Intent

At the Lanes, we are committed to ensuring all children develop the knowledge, skills and attributes to manage life’s challenges and make the most of life’s opportunities. PSHE and SMSC is delivered through a broad curriculum which aims to tackle barriers to learning and raise aspirations. The curriculum is focused around the school’s values and follows a spiral programme which ensures learning is revisited, reinforced and extended. Our curriculum focuses on the children having key transferable skills which are vital for them to integrate effectively in to the local community as well-rounded individuals. We encourage children to share their views and opinions and use this to feedforward changes to school plans and policies.

We aim for all our children to:

• Have the ability to solve problems independently and interpersonal skills to work effectively and collaboratively with others.
• Celebrate differences and achievements, show an awareness and consideration for others and show empathy by understanding what it may be like to stand in their ‘shoes’.
• A can-do attitude, we promote resilience and risk taking. We encourage children to be confident in having a go and move out of their comfort zone.

An understanding of the world around them and confidence to challenge differing views through discussion

Implementation

At the Lanes, we take both a proactive and reactive approach to teaching PSHE. We adapt to the children needs and reflect on the skills and abilities our children need to be well-rounded individuals within the local community. We embed the school values which are focused around key life skills, these are integrated across the curriculum. Children should expect to learn about the values through PSHE but then also see these values in action throughout school both in structured and unstructured parts of the school day.

For example:

• Staff encourage teamwork skills within PE/playtime, they discuss what this looks like and challenge children to improve these skills.
• In Maths, we welcome challenge and foster the attitude that we all, even the most able, should expect to struggle. This is reinforcing the resilience value and children can be expected to speak positively about challenge.

We encourage our children to understand not only local issues but global issues, displaying empathy and understanding of the challenges others may face. This helps them to understand difference and equality. We have frequent school council discussions and use this to make changes in school for example the development of the new outdoor learning areas.

Current projects

Anti-Bullying Project

We are embarking on the ‘All Together’ anti-bullying programme by the Anti-Bullying Alliance. We are aiming to prevent/reduce bullying and improve pupil wellbeing. Children have been surveyed from reception to Y6 and we will use these results to feed forward our policy and planning. We have a staff meeting planned on anti-bullying and will be participating in the anti-bullying week across school.

The school council have led the way on changes to the playground areas. We have recently developed a quiet area and have plans to build a new seating area. We are continuing to develop the playground pals at both Meadow and Cator Lane which aims to encourage good social skills such as negotiation. It is integrated in to the PSHE curriculum for certain year groups.

We have used feedback from children to create more lunch time clubs and opportunities such as opening the library with library monitors and developed TOGO club. We also have ELSA support to nurture those who need it.

Celebrating equality and difference within our local community

We are building closer links with local community groups, many year groups have planned trips to local organisations and we have invited many local visitors in to deliver assemblies. We are encouraging staff and children to share their achievements in school and many children now feel confident to deliver class assemblies (show and tells) on what makes them unique. We encourage peers to be supportive of difference.

Children will watch Newsround at least once a week. This is to develop their global awareness. Staff take opportunities to discuss wider issues and encourage empathy. We encourage the children to have an understanding of the concept of ‘charity’, we have participated in Macmillan Cancer Morning, wear it pink day and donated food for Harvest Festival to local food banks. The school council have been communicating with different stakeholders such as ‘The Lanes Fundraising Group’, dinner staff and staff on how we can use pupil voice to make changes for the children.

Staff are attending training on diversity and the new RSE training. We are purchasing resources to support this for example books and will be investigating further training based on staff feedback.

Outdoor learning/Eco-club

The parents fundraising group have helped to fund changes to the wildlife garden at Cator Lane and plans are developing for the outdoor learning lodge. Children throughout school through the school council have voiced a desire to be involved in more outdoor learning. We have participated in outdoor learning day which seen a great response from children, staff and parents.  Staff are being encouraged to take more opportunities to go outdoors. We have 2 TA’s trained in ‘Forest Schools’ and we are currently arranging a timetable to take outdoor learning groups on set afternoons (as we did last year).

We have planned to have more water fountains and bins around school and to make a real push on recycling. The eco-council is being set up across both sites. We will be aiming to start the process of the ‘Green Flag Award’ and developing areas such as recycling, gardening, energy saving and walking to school.

Future projects

School Value Characters

Our school values are important to us; they are embedded through our school song and PSHE curriculum. However, we have noticed that the younger children struggle to remember them and understand the meaning behind each value. Our school council suggested running a school wide competition in which children design a character to the value to help them. We will therefore be running a school wide competition to design a character and using this to encourage the younger children to recognise these values in their own learning.

Careers

In summer term, all year groups will be taking part in careers. This is to raise aspirations and develop links with our local community. It will be focused around the theme of enterprise for UKS2 which will encourage their problem solving and teamwork abilities. For KS1/LKS2 this will prompt them to think about the skills they may need to develop for their career.