PSHE education and the Curriculum and Assessment Review

• The Curriculum and Assessment Review Group is undertaking a review of the existing national curriculum and statutory assessment system, including qualification pathways.
• The Review terms state that its purpose is ‘to refresh the curriculum to ensure it is cutting edge, fit for purpose and meeting the needs of children and young people to support their future life and work’.
• The Review Group is due to publish an interim report over the coming months outlining some key themes and initial recommendations to be explored.
• As PSHE education (including statutory RSHE) is included within the review remit, we submitted a detailed response to the Review consultation last November and encouraged our members to do likewise.

You can read our response in full here as well as a summary of some of the key points below:

We are not calling for new content

Only for existing statutory (RSHE) and non-statutory (personal financial education and careers education) to be on the same statutory footing as part of a coherent PSHE education curriculum, guaranteed for all from key stage 1.

This would reflect what schools with high quality PSHE/RSHE are already doing

But build on the success we have seen in raising standards and consistency since statutory RSHE was introduced. It would also recognise the overlap and interplay between statutory and non-statutory content (for example, the relationship between online safety and avoiding financial harms; the importance of effective relationship building and careers).

This will allow greater consistency between schools and equality of access for all children and young people, not just some

Many schools of all types follow this approach successfully via the existing PSHE education Programme of Study, supported by our planning tools. But all of PSHE education is only compulsory for independent schools.

This existing content needs to be a universal entitlement for all children, not some.

A UCL study shows that financial skills of 15-year-olds from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds are four years behind those from advantaged backgrounds, and they are less likely to learn about money in school or discuss it with their parents.

This is a deeply unfair situation that can only be rectified by making a universal entitlement to all PSHE education has to offer, including financial education and careers.

PSHE education is already taught on the curriculum in the majority of schools, but it must be taught as a school curriculum subject in all cases (with at least one timetabled lesson per week) to facilitate sequenced learning

This is in line with Statutory Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) guidance recommending a 'planned programme of evidence based RSHE delivered in regularly timetabled lessons and reinforced throughout the whole curriculum', and Ofsted’s sexual harassment review recommendation that content ‘should be carefully sequenced with time allocated for topics that children and young people find difficult'.

Limiting PSHE education to drop-down days, assemblies or tutor time makes sequenced learning impossible and would not be tolerated for any other curriculum area.

The current, 2019 RSHE guidance sets out in broad terms what schools must teach.

It strikes about the right balance of content and prescription by outlining key content but, critically, enabling the flexibility for schools to tailor provision to pupils whilst also having the space to cover complementary non-statutory financial education and careers content within a lesson per week on the curriculum.

Therefore statutory RSHE was both a big step forward, and a missed opportunity to make PSHE statutory in entirety (as the previous Labour government had attempted to do in 2010 before plans got lost in the pre-election ‘wash-up’).

The Education Secretary can address this imbalance without further legislation, by using a power available to her under section 35 of the Children and Social Work Act to extend statutory status to existing PSHE content beyond RSHE.