Relationships Education at St. Mary’s 2022/2023
Intent Statement
Through the study of Relationships Education, St. Mary's children will develop a knowledge and understanding of respect for themselves and others, learning about healthy and safe relationships within the special context of the identity of our school.
Rationale and Learning Sequence
The Department for Education states the following:
“The focus in primary school should be on teaching the fundamental building blocks and characteristics of positive relationships, with particular reference to friendships, family relationships, and relationships with other children and with adults. 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. From the beginning of primary school, building on early education, pupils should be taught 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.”
At St. Mary’s we have developed our relationships education curriculum through use of Ten:Ten Life to the Full materials which ensure our developmentally appropriate curriculum is delivered to the standard required by the DfE whilst reflecting the religious character of our school. Through our curriculum we aim to ensure that our pupils are equipped with the following skills:
- Understand what family means, acknowledging that families in many forms provide love, stability and security.
- Understand that stable, caring relationships are at the heart of happy families and are important for children’s security as they grow.
- Appreciate that families can be different but that respect for difference is important
- Recognise that sometimes relationships can make us feel unhappy or unsafe and know how to ask for help and support when this occurs.
- Understand personal space and boundaries, and appropriate and inappropriate contact, gaining an understanding of the features of relationships which will likely lead to happiness and security.
- Understand physical & psychological changes as they develop and grow.
Our relationships curriculum overview tracks the sequence of learning for our children and seeks to build on prior learning at all stages of the learning journey so that children are able to refer to prior learning experiences when accessing new learning and deepening skills over time. The curriculum is taught with a spiral approach to learning, meaning that pupils revisit the same topics at an age-appropriate stage. The curriculum sequence is also flexible in that it can respond to local, national or international events when deemed necessary.