Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE)

RSHE is a fundamental part of our approach to providing children with an understanding of healthy and respectful relationships and appropriate boundaries, supporting them to grow into confident, caring and responsible young citizens.

It teaches children to develop and form positive values, attitudes, personal and social skills, and increase their knowledge and understanding of how to make informed decisions and life choices. RSHE plays an important role in supporting the safeguarding of children.

Key themes in the RSHE curriculum are:

• families and people who care for me;
• caring friendships;
• respectful relationships;
• online relationships;
• being safe.

Our Relationships, Sex and Health Education programme is delivered in an age appropriate and sensitive manner by class teachers. Teaching is normally taught in mixed gender groups, although some content is covered in single sex groups e.g. menstrual hygiene.

Non-Statutory Sex Education:

The DfE guidance 2019 recommends that all primary schools have a sex education programme tailored to the age and the physical and emotional maturity of pupils, and this should include how a baby is conceived and born. Although sex education is not compulsory in primary schools, we believe children should understand the facts about human reproduction before they start secondary school. We therefore provide some non-statutory sex education, covering how human reproduction and conception occurs. In Year 6, children are taught:

• that for a baby to begin to grow, part comes from a mother and part comes from a father; that in most animals including humans the baby grows inside the mother;
• that when a sperm and egg meet, this is called conception; that conception usually occurs as a result of sexual intercourse, and what sexual intercourse means;
• how a baby develops in the womb and how babies are born.

Parents wanting to withdraw their children from the non-statutory element of sex education are invited to write to the head teacher to request their child is withdrawn from these lessons.