The PSHE Association Quality Mark

Find out what our Quality Mark can do for your resource(s) and apply today!

Check your eligibility and apply
Quality mark logo

Stand out from the crowd with our Quality Mark for PSHE resources...

The PSHE Association Quality Mark is awarded exclusively to lessons that meet best practice principles for safe and effective PSHE education.

As the national body for PSHE education, with a mailing list of over 60,000 contacts plus extensive reach via our website and social media, we help resource providers reach PSHE teachers around the country.

What kind of resources are eligible?

There is a range of criteria that resources need to meet in order to be eligible for the full quality assurance process. For example:

  • We only quality assure resources designed to be used by teachers in PSHE education lessons. These must comprise full lesson plans (with accompanying resources where appropriate) and be designed for use within key stages 1 to 5.
  • We cannot quality assure training, workshops, consultancy, assemblies, form time activities or similar services, nor can we quality assure lessons designed, or incorporating content, for other subjects, such as Citizenship, or RE.
  • We cannot quality assure whole programmes (see our FAQ below for further information)

Before a resource is accepted for the full quality assurance process, our Subject Specialist team will conduct an initial assessment (free of charge) to determine whether it is eligible. Read our full terms and conditions and complete our short eligibility form to submit your resource for an initial assessment.

What happens next if you are eligible? The QA process

Resources that are eligible will move through to the full quality assurance assessment. Materials will be rigorously assessed by our Subject Specialists to ensure they are of the highest quality and meet evidence-based best practice in PSHE education. The Subject Specialist team will provide detailed feedback on changes required before your resource can achieve our Quality Mark.

You'll have the chance to action the first round of feedback before we reassess your application to determine whether the Quality Mark can be awarded.

If your materials receive the Quality Mark, they will be hosted on our website – which has over 2.5 million visits a year from busy PSHE teachers looking for support on a wide range of PSHE topics. Optional marketing activity, such as a dedicated mailout on your resource, is also available to drive resource engagement.

Information for teachers and schools

Note that we’re not presenting resources on our site (either that we have produced or quality assured) as a definitive list of high quality resources. Materials in line with best practice will exist in addition to those that we have quality assured and we provide guidance to schools on what factors to look out for or avoid when choosing. There is also support available to schools that we cannot assess. This includes whole programmes – which we don’t quality assure for reasons outlined in our FAQ below. Therefore a whole programme’s lack of our Quality Mark is no reflection on its quality or suitability.

Check your eligibility and fill in this form to start the process.
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FAQs and testimonials
  • We quote a price based on the size of the resource(s) submitted and the estimated assessment time.

     

    We carry out an initial assessment of the resources, free of charge. We use this to inform our quote for the full quality assurance assessment, which will cost at least £1,500 per application. Larger resources will be quoted a higher price.

  • The time required for the full quality assurance assessment process will vary based on the size of the resource and the extent of changes needed. Our Subject Specialists will provide an estimate after the initial assessment. 

  • No, we don’t offer quality assurance for whole programmes. By ‘whole programme’ we mean a resource for schools that comprises a complete PSHE education, or ‘RSHE’ programme, providing all the lesson plans a school requires for an entire key stage or phase, whether presented as one resource or comprising several parts.

     

    Our quality assurance process is thorough and lengthy. And while we are proud of our rigour, not all providers of whole programmes can afford to undertake it. We believe it would unfairly skew the market for only some providers to be able to afford to gain our quality mark, and as a result, we are no longer accepting whole programmes into the quality assurance process.

     

    We continue to recognise the value that whole programmes can offer as a foundation for designing a PSHE curriculum, though teachers should always tailor their curriculum to give the best results for pupils — and that is what we help our members to do.

  • We aim to provide and highlight high quality resources that cover the breadth of the PSHE education curriculum. Quality assurance is a rigorous process, and just one aspect of our Subject Specialists’ work, so we need to prioritise our resources according to our members’ needs.

    When considering quality assurance applications, we may therefore prioritise resources covering areas where there are gaps and reserve the right to decline submissions for the full quality assurance process on this basis.

  • Please read our terms and conditions before applying.

Obtaining accreditation has had an extremely positive effect. Following the announcement of the quality mark, we saw a significant spike in traffic to our webpage.
Rachel Piggott
British Heart Foundation
We’re really pleased with the teacher response and downloads. The PSHE Association has been incredibly important is terms of the click through and quality mark. It’s also very encouraging that teachers are still accessing the resources a year after launch.
Susan Ross
Changing Faces
Young people are now really loving being in RSE lessons and are really engaged.
Secondary teacher
Commenting on quality assured lesson plans produced by the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC)