PSHE Curriculum

PSHE Coordinator – Miss Kruse – Assistant Principal – hkruse@northcambridgeacademy.org

North Cambridge Academy as part of Meridian Trust have adopted the ‘PSHE Association’ (Personal Health Social Education) long term planning model that covers all three core themes of PHSE over three terms:  Health and Wellbeing, Relationships and Living in the Wilder World.  It takes into account progression and development of pupils’ understanding of the overarching concepts and development of essential skills and attributes.

All of our lessons have been planned by staff at NCA in order to tailor the lessons to the needs of our students. To create the lessons and resources we have used multiple professional sources and companies as guidance to ensure the lessons are high quality, appropriate and informative.  We supplement our PSHE lessons with assemblies, form time activities and use of external companies to deliver workshops to our students on Flatpack days. 

We welcome feedback and discussion about our PSHE curriculum and include it as an item at one of our parent forums each year, please keep an eye out on the family bulletin for when this is, if you wish to be involved. 

All lessons use booklets that student self-assess on confidence and to complete tasks. At the end of the unit student can take these booklets home as we believe that it is important for students to have this information available to them outside of lessons. An example of the booklets can be found here. If you wish to see any lesson or other years booklets, please do not hesitate to contact me on the details above. 

Personal Health Social Education Curriculum

We use the PSHE Associations units as a guide to our curriculum.

Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)

Relationships and Sex Education is mandatory for all secondary schools as outlined by the Government Guidance, and we deliver this predominantly through PSHE and the science curriculum. As part of the statutory guidance parents/carers have the right to withdraw their child (following discussion with the school) from ‘any or all aspects of Sex Education, other than those which are part of the science curriculum, up to and until three terms before the age of 16’. If you would like to discuss withdrawing your child from any aspect of our RSE curriculum, then please contact Miss Kruse directly. Information about withdrawing is annually to parents/carers in the Autumn term outlining their right to withdraw.

Careers and Gatsby

We are also using the Gatsby 8 Pillars to inform our Careers Programmes, which is woven into the PSHE Programme of study as well as taught discretely through career’s events and experiences.  The Gatsby 8 Pillars are:

• A stable careers programme
• Learning from career and labour market information
• Addressing the need of each pupil
• Linking curriculum learning to careers
• Encounters with employers and employees
• Experiences of workplaces
• Encounters with further and higher education
• Personal guidance