February 2016

The know zone

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  • Lessons in life?
    A new report from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner recommends compulsory personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) lessons in schools. What are your views – should PSHE be a compulsory component in the National Curriculum? Here ASCL members share their thoughts. More
  • Leaders' surgery
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Lessons in life?

A new report from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner recommends compulsory personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) lessons in schools. What are your views – should PSHE be a compulsory component in the National Curriculum? Here ASCL members share their thoughts.

Need a broader curriculum 

The biggest barrier to teaching PSHE effectively is the narrowing of the curriculum created by the government’s disproportionate focus on performance indicators in certain subjects. And yet our children and society as a whole have not needed a truly effective PSHE curriculum so much for several generations. Not just because of the threats to a peaceful and prosperous world in the 21st century, but because employers and society are crying out for young people with a broad and balanced understanding of the world and how to lead a successful adult life. 

Yes, PSHE should be compulsory, but only in a way that provides schools with the freedom and flexibility that they need to respond creatively and effectively to their own particular context. What we don’t need is a prescriptive curriculum imposed centrally and subject to compliance checks by Ofsted. First lesson in the new scheme of work: how to cut through red tape effectively… 

Jonathan Fawcett Headteacher, Swanwick Hall School, Alfreton, Derbyshire 

Resources 

In my experience in previous schools, all too often the staff assigned to teach PSHE are those who have some ‘surplus’ time on their timetable, after other subjects have been timetabled. 

This potentially leads to lessons being delivered that are poorly planned and uninspiring, since the teachers delivering them perhaps don’t really want to be there. At my current school, the staffing of this subject is one of the first things to be allocated on the staffing plan. 

PSHE takes a high priority and only heads of year or assistant heads of year deliver the subject to students within their respective cohorts. This ensures that the subject is being delivered by a teacher who has a sound pastoral knowledge of the students being taught. This structure is overseen by a head of PSHE, who has resources – financial and human – to be able to plan adequately to deliver engaging and inspiring learning opportunities, through allocated time spent as a team. 

Gareth Burton Acting Headteacher, Cheltenham Bournside School & Sixth Form Centre, Gloucestershire 

Not compulsory 

All schools have a wider responsibility for their pupils’ personal and social development, notably the four strands of health, careers, citizenship and relationships education. As with other cross-curricular themes this is best fulfilled through a combination of assemblies, tutor time, discrete teaching and special events. This does not make it a subject. Nor is it easy to make it statutory, as there is no proper academic discipline in which to root this relatively superficial study. So, no PSHE shouldn’t be made compulsory. 

The ugly – and tautologous – acronym PSHE needs replacing with a name that says what it does ‘on the tin’. Decisionmaking comes to mind. 

Richard Parrish Headteacher, Archbishop Tenison’s CE High School, Croydon, South London 

Quality is key 

Good quality PSHE can have a significant impact on the personal development of young people but sadly the quality varies hugely and it is not uncommon for teachers to be given a poor quality PSHE lesson to teach at short notice and with little context or guidance. Finding a sheet in your pigeon hole on ‘relationships’, ‘careers’ or ‘prevent’ the day before a lesson, is no way to ensure a real impact is made on such profound topics. 

Bad PSHE is given the contempt by students it probably deserves, and the idea that a one-off lesson on a huge and complex topic can somehow change the way young people think results in teachers who resent having to do the work and children who treat the whole experience as a joke or, even worse, a free-lesson. Address these issues first before making PSHE compulsory. 

Carl Smith Principal, Casterton College, Great Casterton, Rutland

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