: physical well-being, mental health, ourselves growing and changing, keeping safe; drugs, alcohol, tobacco and vaping.
They learn the basic rules and skills for keeping themselves healthy and safe and for behaving well. They have opportunities to show they can take some responsibility for themselves and their environment.
Our pupils are taught:
To make simple choices that improve their health and well-being.
How to maintain personal hygiene.
That some diseases spread and can be controlled.
About the process of growing from young to old and how people's needs change.
The names of the main parts of the body;
That all household products, including medicines, can be harmful if not used properly;
Rules for, and ways of, keeping safe, including basic road safety, and about people who can help them to stay safe.
2. Preparing to play an active role as citizens
As members of a class and school community, they learn social skills such as how to share, take turns, play, help others, resolve simple arguments and resist bullying. They begin to take an active part in the life of their school and its neighbourhood.
Our pupils are taught to:
Take part in discussions with one other person and the whole class.
Take part in a simple debate about topical issues.
To recognise choices they can make, and recognise the difference between right and wrong.
Agree and follow rules for their group and classroom, and understand how rules help them.
Realise that people and other living things have needs, and that they have responsibilities to meet them.
That they belong to various groups and communities, such as family and school.
What improves and harms their local, natural and built environments and about some of the ways people look after them.
How to contribute to the life of the class and school.
Realise that money comes from different sources and can be used for different purposes.
3. Developing good relationships and respecting the differences between people
They begin to learn about their own and other people's feelings and become aware of the views, needs and rights of other children and older people.
Our pupils are taught:
To recognise how their behaviour affects other people.
To listen to other people, and play and work cooperatively.
To identify and respect the differences and similarities between people.
That family and friends should care for each other.
That there are different types of teasing and bullying, that bullying is wrong, and how to get help to deal with bullying.
Breadth of opportunities
Our pupils will be taught the knowledge, skills and understanding through opportunities to:
Take and share responsibility (for example, for their own behaviour; by helping to make classroom rules and following them; by looking after pets well).
Feel positive about themselves (for example, by having their achievements recognised and by being given positive feedback about themselves).
Take part in discussions (for example, talking about topics of school, local, national, European, Commonwealth and global concern, such as 'where our food and raw materials for industry come from').
Make real choices (for example, between healthy options in school meals, what to watch on television, what games to play, how to spend and save money sensibly).
Meet and talk with people (for example, with outside visitors such as religious leaders, police officers, the school nurse).
Develop relationships through work and play (for example, by sharing equipment with other pupils or their friends in a group task).
Consider social and moral dilemmas that they come across in everyday life (for example, aggressive behaviour, questions of fairness, right and wrong, simple political issues, use of money, simple environmental issues).
Ask for help (for example, from family and friends, midday supervisors, older pupils, the police).
Long Term Plan
Personal Development
