What should a primary PSHE curriculum include?

Inspired by our CEO, Olivia’s, PhD research, we are writing about a topic close to our hearts….

PSHE is a vast and fascinating topic that covers a broad range of content, including health, relationships, online safety and more. The PSHE Association (2024, webpage) defines it as

PSHE education is the school curriculum subject dedicated to supporting children’s physical and mental health, relationships, careers and economic wellbeing’

PSHE stands for Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (DfE, 2021). In 2020, some of the content of the PSHE curriculum became statutory at primary level under the heading RSHE (DfE, 2019a) or ‘Relationships, Sex and Health Education’.

It is a topic that has the power to lift children; supporting and developing their physical and mental wellbeing. It is one that forms the strong grounding needed to thrive in other areas of the curriculum.

To put this into less abstract terms – how often do we see children in class who are struggling to regulate themselves, children who cannot process their emotions or understand how they feel? So much so, it prevents them from accessing learning.

For this reason, we must get PSHE education right for all children in our schools. So, what should a PSHE curriculum look like in primary schools? What are the important bits and what are the features we would like to see in an ideal world?

The decision is one that is individual to each school. While there may be statutory content everyone has to teach, how these topics are taught and what extra learning is included is all a matter of preference and context. Factors such as community makeup, class context, common issues within the school (e.g. an increase in bullying), school setting and more can influence a school’s decision.

Let’s take a closer look at the PSHE curriculum content:

Core PSHE content

If you are a primary or secondary teacher in the UK, you are probably already familiar with this document DfE’s RSE Guidance, which sets out the statutory curriculum elements all schools have to follow.

In its pages it covers suggested best practices for teaching, further information on RSE policies, how to support children from different backgrounds and lots more. It is a document that forms the start point and centre point for all PSHE curriculums.

Rightly so, the DfE’s guidance also covers Protected Characteristics and the SEND Code of Practice, ensuring schools do not discriminate against any group(s) in the way they teach the curriculum.

The statutory curriculum in primary begins with a focus on family and friend relationships; emphasizing positive relationships and how to ask for help. Children are taught the building blocks of empathy, respect and kindness. They also learn how to stay safe in a variety of contexts, and about important topics such as permission-seeking and boundaries.

Mental health, physical health and wellbeing forms another important part of the curriculum. It supports children to develop their understanding of positive health choices and what to do if they feel worried. Following this, children learn skills linked to ill health prevention and basic first aid. Online safety also features in the curriculum, ensuring children are ready for the internet when they begin to use it in KS2 and beyond.

Non-statutory content

While the DfE Guidance covers the main content of the PSHE curriculum, many schools also include additional objectives such as the PSHE Association Programme of Study

This enables schools to delve deeper in to topics they believe are important for their children. Community responsibilities, human rights and economic wellbeing are all topics often included in a primary PSHE curriculum that go beyond the statutory.

Without these non-statutory elements, children miss out on vital parts of their wellbeing education. For instance, children would not be given the opportunity for explore the link between wellbeing and money.

Our approach

At The Story Project, we cover all the statutory PSHE objectives as standard in our curriculum. In addition, we highlight key parts of the non-statutory objectives that we think are really important. We place a heavy focus on diversity and inclusion so that the content itself and the way the content is taught supports all children.

Splitting the curriculum into themes, means there is progressive skill development and opportunity to look at topics from different angles at multiple points in the primary journey. Here are our 6 themes:

More information about our key themes can be found here.

What we would like to see included in PSHE education in the future 

Well taught PSHE lessons have strong links with children’s success in other areas, with studies showing a link between pupil health & wellbeing education with stronger attainment levels (Public Health England, 2014). This is in addition to a whole array for further benefits when individual aspects of the curriculum are taken into account (Pro Bono Economics, 2017). For this reason, we hope that PSHE gets greater attention and features more prominently in curriculums in the future.

We hope that the topics often seen as controversial in primary schools, such as information about sexual health, abuse and gender identity, are not curtailed or banned. We hope schools are given the freedom to teach these topics in a way that keeps children safe and is age and context appropriate.

Bereavement and grief would be a positive addition to the curriculum. Further non-statutory topics, such as economic wellbeing and our responsibilities as global citizens should be brought into the statutory guidance, too.

However, we also appreciate the challenges that schools face. We know that additional topics would be met with an already-squeezed timetable that has little room for extra detail.

Ultimately, we hope that primary and secondary PSHE curriculums continue to develop in a way that safeguards children, supports emotional wellbeing and gives children the skills they need to live happy lives in a quickly changing world.

Finally

Last year, the government announced draft updated guidance as part of a consultation on PSHE and RSE. Like many other similar organisations, we wrote our response to the consultation – a mixture of support and disappointment. We await further information about changes to the PSHE curriculum, and will let our member schools know about it as soon as announcements are made.