“Today’s children and young people are growing up in an increasingly complex world and living their lives seamlessly on and offline. This presents many positive and  exciting opportunities, but also challenges and risks. In this environment, children and young people need to know how to be safe and healthy, and how to manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way.” 

(DfE, 2019, Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education)

At Ordsall Primary School we want all our children to grow up healthy, happy, safe, and able to manage the challenges and opportunities of modern Britain. That is why, like all primary schools across the country, we teach Relationships and Health Education. These two subjects are designed to equip our children with knowledge to make informed decisions about their wellbeing, health and relationships, as well as preparing them for a successful adult life. 

Ordsall Primary School's Relationship and Health Education curriculum is delivered in an age-appropriate way and is about empowering children to have the confidence and giving them knowledge to ensure they have the skills needed to act appropriately to new or uncomfortable situations. The acquisition of key knowledge and key skills are planned so that they build on what has been taught before and move developmentally towards clearly defined end points or “milestones”. The milestones for the end of each term and each year ensure progression between year groups so that learning is always “built upon”. In this way, our curriculum aligns closely to the overall vision and intent for the curriculum at Ordsall Primary School. 

At Ordsall Primary School the content of our Relationships Education curriculum aims to put in place the building blocks needed for positive and safe relationships, including with family, friends and online. This means that our children are taught what a relationship is, what friendship is, what family means and who can support them. We cover how to treat each other with kindness, consideration and respect and by the time they reach the end of their time at Ordsall Primary School they will have been taught content about:

• families and people who care for me
• caring friendships
• respectful relationships
• online relationships
• being safe

At Ordsall Primary School the content of our Health Education curriculum aims to give our children the information they need to make good decisions about their own health and wellbeing, to recognise issues in themselves and others, and to seek support as early as possible when issues arise. This means that by the time they reach the end of their time at Ordsall Primary School that they will have been taught content about:

• mental wellbeing
• internet safety and harms
• physical health and fitness
• healthy eating
• facts and risks associated with drugs, alcohol and tobacco
• health and prevention
• basic first aid

the changing adolescent body (including Relationships and Sex Education which is taught through the themes of Relationships, Health and Wellbeing.)

The learning at Ordsall Primary School in Relationships and Health Education is organised so that children will learn component parts to develop their knowledge and use this knowledge within their contextualised learning. Learning in this area is delivered in different ways using a range of teaching strategies – auditory, visual and kinaesthetic. It could be done as discrete lessons - learning that takes place that is focussed on a particular theme, such as Stereotyping. It could be done as a block - lessons which are delivered over a number of consecutive days, for example when looking at bullying or e-safety. Alternatively, it could be delivered as a sequence of lessons, which can be cross-curricular, and delivered across a number of weeks such as when learning about being healthy and living a healthy life. Whichever approach is used, it is our aim to ensure that learning builds systematically on prior knowledge. In this way, the teaching staff are aware of what pupils should ‘know’ by the end of each term, year and key stage. 

Each year group develops their contextualised plans which identify which areas of the programme are being taught and how it links into the ‘Big Question’ each half term. The opportunities planned in the contextualised plans provide a context for the children’s knowledge in Relationships and Health Education. Our curriculum plans also reference the connections across subjects including to Science, Computing, Physical Education, Religious Education, and Design Technology for example, when the children’s learning is set in a context such as the Enterprise Fair. Through this approach, we aim to allow our children to be able to transfer key knowledge to long-term memory and apply it fluently in a range of contexts.

At Ordsall Primary School, we plan events to support learning such as School Council Elections and the Enterprise Fayre and take part in National Events events such as Anti-Bullying Week, E-Safety Day and Remembrance Services when we attend services held within the local community. We also plan and implement learning that focuses on contextualised safeguarding factors. This reflects the school’s setting and the unique local factors which face our children and their families, such as living close to the east coast mainline, open water and electricity provision. We believe that this is innovative and unique to the curriculum at Ordsall. We partner with a number of outside agencies to address this including Nottinghamshire Police Service, who delivered learning about knife crime because of the increase in knife crime in Nottinghamshire and the DARE programme due to the increasing incidents of drugs related offences and County Lines. We have also worked in partnership with the NSPCC who worked with our parents and carers and also spoke to the children about staying safe, different forms of abuse, understanding the ‘PANTS’ rule and where to go for help and support. These are alongside our work with the Safer Schools APP as part of our E-Safety learning.

The Relationships Sex Education curriculum is designed to progressively build on learning that has happened previously, so each year group will consolidate and develop their understanding of relationships and health education gradually throughout KS1 and KS2. The delivery of the RSE curriculum will be age appropriate and tailored to the needs of the children at that particular time and involves:

1. a combination of sharing information, and exploring issues and values.
2. links with learning in Science, Computing and PE which means that it is part of the overall curriculum that our school already delivers.
3. the emotional, social and cultural development of pupils, and involves learning about healthy relationships (including friendships), healthy lifestyles, diversity and personal identity.
4. Teaching Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHCE) which also covers economic wellbeing, careers and enterprise education, as well as education for personal safety, including assessing and managing risk.

The teaching of Relationships and Sex Education focuses mainly on pupil voice and discussion, but it may also involve the use of age appropriate images, short films, photographs, scenarios and the use of visitors into the school from a variety of services, both emergency and non-emergency, and charitable and non-charitable organisations. At Ordsall Primary School, parents and carers have the right to withdraw their child from RSE sessions and the Head Teacher will grant this request, should you wish to make one. Parents and carers however, cannot withdraw their child from Relationships Education or from other curriculum areas which may deal with aspects of the RSE curriculum e.g. human development including reproduction in science or images and the sharing of appropriate and innapproariate images online. 

Relationships and Health Education at Ordsall Primary School provides the children with exciting learning opportunities that they can commit to long-term memory and apply fluently. It is our intention that our curriculum at Ordsall Primary School in this area will be both stimulating and motivating in order to capture the children’s curiosity so that they can enjoy acquiring and developing the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to keep themselves healthy and safe, and prepare for life and work in modern Britain.

How do we measure the impact of our work in Relationships and Health Education?

At Ordsall Primary School we measure the impact of our work in Relationships and Health Education in a variety of ways. The school uses its knowledge and vocabulary progression map for Relationships and Health Education to compare the work that the children are doing with key points on the map. This allows the staff to assess where the children are, and check which elements are evident from the progression on the maps. In Relationships and Health Education this is done by observing the children completing or starting their work, through pupil discussion (when the children are asked about their work)  the record of children's work and their work on display and a scrutiny of social media posts about Relationships and Health Education. The assessment process, used within Relationships and Health Education, enables the school to evaluate the progress that the children are making, inform future work, measure the impact of what we teach and monitor specific groups. The process is tied together through the records of achievement at the end of the year that are shared with parents and carers.

If you would like to see some of the work that we share please see our Twitter feed @Ordsallschool or our website, which are both used to share the work that we do with parents and carers, the local community and the wider community of Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire, the region and the United Kingdom.

If you would like to know more about the Relationships and Health Education curriculum at Ordsall Primary School please see the documents below. If you have any questions about the work we do in Relationships and Health Education please contact the Subject Leader at the school or your child's class teacher using the year group email.