And once you’ve found your feet, we’ll be here with more high-quality resources, training and advice to help you deliver best practice PSHE education at your provision throughout the academic year.

The government decision — to make the health, relationships education and RSE aspects of PSHE mandatory — presents a great opportunity to raise the status and quality of the subject across all schools, and we can offer the support you need to get it right. There’s also the opportunity to influence what’s covered by responding to the consultation on the draft statutory guidance.

CPD training for the year ahead

The start of term is an ideal time to consider high-quality CPD training for you and colleagues. We’ve just updated this term’s training calendar and places are filling up rapidly, so please book early to avoid disappointment! All of our courses will address the implications of mandatory health education, relationships education/RSE for your PSHE programme.

‘Understanding PSHE’ on 26 September is our first course of the year and provides a comprehensive introduction to PSHE education — covering effective teaching and learning, lesson planning, assessment and more. We will also run our ‘Preparing for statutory relationships education’ (KS1&2), ‘Preparing for statutory RSE' (KS3&4), ‘Effective PSHE in SEND provision’ and 'Effective leadership and management in PSHE’ courses this term along with many others. And we can deliver bespoke training for your own school or network, tailored to your needs — please get in touch to discuss.

Latest Resources

Here’s a reminder of some of the key member resources we’ve recently published or updated, and you can look forward to many more resources during the term ahead:

We’ve also recently quality assured a great set of free lesson plans from the BBFC on developing decision-making skills in relation to viewing films and video content, and just before summer published lesson plans to support the Home Office #knifefree campaign.

Policy update — consultation on new relationships education, RSE & health education draft guidance

We welcomed the government’s commitment to making the health education and RSE aspects of PSHE mandatory from 2020, which should ensure all children and young people receive the PSHE education they deserve. And though we’re disappointed economic wellbeing and careers won’t yet be mandatory aspects of PSHE, they must remain integral to schools’ PSHE programmes.

In his oral statement on the proposals, the Education Secretary recognised that many schools successfully cover health education and relationships education/RSE already through a broader PSHE framework, and should “continue to do so . . . rather than starting from scratch”, which the Association sees as a great endorsement for the work of PSHE professionals across the country.

We published a ‘key questions’ briefing just before the break and are now working on our response to the consultation on draft statutory guidance, which is open until 7 November. The consultation provides a key opportunity to positively influence what’s covered. There is much to welcome in the guidance but also a few areas of concern, and we’ll be back in touch next week with further thoughts.

In the meantime, we wish you a successful start to the new term and look forward to seeing you at one of our events soon,

The PSHE Association team