We are proud of our very strong personal development and enrichment offering at The Elms Primary School - one that extends beyond the academic but is also embedded within the curriculum, and provides frequent and varied opportunities for pupils to develop character and enrich their lives.

Intent

Personal Development (PD)  is seen as a crucial part of the journey of preparing our pupils for their adult, independent life. PD helps create safe school communities where pupils can grow, learn, and develop positive, healthy behaviour and character traits for life. It can have a positive impact on pupils’ health and wellbeing and their ability to achieve. 

Personal development at The Elms centres on our school values of kindness, resilience, community, integrity, aspiration and belonging. We believe that a pupils’ character and understanding of the world can be developed through consistent reference to, modelling and teaching of these. 

We aim for pupils to be active citizens in a diverse world and to be respectful, inquisitive and understanding about difference. We want pupils to be confident to participate and keen to learn skills, knowledge and/or talents in the next stage of their education. We offer a vast range of additional enrichment opportunities to help facilitate this. 

Implementation is through:

Our school values - these are discussed daily when teaching, supporting behaviour and in assemblies. Our school values are deeply embedded in our school’s daily life in our interactions with pupils, parents and each other. 

RSHE (Relationships, sex and health education) - This has been mapped and sequenced. Each year group has a series of objectives that are covered through lessons, assemblies and/or whole school work. You can find our policy here and see on each year group’s page what is being covered each term. RSE and PSHE Policy

PSHE - This includes wider safety, such as road safety, water safety and teaching children about finance. In addition to Jigsaw PSHE lessons, we also supplement lessons with The Mulberry Bush: Social and Emotional Curriculum to support the bespoke needs of our learners. 

British values - These are taught through assemblies. They are revisited throughout the year when linking to our school values. For example, when we teach about community, we discuss tolerance. We regularly vote (school councillors, learners of the week) and remind the children of democracy at this points. Individual classes reinforce British values at teachable moments. 

Inclusion, equality and diversity - please see the document on this page, which explains how this is taught and embedded.  

Citizenship - we aim to prepare children for their role in society through assemblies, PD  lessons, our bespoke curriculum and our enrichment programme. Our focus on the value of community discusses how we can help to shape our school, our local community and the wider world with eco councillors, school councillors and charity work. We discuss integrity as standing up for what we believe is right and take part in our own demonstrations or learn about activists. We encourage children to think about citizenship through our texts and writing, and our text spine throughout the school provides windows to the world outside of Faringdon. Our visits and trips, including links with secondary schools, also support children in the next stages of their education. 

SMSC - At The Elms, spiritual development enables pupils to look within themselves, at their human relationships and at the wider world. We are committed to celebrating the cultures and values that all families bring to The Elms and to build an awareness and respect of these. We aim to help pupils come to an understand of themselves as individuals. We do this through our RE curriculum, RSHE curriculum, our value of community. These are covered in stand alone lessons, assemblies, visits to places of worship and visitors into school.  At The Elms, moral development enables pupils to know what it right and wrong, and act on it accordingly. We teach this through our values of integrity and kindness. We reject all forms of bullying and use a restorative approach to behaviour management. At The Elms, social development enables our pupils to understand the rights and responsibilities of living in a community and their rights/responsibilities. We develop this through our PD taught lessons, values based assemblies, including a focus on our value of community. At The Elms, cultural development enables our pupils to acquire an understanding of a range of cultures. We celebrate the richness of diversity in our school through our values based assemblies (community), events (shining a spot light on a range of religious festivals), providing opportunities for pupils to engage in a range of sporting, artistic and cultural opportunities both within and outside of school, visitors.