Personal Development

At Sidlesham Primary School, our Personal Development Curriculum helps children develop the knowledge, understanding and behaviours they need to build positive relationships, look after their health and wellbeing, stay safe, participate responsibly in an increasingly digital world and contribute positively to their community.

Our curriculum reflects our school vision:

Growing Together in Ambition, Confidence and Kindness

and our school rules:

Ready • Respectful • Safe

It includes statutory Relationships Education and Health Education, relevant National Curriculum Science, and wider Personal Development learning that prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.

Our Personal Development Curriculum

Our curriculum is organised through six interconnected strands:

Becoming a Sidlesham Learner – identity, character, independence, resilience, confidence and readiness to learn
Relationships – families, friendships, respect, boundaries, inclusion and healthy relationships
Digital Life – online safety, digital relationships, critical thinking, responsibility and healthy digital habits
Health & Wellbeing – emotional wellbeing, physical health, healthy choices and growing and changing
Community & Citizenship – belonging, rights and responsibilities, democracy, pupil voice, money, service and environmental responsibility
Safety – personal and community safety, risk, emergencies and our local coastal and rural context

These strands provide a coherent and progressive curriculum from EYFS to Year 6. Important concepts are introduced, revisited and developed with increasing sophistication as children move through the school.

How the Curriculum is Organised

EYFS has its own age-appropriate enquiry within each strand.

Years 1–3 follow a three-year Cycle A/B/C, while Years 4–6 follow a separate three-year Cycle A/B/C. This structure reflects our mixed-age classes while ensuring children build secure knowledge and encounter increasingly sophisticated learning as they progress through school.

In 2026–27, mixed-age classes follow Cycle C.

Our annual whole-school sequence is:

How Personal Development is Taught

Children receive a dedicated weekly Personal Development lesson. Teachers explicitly teach essential knowledge and vocabulary and help pupils apply their learning through discussion, stories and scenarios, practical activities, reflection and meaningful enquiry outcomes.

Learning is also:

Reinforced through assemblies, collective worship, retrieval, class discussion and links across the wider curriculum.

Experienced through visitors, educational visits, Bikeability, RNLI learning, environmental work, charity projects, pupil leadership and community involvement.

Lived through our school vision and rules, Behaviour Curriculum, restorative conversations, routines, playtimes, relationships and expectations.

Growing & Changing

Alongside the main Health & Wellbeing curriculum, pupils in Years 4, 5 and 6 receive an age-specific Growing & Changing entitlement every year:

Year 4 – Getting Ready for Puberty
Year 5 – Understanding Puberty
Year 6 – Growing Up & Moving On

This ensures essential knowledge about puberty, menstruation, body changes, personal hygiene and emotional changes is introduced and revisited at an appropriate developmental stage.

In Year 6 only, pupils also receive a small amount of additional, age-appropriate non-statutory sex education covering human conception, pregnancy, foetal development and birth.

Parents may request withdrawal from these specific additional Year 6 sex education lessons. Parents cannot withdraw children from statutory Relationships Education, Health Education or National Curriculum Science.

Inclusion & Safeguarding

Safeguarding is a golden thread throughout all six strands. Pupils learn to recognise unsafe situations and unhealthy behaviour, understand personal boundaries and privacy, identify trusted adults, communicate concerns and seek help.

Teaching is adapted appropriately for pupils with SEND while maintaining ambitious expectations and the intended curriculum entitlement.

Our curriculum also reflects the diversity of modern Britain and helps pupils develop respect for different families, identities, beliefs, cultures and experiences.