PSHE/RSE Education

All schools are required by law to consult their school communities on their Relationship and Sex Education Policies and schemes of work. We carried out this consultation when the requirement came into force in 2019 and we adopted the HeartSmart scheme.
As part of our curriculum review process, we have decided that it is necessary to updated our practice as we feel that HeartSmart is no longer meeting our needs. After a significant amount of research, we have decided to adopted a new scheme called Jigsaw. It is widely used in primary schools and is designed for use in faith schools.
We began using the new scheme in September as we do not need to consult on the general PSHE part of it - the vast majority. It is the RSE part that we have to consult on and this is only taught towards the end of the school year.
Relationships Education is statutory in all schools, however sex education is only statutory in secondary schools. At St Mary's, we have made the decision not to teach sex education as part of our RSE, however we need to consider the views of our parents and carers about this decision.
Attached is our draft PSHE/RSE Policy which contains an overview of the DfE requirements and the detail of what is taught in each year group as part of the scheme.
We welcome your questions and comments about the policy and the scheme. To this end we are holding a consultation meeting on Tuesday 23rd January at 2:45pm. We also welcome questions sent in advance if you are unable to attend the meeting. The meeting will be minuted and we will publish the results of the consultation.
Please do take the time to read the policy and the curriculum overview. It will also be published on the school website. Paper copies can be made available from the school office on request.
Feel free to message me directly with any questions or comments.