PSHE
What do we teach in PSHE? How do we teach PSHE?
PSHE Curriculum Overview & Intent
At Stoke Lodge Primary School, we believe that high‑quality PSHE education is essential for enabling children to flourish academically, socially and emotionally. To achieve this, we have chosen the Connect PSHE Curriculum, a modern, research‑informed programme designed to meet the needs of today’s children and fully aligned with the latest statutory RSHE requirements.
Connect is built around a clear, coherent and ambitious vision: to help children understand themselves, build healthy relationships and navigate an increasingly complex world with confidence and integrity. The curriculum is structured around progressive, interconnected themes that revisit and deepen learning over time, ensuring pupils develop secure knowledge and transferable skills. This spiral design reflects the best principles of curriculum thinking and supports long‑term retention.
We selected Connect because it offers exceptional clarity, sequencing and inclusivity. Each unit is carefully mapped to ensure that learning builds logically from Early Years to Year 6, with explicit links to safeguarding, wellbeing and personal development. Lessons are interactive, discussion‑rich and grounded in real‑life scenarios, enabling children to apply what they learn to everyday situations. This supports the development of confident, articulate and emotionally literate learners who can express themselves, manage challenges and make safe, informed choices.
A significant strength of Connect is its strong emphasis on online safety, digital wellbeing and critical thinking. Children learn how to recognise risks, understand consent and privacy, manage online pressures and protect their personal information — all essential for modern childhood. The curriculum also prioritises emotional regulation, resilience, respectful relationships, diversity and inclusion, ensuring that every child feels represented and valued.
Connect provides clear guidance for adapting lessons to meet the needs of pupils with SEND, ensuring that all learners can access the curriculum meaningfully. This aligns with our commitment to equity and our belief that PSHE should empower every child, regardless of background or starting point.
At Stoke Lodge, PSHE is taught weekly and reinforced through assemblies, our behaviour culture, safeguarding practice and wider school ethos. Staff receive ongoing training to ensure lessons are delivered confidently and sensitively. Leaders monitor the curriculum closely through pupil voice, lesson visits and work reviews to ensure high standards, strong progression and meaningful impact.
We believe that the Connect PSHE Curriculum offers the strongest foundation for our children to grow into thoughtful, responsible and resilient young people who contribute positively to their community and wider society. It reflects our ambition for excellence.
If you would like to explore our curriculum further, you can follow up through our Connect PSHE Curriculum Overview.
How does studying PSHE help our young people to achieve?
What makes Connect PSHE unique is that the termly themes are derived from the psychological wellbeing literature, and specifically the work of Dr Geetanjali Basarkod. Dr Basarkod’s PhD thesis expanded on the work of the New Economics Foundation by showing that psychologically healthy people tend to engage in 6 behaviours, and our curriculum is built around them. They are…
- Connecting with others – this involves having healthy social relationships.
- Challenging oneself – this involves continually trying to improve via learning.
- Giving to others – this involves spending time and resources helping our fellow human beings.
- Exercising – this involves engaging in physical activity.
- Embracing the moment – this involves mindfully interacting with our thoughts and feelings.
- Self-care – this involves looking after oneself, such as through healthy eating and improved sleep quality.
Connect is the only PSHE curriculum specifically designed to support children to engage in the six wellbeing behaviours.
Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education
At Stoke Lodge Primary School, our updated Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum 2026 is designed to give every child the knowledge, skills and confidence they need to lead safe, healthy and fulfilling lives. Our approach reflects national guidance, the PSHE Association’s best practice, and the needs of our own school community. Above all, our curriculum supports children to grow into kind, caring individuals who respect themselves and others and know how to keep themselves safe.
RSE is rooted in children’s everyday experiences, both offline and online. As the world changes, so must the curriculum. Our updated programme includes new and strengthened content to ensure pupils are well prepared for modern life. This includes a greater focus on online safety and wellbeing, helping children understand issues such as gaming, online financial risks, scams, age restrictions, privacy, consent and the importance of protecting personal data.
Within health education, children continue to learn about their bodies and the changes they may experience as they grow. This now includes learning the correct names for body parts, including genitalia, which is recognised as best practice for safeguarding and helping children speak confidently and safely about their bodies.
We are pleased to see the addition of personal safety within the statutory content. Children will learn how to recognise and reduce risk in everyday situations, including fire safety, road safety, water safety and safe travel.
Our curriculum also now includes learning around change, loss and bereavement, helping children understand that people experience grief differently and that a range of feelings is normal. This supports emotional literacy and resilience across the school.
A key emphasis in the new guidance is on skills as well as knowledge. Children will learn how to communicate effectively, express their needs and boundaries, be assertive, and manage difficult feelings such as frustration, disappointment and loneliness. These skills are taught in the context of both face‑to‑face and online relationships. Pupils will also learn strategies for resisting pressure to share information or images online. Where schools choose to teach about image sharing or online sexual content in upper Key Stage 2, this is always done in an age‑appropriate, sensitive and respectful way.
While there are new elements to introduce, much of the curriculum remains familiar. Children will continue to learn about families, friendships, respect, staying healthy, first aid, physical activity and healthy eating. Teaching about drugs and alcohol now includes vaping and nicotine addiction. Sex education remains non‑statutory in primary schools, though the DfE recommends it is taught in Year 5 and/or Year 6. Parents retain the right to withdraw their child from this element.
Our approach is grounded in safe, positive and inclusive practice. Lessons are carefully sequenced, interactive and delivered by trained staff who create a safe learning environment. We teach about different types of families and make appropriate adjustments for pupils with SEND. The guidance emphasises teacher expertise and professional judgement, and we are committed to ensuring our curriculum is responsive to the needs of our children and community.
At Stoke Lodge, our aim is simple: to provide high‑quality RSE that helps children feel safe, valued and confident as they navigate the world around them.
In the summer term of 2026, we invited families to join us for a consultation coffee morning, where we shared our proposed curriculum updates and the materials we intend to use. This was very well attended and provided a valuable opportunity to discuss the changes, gather feedback and answer questions. The thoughtful contributions from families have reassured us that our approach reflects what our community feels is appropriate, supportive and well‑suited to preparing children for their next age and stage. We have included more detailed overview documentation below for families who wish to revisit the information.
If you would like to explore any aspect of our curriculum further, you can follow up through RSE content overviews below, parent consultation, or by speaking to a member of the team.
DfE Statutory Guidance for Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE)
Alongside this, we also believe in the importance of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), and therefore incorporate the explicit and implicit teaching of social and emotional skills within our teaching. Teaching PSHE and SEL will help children to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain healthy and positive relationships and make responsible decisions (Weissberg: 2015)
PSHE Strategy
We believe that our pupils’ spiritual, emotional and cultural health and well-being are as important as their academic. We pride ourselves on the wide range of curriculum opportunities, strategies and approaches that we employ in order to ensure our learners are prepared for the next phase of their educational careers and for life in general. In order to achieve this we use a variety of approaches to support the planning and delivery of:
- Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
- Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE)
- Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural Education (SMSC)
- Mindfulness
- Emotion Coaching
- Mental Health and Well-being
- Fundamental British Values
Our PSHE curriculum is woven into everything we do, including our curriculum themes. To compliment this we have also adopted Connect PSHE to ensure all discrete areas of the PSHE curriculum are taught to the highest possible standard.
Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
At Stoke Lodge we believe in the importance of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), and therefore incorporate the explicit and implicit teaching of social and emotional skills within our teaching. We define SEL as:
“Social and Emotional Learning refers to the process through which children learn to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.”Weissberg, R. et al. (2015)
The term SEL is widely used internationally and consists of 5 competencies.
- Self-awareness
- Self-management
- Social awareness
- Relationship skills
- Responsible decision-making
We believe that these competencies need to be taught explicitly as skills and also integrated and modelled through everyday teaching. Our whole school plan which ensures SEL is woven through our culture and ethos.
