RSE
Relationships, Sex and Health Education - The Oakmeadow Way
RSHE has two statutory elements:
- Relationships Education
- Physical Health and Mental Well-being
- Families and Relationships
- Health and Well-being
- Safety and the Changing Body
Please utilise our pdf sliders below to read our RSHE policy and parental guidance slides.
Relationships Education
At Oakmeadow, we believe that our relationships curriculum should ensure an opportunity to enable pupils to be taught about positive emotional and mental wellbeing. This starts with pupils being taught about what a relationship is, what friendship is, what family means and who the people are who can support them. We teach pupils how to take turns, how to treat each other with kindness, consideration and respect, the importance of honesty and truthfulness, permission seeking and giving, and the concept of personal privacy. We aim to help children develop an understanding one’s own and others’ boundaries. We talk explicitly about the features of healthy friendships, family relationships and other relationships which young children are likely to encounter. Drawing attention to these in a range of contexts should enable pupils to form a strong early understanding of the features of relationships that are likely to lead to happiness and security. This will also help them to recognise any less positive relationships when they encounter them. We explore on-line behaviours as we recognise children will have increasing access to this. We teach online safety explicitly, making links with our computing curriculum.
We are a values based school which encourages the development and practice of resilience and other attributes, this includes character traits such as helping pupils to believe they can achieve and persevere with tasks. Alongside understanding the importance of self-respect and self-worth, pupils should develop personal attributes including honesty, integrity, courage, humility, kindness, generosity, trustworthiness and a sense of justice.
Through Relationships Education, we teach pupils the knowledge they need to recognise and to report abuse, including emotional, physical and sexual abuse. We do this in a variety of ways including utilising external organisations such as the NSPCC annually. We discuss boundaries and privacy, ensuring young people understand that they have rights over their own bodies.
Sex Education.
We believe that it is important that the transition phase before moving to secondary school supports pupils’ ongoing emotional and physical development effectively. The Department for Education continues 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’. We support this and, through our use of the Kapow scheme, we teach this in a progressive way throughout years 1-6 that link well to our Science curriculum. We aim to ensure that both boys and girls are prepared for the changes that adolescence brings and – drawing on knowledge of the human life cycle set out in the national curriculum for science - how a baby is conceived and born.
We believe in consulting our parents on the content of what will be taught. We offer parents support in talking to their children about sex education and how to link this with what is being taught in school in relation to the developmental differences of children. When we consult parents, we offer them the chance to explore materials and key vocabulary that will be used. We offer parents the right to withdraw their children from Sex Education and will work to aid children’s understanding of the key concepts in a way that is appropriate to their developmental stage.
For more details on our RSE curriculum see our supporting documents or if you would prefer to speak to a member of staff to discuss queries, please call school to make an appointment.