The Secondary PSHE Co-ordinator's Handbook

Colin Noble

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415250221
• eBook ISBN: 9781136748301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

This handbook provides the Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) co-ordinator in a school with everything that they need to deliver good practice in this subject. The book contains thorough guidance through policy and required practice and has a strongly practical bias. It shows through examples of good practice what can be achieved and how this can generally help to raise standards in schools.

This is a topical, lively and up-to-date book which tackles the real issues facing schools, heads, co-ordinators and classroom teachers in an engaging and practical manner. It quotes from examples and case studies where strategies worked, and failed - but also keeps the learning of the pupil as the focus of all activities.

The PSHE Co-ordinators Handbook is what every Head and PSHE co-ordinator needs to help them make practical sense of the new curriculum, the new PSHE, the new healthy school standard, social inclusion, citizenship, school councils, and the new Ofsted requirements - and how these can be woven together in a coherent way to support the raising of academic standards.

What Schools have to do about PSHCE and Citizenship

1

There is an imperative which commands a certain conduct immediately, without having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by it. This imperative is categorical. … This imperative may be called that of Morality

Immanuel Kant

This chapter is intended to give the PSHCE co-ordinator some ammunition. It has historically been a job in which she or he goes very lightly armed into the curriculum and school policy battles, and can be savaged by cynics or myopic pursuants of academic standards. It will give the reader three broadly based elements of heavy weaponry to take into discussions:

(a) that there is a moral obligation to address many of the elements contained in PSHCE in order to prepare pupils for the future and to make them happy and healthy now;

(b) that PSHCE is required by law, expected by the government and inspected by OFSTED;

(c) that there is a strong causal link between pupils’ successful personal and social development and their academic success.

This chapter is, in some senses, redundant. We are going to discuss the new requirements made of schools, within the 2000 National Curriculum and other guidance, to teach Personal Social and Health Education and Citizenship. Many would argue that there is no need to explain this. The clear imperative for good, effective PSHCE in the curriculum is irrefutable. Nobody in the early twenty-first century would argue against the need to educate our pupils to become responsible citizens – aware of themselves, their communities and global issues – and with the skills and values to build a just, tolerant and free society. Unfortunately it is not as simple as that. Schools’ curriculum planning often shows fierce competition for time, with academic subjects under intense pressure to meet challenging targets. Not all teachers or parents are as convinced as they ought to be of the value of PSHCE, and there are some politicians who are extremely hostile to it. In this light, it can be useful armoury to the PSHCE co-ordinator and her/his team to have recourse to the legislative background and accompanying guidance.

So, this chapter presents an overview of the place of PSHE and Citizenship within the requirements of the National Curriculum that was introduced in 2000, but only comes into full effect in September 2002. The PSHCE curriculum has also been deeply influenced by:

• The changing nature of OFSTED inspections, in what we hope will prove to be a more rigorous approach that can only be of positive benefit for those who have responsibility for the co-ordination of this area of school life

• The PSHCE Guidance at Key Stages 1 and 2

• The PSHE Guidance at Key Stages 3 and 4

• The Citizenship Guidance at Key Stages 3 and 4

• The Sex and Relationships Education Guidance of July 2000

• The National Healthy School Standard, launched in October 1999 and due to be nationwide by 2002

• The Teenage Pregnancy Unit’s strategy (obviously mainly affecting secondary schools)

• The requirement for a drugs policy and education in all schools

• The requirements for careers and guidance education at Key Stages 3 and 4

• The whole inclusion agenda.

One of the main problems for the PSHCE co-ordinator is that, after a curriculum famine for 20 years, when PSHCE was always the Cinderella subject that never went to the ball, there’s now a feast of invitations, requirements and funds to consider – and the real art is not only making sense of them all for oneself, but also for colleagues and pupils.

What is encouraging about the government’s greater emphasis on PSHCE, and the supporting schemes and guidance, is the growing recognition that they are at the core of school improvement. In the constant quest to drive up standards, it is apparent that often the lack of personal and social skills and happiness get in the way of pupil achievement. It is not enough to concentrate solely on the academic subjects themselves. Those that think it is are missing the critical point that the most elastic variable in the equation for success is the pupil, and the pupil is far more effective if he/she is happy, comfortable, stimulated and secure.

‘I find that I bowl my fastest when I am totally relaxed, and don’t worry too much about what the speedometer says. As long as I get my rhythm right and get my balance I know I’ll bowl fast. You also have to remember that the real point of bowling is to take wickets, not to be the first man in the world to break the 100 mph barrier.’

Brett Lee, Australian cricketer, who has currently bowled the fastest ball ever recorded – at 96 mph. Paraphrased from an interview on BBC radio.

Likewise, the real point of schooling is good and appropriate education to fulfil the potential of the individual, not – per se – to achieve high exam grades. Indeed, in the 1997 White Paper ‘Excellence In Schools’ which largely set out the government’s philosophy and beliefs of education, the Secretary of State related the Government’s aims for education to five priorities:

1 the need to overcome economic and social disadvantage

2 the creation of greater fairness

3 the encouragement of aspiration

4 economic competitiveness

5 unlocking the potential of each individual.

It is not academic achievement by itself that will achieve these, although it may often play a very important part, but the whole process and experience of schooling. It is obvious that PSHCE has a critical role to play here.

What the National Curriculum says about PSHCE

The National Curriculum handbook is very clear about the importance of PSHCE in the curriculum. It sees education as being:

… a route to the spiritual, moral, social, cultural, physical and mental development, and thus the well-being, of the individual. Education is also a route to equality of opportunity for all, a healthy and just democracy, a productive economy and sustainable development. Education should reflect the enduring values that contribute to these ends. These include valuing ourselves, our families and other relationships, the wider groups to which we belong, the diversity in our society and the environment in which we live. Education should also reaffirm our commitment to the virtues of truth, justice, honesty, trust and a sense of duty.

The National Curriculum handbook, page 10

There could be no clearer call for a comprehensive and effective PSHCE curriculum than this, but the handbook does make it clearer when it gives two broad aims for the school curriculum. Please note that these aims are for the school curriculum, not the National Curriculum. Both can be found on pages 11–12 in the National Curriculum handbook. Let us consider them from the PSHCE perspective.

Aim 1: The school curriculum should aim to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and achieve

It seems bizarre that this was a new aim for the curriculum in September 2000, almost suggesting that nobody had previously considered that learning and achieving could be one of its functions. What is so encouraging for PSHCE is that the explanation in the handbook of what this aim means is full of references to the sort of things that would be addressed by a PSHCE curriculum:

• Building on pupils’ strengths, interests and experiences

• Learning both independently and collaboratively

• The knowledge and understanding of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages of Britain’s diverse society

• Thinking creatively and critically

• Problem-solving

• Enterprise, leadership, workers and citizenship

• The importance of a healthy lifestyle.

The second aim has strong echos of the 1988 Education Reform Act, but there is one interesting deletion.

Aim 2: The school curriculum should aim to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and prepare all pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life

The difference is that the aim no longer focuses on adult life, but life. This is no accident, but deliberately suggests that pupils need to be prepared for life as children and teenagers. The explanation of this aim refers, amongst other things, to:

• Developing principles for distinguishing between right and wrong

• Awareness of own beliefs and cultures and how these influence individuals and societies

• Caring citizens

• Equal opportunities, discrimination and stereotyping

• Respect for the environment and sustainable environment

• Pupils as aware consumers

• Understanding responsibilities and rights

• Self-esteem and emotional well-being

• The common good.

All these could be addressed by a PSHCE curriculum.

These two aims of the school curriculum, states the handbook, reinforce each other:

The personal development of pupils, spiritually, morally, socially and culturally, plays a significant part in their ability to learn and to achieve. Development in both areas is essential to raising the attainment for all pupils.

The National Curriculum handbook, page 12

What exactly is Personal Social Health and Citizenship Education?

One of the many reasons that PSHCE has suffered from a bad press and is not universally supported in schools is that of vague or competing definitions. Often associated with the affective side of education, PSHCE has sometimes been handed those parts of the curriculum which subject disciplines find do not fit with them, or are so tangential to them that they feel they are unable to take responsibility for it. Before the days of a national curriculum, when schools and LEAs pursued a locally determined curriculum, it did not matter too much about a national understanding of PSHCE – but the profession, public and politicians have come to expect a more uniform definition.

The National Curriculum Council, now subsumed within the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, defined PSE in 1990 as consisting of themes, skills and dimensions. The five themes were health education, citizenship education, economic and industrial understanding, careers and guidance and environmental awareness. The skills were the sort of personal and social skills one would expect, and the dimensions were equal opportunities and multi-cultural education. However useful the guidance was, and some of it was very good, it suffered from an obese national curriculum which left no time for PSE, a lack of statutory and political expectation, and an OFSTED inspection regime that almost completely ignored it. Since the election of a new government in 1997, this desolate picture has changed dramatica...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Further support
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 What schools have to do about PSHE and Citizenship
• 2 The role of the head teacher and governors in supporting PSHCE
• 3 The role of the PSHCE co-ordinator
• 4 Organising PSHCE in the school
• 5 Deciding what to teach and how to plan the PSHE and Citizenship curriculum
• 6 The role of pupils, parents and the whole school community
• 7 The classroom
• 8 The socially inclusive school
• 9 Setting up a successful school council
• 10 Sensitive issues – drugs and Sex and Relationship Education
• 11 PSHCE in the whole school curriculum
• 12 Citizenship education
• 13 Monitoring, assessing, evaluating and reporting in PSHCE
• 14 Continuing professional development in PSHCE
• 15 Resources, useful addresses and websites
• Bibliography
• Index