Our curriculum is fully aligned with the Department for Education's statutory Relationships, Sex, and Health Education (RSHE) guidance. Designed as a spiral curriculum, key themes are revisited each year, allowing children to build sequentially on their prior learning in an age-appropriate and sensitive manner.

PSHE: Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education

Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education in our school aims to promote each child’s personal development. We want them to leave Geoffrey Field Junior School armed with the knowledge, attitudes, skills and strategies they will need to be safe, healthy and productive members of their families, schools and society.

Our Core Values: The Heartbeat of Our School

Our five core values form the very backbone of our PSHE curriculum and the foundation of our entire school ethos:

• Kindness
• Resilience
• Respect
• Honesty
• Responsibility

Rather than just words on a wall, we believe that living and breathing these values has a profound, long-lasting impact on our children. By embedding them into daily life, we equip our pupils with a strong moral compass and the personal character they need to thrive—not just during their time with us, but as they grow into compassionate, active, and successful citizens in the wider world.

In our daily school life, children receive positive praise when they demonstrate these values, and they are actively encouraged to look for and celebrate them among their peers. This culture of reflection culminates in our annual Award Ceremony, which is built entirely around our core values. This special event gives pupils a meaningful opportunity to evaluate their own attitudes and behaviours over the year, celebrating their personal growth and setting themselves inspiring targets for the future.

Relationships Education (Personal & Social)

Our Relationships Education ensures that children understand the fundamental building blocks of healthy, nurturing relationships—starting with family and friendships and extending to online spaces.

In line with the DfE statutory requirements, this area focuses on:

• Families and Close Relationships: Celebrating that families can look different, understanding the importance of caring for one another, and recognising stable, loving environments.
• Caring Friendships: Learning how to make and maintain healthy friendships, resolve conflicts, and recognise when a friendship is not respectful or safe.
• Respectful Boundaries and Consent: From Key Stage 1, children are introduced to the concepts of personal boundaries and consent in an age-appropriate way. The updated guidance emphasises developing communication skills, assertiveness, and the confidence to express personal needs and boundaries.
• Online Relationships: Navigating safety in the digital world, including identifying online risks, resisting peer pressure, and recognising their rights to privacy and personal data.

Health and Wellbeing Education (Physical & Mental Health)

Our Health and Wellbeing curriculum teaches children how to make informed decisions about their own health, recognise issues in themselves and others, and know where and how to seek help.

Key areas of learning include:

• Mental Wellbeing: Promoting positive mental health, building resilience, and learning to identify a wide range of emotions. In accordance with the updated DfE guidance, we explicitly teach children about change and loss, including bereavement, helping them understand that grief is a normal process and that everyone experiences it differently.
• Physical Health and Lifestyles: Understanding the importance of physical activity, healthy eating, dental hygiene, and a balanced lifestyle.
• Safety and the Changing Body: Explaining the physical and emotional changes that happen as we grow. In line with best-practice safeguarding requirements in the statutory guidance, we teach children the correct anatomical names for body parts (including genitalia) to reduce stigma and help children identify and report abuse.
• Personal Safety: This includes critical new statutory content aimed at recognising and reducing risks in everyday life, focusing specifically on fire, road, rail, and water safety.

Economic Wellbeing and Citizenship Education

While the statutory RSE and Health Education guidance focuses heavily on relationships and health, the DfE highly recommends that schools maintain a broad PSHE framework. Following the Kapow curriculum, we go beyond the statutory minimum by integrating Citizenship and Economic Wellbeing units, drawing on the recommended PSHE Association Programme of Study.

Our pupils learn about:

• Financial Literacy: Understanding where money comes from, the difference between "wants" and "needs," and the value of saving. Consistent with the updated DfE focus on digital-age risks, we introduce children to online financial harms, helping them understand scams, fraud, and the age restrictions associated with online content, gaming, and gambling.
• Active Citizenship: Learning about democracy, the rule of law, and how communities function. We explore diversity, the negative effects of stereotypes, and how we can positively contribute to school life and the wider community.

RSE: Relationships & Sex Education

Co-Designing Our Curriculum with Our School Community

When designing and updating our Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum, we made parental engagement and transparency our absolute priority, fully aligning with the Department for Education’s (DfE) statutory RSHE guidance.

To ensure that our curriculum is sensitive, age-appropriate and representative of our community’s values, we conducted a robust consultation process.

RSHE Consultation 2026

We shared our key objectives from our chosen RSHE scheme and invited parents to share their views on where in the Key Stage 2 curriculum the objective should be taught, if at all. the valuable feedback gathered in the consultation has informed how we have sequenced our RSE Curriculum.

A DETAILED REPORT OF THE RESULTS FROM THE 2026 RSHE CONSULTATION CAN BE FOUND AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS WEBPAGE.   

We use the Kapow Primary RSHE curriculum. This curriculum is structured to build children's confidence, emotional literacy, and understanding of safety year-on-year.

Compulsory Elements (Cannot be Withdrawn)

Under the statutory DfE guidance, the vast majority of our PSHE and RSHE curriculum is compulsory for all pupils. Parents do not have the right to withdraw their children from:

• Relationships Education: Learning about safe, caring friendships, family structures, digital safety and personal boundaries.

• Health Education: Learning about physical health, mental wellbeing, emotional resilience and the physical changes of puberty, including the menstrual cycle.
• The National Curriculum for Science: This includes statutory science lessons on the human life cycle, reproduction in plants and animals and basic human anatomy.

Sex Education and the Right to Withdraw (Year 6 Only)

In line with DfE recommendations and the Kapow curriculum, we do not teach explicit "Sex Education" in the lower primary years.

• When does it happen? The non-statutory "Sex Education" component of our curriculum is taught strictly in Year 6. This lesson focuses on human conception and birth (building upon, but distinct from, the factual biological concepts taught in statutory Science).
• Your Right to Withdraw: As a parent, you have the right to request that your child is withdrawn from this specific Year 6 Sex Education lesson.
• How to make a request: If you wish to withdraw your child from the Year 6 Sex Education lesson, we ask that you attend one of our parent/guardian RSHE sessions in Summer Term beforehand.  This will give you an opportunity to review the teaching materials and make a more informed decision regarding the lesson(s) you are considering withdrawing your child from. Should you still wish to withdraw your child following this session, then email or phone the school office to inform the Headteacher so we can support your request by arranging alternative provision for your child during that lesson.

Creating a Safe Learning Environment

Because PSHE covers sensitive topics, we aim to establish clear class ground rules. This ensures a supportive, respectful and safe space where children feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and asking questions.

We work in close partnership with parents and carers. If you have any questions about our PSHE and RSHE curriculum, or if you would like to view our policy and the teaching resources we use, please contact the school office.

Promoting Fundamental British Values

At our school, the four fundamental British values—Democracy, the Rule of Law, Individual Liberty, and Mutual Respect and Tolerance—are not taught in isolation; instead, they are woven directly into the fabric of our PSHE and RSHE curriculum. Through the Kapow Primary scheme and our focus on our five core school values, we ensure children understand how these principles shape life in modern Britain:

• Democracy: Hand-in-hand with our school value of Responsibility, children learn how to debate respectfully, make democratic decisions through class voting and understand how they can actively contribute to the school and wider community.

• The Rule of Law: In every PSHE lesson, we establish collaborative "ground rules", helping pupils understand that clear, fair rules protect our safety and wellbeing.

• Individual Liberty: By teaching children about their rights, personal boundaries, and safe choices, we build the Resilience and self-esteem they need to confidently express their individuality and make informed, safe decisions online and offline.

• Mutual Respect and Tolerance: Closely aligned with our core value of Respect, our curriculum explicitly celebrates diversity, tackles stereotyping, and teaches the importance of valuing families and individuals of all faiths, beliefs, and backgrounds.

By living and breathing these values daily, our pupils learn to appreciate and respect the differences in the world around them, preparing them to thrive as responsible, open-minded citizens.

Localised curriculum links:

At Geoffrey Field, we have developed a localised curriculum, which focuses on areas of importance and barriers for our pupils. These key areas are woven into our PSHE curriculum, to ensure our pupils receive a full, rich and engaging curriculum.

• Oracy – Exploratory and presentational talk is a natural part across the PSHE units.
• Health & Wellbeing – Learning how to maintain their mental, physical and emotional wellbeing is addressed across the school’s broad curriculum and is also taught within PSHE lessons.
• Aspirations – Through special events and aspects of the PSHE curriculum (such as economic well being), children are encouraged to recognise and set high aspirations for themselves. Aspects of the PSHE curriculum, such as working cooperatively and setting goals, teach the children how their aspirations might be achieved.
• Global Literacy – Within the PSHE curriculum (as with the school’s wider curriculum), the children learn to recognise and celebrate diversity.

 

Impact – Our children leave Geoffrey Field Junior School with the skills, attitudes, knowledge and strategies that will allow them to be a happy and productive member of their community. Whilst at school, the children are shown how to make appropriate and informed decisions, develop positive behaviours towards themselves and others and to develop a resilient and responsible attitude towards their own learning.