We've got your back this year — building trust, empowerment and agency

The introduction of statutory RSHE in 2020 was a landmark moment that has already started to improve the quality and consistency of the subject nationally. Though there is still a distance to travel, teachers and schools now have more permission to give this PSHE education content the priority it deserves. It feels, in other words, like the beginning of a success story.

Despite this, the past few years have been challenging for those of you leading and teaching PSHE education, in part due to these developments drawing greater attention from a vocal minority opposed to what the subject covers. While there is strong evidence regarding its importance in supporting safeguarding, physical and mental health, digital literacy and healthy relationships, the attention in recent years has focussed on teaching materials and guidance. Though there is no evidence to suggest widespread use of problematic materials in schools, or of ‘activist teachers’ pushing a particular agenda, this is the tone of coverage that has resulted from dubious reports suggesting as much.

This all serves as an attempt to undermine trust in teachers’ professionalism and agency. Its manifestation in the draft RSHE guidance — which suggested imposing arbitrary age restrictions and other limitations on language and content — posed teachers as almost incidental to covering the content, and presented the guidance as a way to limit the damage they can do if left to their own devices.

This guidance also reduces teachers to a delivery mechanism for pre-existing content or a tick box exercise. On the one hand schools/teachers are criticised for over-reliance on ‘third party providers’, but on the other, there has been a resistance to providing and funding the training and support they need. This lack of trust in teachers is self-defeating: everyone is so focussed on guidance and materials that they neglect the crucial task of equipping the workforce to teach this important content well. If a vocal minority are allowed to undermine trust in teachers and schools in this way, and there is under investment in training teachers to teach PSHE/RSHE well, then you’re left with the deeply unsatisfactory option of centrally prescribing the minutiae of how all schools should cover it.

Because more than any other subject, PSHE education/RSHE cannot just be a script, something you can plug-and-play or a video you can show in the classroom with minimal teacher involvement. PSHE teaching is a human endeavour, which (although it may benefit from additional input) should always be planned and taught by trained, knowledgeable and engaged specialists.

So, while teaching materials are important — our expert Subject Specialists spend months on each of our lesson packs to ensure they are well-evidenced and pedagogically optimised — we never suggest that teachers should take our materials wholesale without seriously planning how they may be tailored for their own pupils’ specific needs. Likewise, our Programme Builders support teachers to build their own schemes of work selecting from quality assured teaching materials, but don’t provide a ‘one size fits all’ plan for them. This may take a little more time in the short term, but time building the foundations is time very well spent, with major long-term benefits.

Our recent Fully Human piece on teacher autonomy stressed its importance in various areas, including teaching itself being seen as a rewarding career (and therefore supporting the retention and recruitment of teachers). When applied to PSHE education specifically, this means properly trained and engaged teachers, trusted to do the job they’re prepared for and able to plan and deliver a tailored programme drawing on a range of trusted sources and resources.

Fully Human is our research and development arm. Subscribe for fresh perspectives into new and emerging issues.

So, in a shifting policy landscape for PSHE education, our priority during the period ahead will be on equipping and empowering the workforce. This will include — but also go far beyond — teaching materials. From new on-demand training options to working with experts at the forefront of current and emerging issues, so that children and young people are prepared for challenges around the corner as well as the ones they’re facing today.

As ever, we will keep our network of PSHE professionals at the centre of what we do, continuing to represent you nationally so that your crucial work is both better recognised and supported.