PSHEE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education)

Through PSHEE lessons we are doing a lot to educate our pupils in ways to deal with life’s challenges. This includes helping you to deal with critical issues you face every day such as friendships, emotional wellbeing and change. From making informed decisions about alcohol to succeeding in your first job, Warwick School’s PSHEE programme is designed to help you prepare for all of the opportunities, challenges, life decisions and responsibilities you will face. We hope that this in turn will achieve a virtuous circle, whereby our pupils have better health and wellbeing, meaning you can achieve better academically and enjoy greater success.

PSHEE is taught to pupils in all year groups. Curriculum lessons are complimented by assemblies, chapel services and talks from external speakers. We try to cover all of the PSHE Association’s suggested learning outcomes in each key stage, but we focus especially on issues that experience has taught us are particularly important for our pupils.

You can see further details about what you will cover in the curriculum in the PSHEE Policy, and additionally in the outline PSHEE schemes of work (see attachment at the bottom of this webpage).

RSE (Relationships and Sex Education)

Within the PSHEE curriculum, a key component that we return to several times is Relationships and Sex Education (RSE). The RSE component of our PSHEE curriculum teaches our pupils about the different physical, social and emotional aspects of growing up, relationships and sexuality. The aim is to provide our pupils with the skills and knowledge you need to have safe, fulfilling relationships, take responsibility for your sexual health, and feel secure and happy in your sexuality. It also helps you to develop resilience, independence and self-esteem.

RSE helps to prepare our pupils for changes like puberty and the transition into adult life. We also try to provide a secure environment where our pupils can feel comfortable asking questions you might not want to ask elsewhere. Through RSE, our pupils can learn to better understand your needs, respect the needs of others, and improve your overall confidence.

A key objective of our RSE programme is for older pupils to learn about sex within the context of positive, healthy relationships, rather than as simply a physical act of gratification. We hope to help you to understand how to safely form and maintain relationships, to recognise the characteristics of healthy relationships, and to understand how relationships may affect physical and mental health and well-being. We also want pupils to know that you should feel no pressure to have sex until you (and any partner) feel completely ready.

You may find that these lessons are a useful starting point for you to have further conversations with your parent or guardian about relationships and sex.  Parents can find further guidance about how to talk about physical intimacy, the NHS has produced a very good booklet.

Parents have the right (under the 1993 Education Act) to withdraw their children from all or part of the sex education part of the RSE programme up until three terms before their child turns 16. After that, it is YOUR decision. Parents should contact the Head to discuss this. Parents cannot withdraw their child from the relationships education component of RSE or the health education topics. Pupils who are withdrawn from sex education will receive appropriate, purposeful education during the withdrawal period.

Pastoral Weeks

In addition to PSHEE, we have five pastoral weeks across the year. In each one we focus on a key whole-school theme.

• Show Racism the Red Card Week
• Anti-Bullying Week
• Children’s Mental Health Week
• Gender Equality Week
• Diversity Week

The assemblies, chapel services and form periods that take place in the designated week are focused on this theme. The aim is to create awareness of the issue, develop empathy for others, and help pupils to understand how they can be upstanders and challenge discriminatory behaviour. These weeks really compliment issues covered in PSHEE lessons.

Parent Pastoral Forums

At the beginning of every year we have run several parent education talks as part of our ‘Meet the Tutor’ Evenings for pupils entering a new section of the school:

• Lower School parents (Y7) receive a talk from our foundation Head of IT Jenny Parkinson-Mills on digital parenting.
• Middle School parents (Y8) receive a talk from Chip Somers on alcohol and addiction.
• Upper School parents (Y10) receive a talk from our Educational Psychologist Dr Craig Joyce on emotion coaching.
• Sixth Form parents (Lower Sixth) receive a talk from Solicitor Russell Robinson on the law and the various pitfalls Sixth formers can, sometimes unwittingly, fall into.

In addition, we are working closer than ever before with our foundation partner schools to offer a range of online “Parent Pastoral Forum” talks to parents of pupils across the foundation. We’ll send out links to these talks in the school newsletter.