PSHE
Our school is a place where everyone is given an education that builds on their strengths and addresses their individual needs to ensure progression. We believe that all children should be able to achieve their full potential academically, socially, emotionally and physically. It is our intent to deliver a PSHE curriculum which is accessible to all and enables our children to become independent, confident, healthy and responsible members of society now and in their later life. With an ever-changing society, we endeavour to provide our children with a strong understanding of the diverse world around them, identifying links to British Values as well as their Rights and Responsibilities. Through the language used, we insist it is taught in a way that ensures it reflects our school’s ethos and values. Our PSHE curriculum equips children with relevant and meaningful content which supports them to develop their independence, confidence, resilience and increase their love of learning and happiness. We wish to develop our children’s sense of self-worth by encouraging them to play a positive role in contributing to school life and the wider community. We ensure that through our PSHE curriculum we nurture both emotional and physical health and well-being by helping them to understand how they are developing personally and socially as well as promoting their physical development. Our Relationships and Sex Education enables our children to learn how to be safe at an age appropriate level, and to understand and develop healthy relationships, both now and in the future. Building upon their cultural capital we take action to ensure they understand how they can play an important, positive role in our diverse society. We educate them on how to deal with factors which might affect their life in an ever-changing world so that they can continue to have positive emotional well-being and a healthier safer lifestyle.
Stonewall
Equality, inclusivity and acceptance are very important to us at Portobello. We strive to provide an environment where children not only feel like they are safe to be themselves but are celebrated for their individuality. Through our work linked to Stonewall and our PSHE curriculum, our pupils learn that there are many aspects which contribute to a person’s identity. This can include, but is not limited to, gender, religion or faith, age, race, sexual orientation and disability. Though this is reflected though our diverse curriculum, we also take pride in celebrating LGBT History Month and Pride Month.
We understand that children may face negative stereotypes at some point in their lives. We aim to give our pupils the tools and confidence to challenge these stereotypes in order for them to succeed in any way they wish. We ensure that children feel confident in recognising different forms of bullying and reporting this to their trusted adults. Our children will be prepared to leave Portobello and flourish in a modern world.
Ultimately, we want all our pupils to live a happy and fulfilling life where they feel confident about who they are and can empower others to do they same.
Rights Respecting
The UK Committee for UNICEF (UNICEF UK) works with schools in the UK to create safe and inspiring places to learn, where children are respected, their talents are nurtured and they are able to thrive. As a Rights Respecting School, we educate our pupils about their rights so they can recognise positive and negative situations and relationships. We want our pupils to understand that positive environments are grown from mutual respect and allow different opportunities for this to be explored. We encourage our pupils to respect the rights of others and encourage them to become active citizens of the world.
We have a weekly Rights Respecting Club where children discuss how to improve people’s rights in our school, local community and the wider world. This club is a tool to ensuring change really is happening at Portobello and that our pupils’ voices are heard and taken seriously.
We want our children to know that they have a responsibility to care for each other and to feel empowered enough to try and make a difference. As we work towards our Silver Award, we continue to build an environment where there is a culture of respect and where each child knows that they are valued.