Personal Development and Character

RSHE/PSHE

Our curriculum is based on the PSHE Associations model which covers Health and Wellbeing, Relationships and Sex Education and Living in the Wider World.

RSHE/PSHE is delivered to all year groups in a discrete one hour lesson every fortnight. The spiral curriculum gives students opportunities to revisit topics that they have discussed previously to further develop their knowledge, understanding, skills and coping strategies. For more information, please see our Relationships, Sex Education and Health Education Policy as well as the RSHE Long Term Plan.

At Graham, we value the education provided by the RSE and PSHE curriculum in preparing our children for the wider world, their place in it and to be respectful, tolerant and accepting of all.

We would very much welcome your support and comment, so we would like to share with you a parent and carer consultation document, which we would be very grateful if you could take a few minutes to read the documentation above and share any of your views via the parents’ response form.

If any families want more information about our programme, please download the DfE information leaflet below or call the school to arrange a meeting with Mr Bell.

Link: DfE guidance on RSE

Citizenship

Citizenship is delivered through our tutorial programme. Students in Year 7 to 11 also have aspects of the course delivered to them through drop down days and tutor time; this includes Economic Wellbeing, Citizenship, British Values, Careers and Character Development. As part of the Philosophy and Ethics programme, we also deliver the Archbishop Young Leader’s Award at Key Stage 3.

For more information please see our Citizenship Long Term Plan here.

Assemblies

Assemblies are also instrumental to our delivery of Philosophy and Ethics and they are used to deliver key messages about acceptance, liberty, social intelligence, diversity and risk taking behaviours. Assemblies follow a British Values, SMSC, Character Building and Citizenship theme. We often have outside speakers who deliver important messages to our students, such as the local police officers explaining the causes and effects of anti- social behaviour and the local road safety officer explaining how students can keep themselves safe and further/higher education providers.

Link: Assembly Rota 2024/25

Religious Education

As part of the discrete Philosophy and Ethics lessons we also cover statutory Religious Education at KS3 and KS4. Students in Year 7, 8 and 9 all look at the religious beliefs set out in the North Yorkshire agreed syllabus, which includes the coverage of Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism and Islam, as well as non-religious beliefs. Christianity features across all year groups and in year 10 lessons, the students follow AQA’s Short Course in RS.

Please see our separate statement on statutory Religious Education.

SMSC and British Values

As a modern school, we promote the basic British Values with the support of the development of character strengths that are connected to each of the strands below:

Democracy
Rule of law
Mutual respect and tolerance
Individual liberty

We aim to actively promote British values in schools to ensure young people leave school prepared for life in modern Britain. In addition to the day to day modelling, British Values are also taught in suitable parts of the curriculum. This includes the strengths, advantages and disadvantages of democracy compared to other forms of government, how the law works in Britain, an understanding and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.

For further information about how we promote British Values and SMSC, please click here.