Our Intent:

We educate students at Nottingham Academy to make happy, healthy and safe choices. 

As a school, we deliver a curriculum which is accessible to all and ensures that each of our pupils will know more, remember more and understand more about how to play a positive and successful role within our society, both as a child and as an adult within the future. 

Our intent is that we help our children to develop resilience, perseverance, autonomy, and focus. Our children learn that they are valued and valuable, they are independent people, and they have the power to do wonderful, amazing things at every stage of every day. We know that every one of our children is a unique individual with their own strengths, aptitudes, interests and dreams. As a school community, we will endeavour to support each child to make the most of every opportunity we offer.  

PHSE is taught through Jigsaw’s 6 half termly themes which each year group teaches the same unit at the same time, at their own level, therefore it is taught progressively. 

Autumn 1- Being Me in My World 

Autumn 2- Differences (including antibullying) 

Spring 1- Dreams and Goals 

Spring 2- Healthy Me 

Summer 1 – Relationships 

Summer 2 – Changing Me (including sex education) 

At Nottingham Academy, we also teach aspects of sex education. Alongside this, we teach about different kinds of relationships as it is important that our children should have an understanding of a full diversity of the world we live in and be prepared for life in modern Britain. The sex education aspects of PHSE are also taught through the Jigsaw scheme of work. More about this is outlined below. 

Character Curriculum 

Our 'Character' and 'Opportunities and Entitlement' stands of the curriculum offer our children a further chance to enhance their personal development, develop good traits to become effective lifelong learners, contribute positively to society and discover interests and talents which will last throughout school and beyond. Our children will be encouraged to build independence, resilience and confidence to embrace challenge, foster a love of learning and increase their level of happiness. We praise children for their efforts and encourage them to praise others and use positive language to encourage children to change their way of thinking.  PHSE is an integral part of the whole school curriculum and is therefore often taught within another subject areas.  

Our core values:

Our Character curriculum is explicit and implicit and is underpinned by our six core values which are at the heart of our school ethos and ensure positive learning behaviours are nurtured:

1. Play fairly and thoughtfully
2. Use your talents to achieve your best
3. Listen to the views of others
4. Respect the environment around us
5. Respect all relationships
6. Show resilience of body and mind

We discuss and revisit our school values through our weekly assemblies, throughout our daily lessons and our staff use every opportunity to model and support embedding these values throughout all parts of our school day. 

Relationship and Sex Education:

Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) is taught through the 'Changing Me' strand of the Jigsaw programme. The lessons provide the opportunity for sensitive discussions to take place with the aim to:

• Prepare pupils for puberty, and give them an understanding of sexual development and the importance of health and hygiene
• Help pupils develop feelings of self-respect, confidence and empathy
• Create a positive culture around issues of sexuality and relationships
• Teach pupils the correct vocabulary to describe themselves and their bodies
•  Support the academy ethos of nurturing a caring community

A parent consultation evening has been held to allow parents to view and discuss the content of the programme. Please find the link below to access the invitation to parents, the PowerPoint shared at the meeting and the Relationship and Sex Education Policy. Following the initial meeting where parents had the opportunity to discuss concerns, we have continued to review the content of our RSE curriculum in order to take on board the issues raised by our parents. A revised plan of what will be taught and letter to parents providing feedback to their concerns can be found below. 

Keeping physically and mentally healthy:

Children are explicitly taught how to stay physically and mentally healthy through our weekly PSHE Jigsaw lessons and PE lessons. As a school, we place a high emphasis on positive mental health and well-being as we know that children learn more effectively when they are happy, settled and have formed positive relationships with others. At Nottingham Academy, we offer further support to children and their mental health through:

• Our in school counsellor 
• Breakfast club to support children who find transition challenging 
• ELSA sessions (Emotional Literacy Support) 
• Monday's well-being check-ins 
• Our large pastoral team supporting children throughout the day 
• Lunchtime clubs to support well-being 
• Links with Mental Health Support Team 
• Links with Educational Psychologist, BEHT, family support workers, CAMHs 

Books and texts to support PSHE

Throughout our English curriculum, books are carefully selected to represent; our modern day society, diversity, care for the environment, keeping safe and healthy, cultural and religious differences, positive relationships and mental health and well-being. The texts we use across school to explore these themes are shown in the table below. 

'Opportunities and Entitlement'- Extra curricular activities

Our inclusive approach ensures that all children experience high quality education and exciting experiences, which will support and enrich their learning, enhance self-fulfilment and encourage them to become active and responsible citizens in the community.  This promotes success in a wide range of extra-curricular activities and enables children to discover life-long interests and talents. The Opportunities and Entitlement curriculum ensures teachers are planning for meaningful experiences which not only captivate and excite pupils in their learning but allow them to get involved with something new to them, contribute to a team or the community and discover something new about themselves. A table showing each year group's curriculum enrichments opportunities can be found in the attachments below. Some of our extra-curricular activities and clubs are listed here:

• Girls and boys football clubs
• Year 4 weekly violin/viola lessons with Mr Barker
• Year 5 and 6 violin/viola lessons with Belinda from the Music Service.
• Year 5 and 6 brass lessons with Mr Barker
• KS1 and KS2 private drumming lessons with Mr Piper
• School choir for KS2 with Mr Barker
• Area Band open to all Year 5 and 6 musicians.
• Epic Sport organised games at playtimes and lunch times
• Little Wicket cricket