Our Intent

At Nottingham Academy, we educate our children to make happy, healthy and safe choices. Through our school values, pupils learn about the importance of respect, aspiration and pride. Our school values are integrated into every aspect of our teaching. We aim to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to thrive in their personal and academic lives and to contribute positively to society. The PSHE programme is part of the character curriculum and aims to develop students in their well-being, resilience and character. This is the basis of happiness as they move towards the next phase in their education or adulthood. British Values are a focus within our school and are explicitly and implicitly taught across the curriculum, which are integral to creating a safe and inclusive learning environment for all students. Our PSHE programme educates students about risk, so that they can make informed choices as they take more responsibility for their own lives.

As a school, we deliver our PSHE curriculum though the Jigsaw programme, which is designed to develop well-rounded, respectful and resilient pupils that can play a positive and successful role within our society, both as a child and as an adult in the future. 

Implementation:

PHSE is taught through Jigsaw’s 6 half-term 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 core values:

                                                  RESPECT, ASPIRATION, PRIDE

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. 

British Values:

At Nottingham Academy, we endeavour to ensure that all children are fully prepared for ‘life beyond Nottingham Academy’ and life in modern Britain. In actively promoting the fundamental British values, we challenge those opinions or behaviours that are contrary to these values. At Nottingham Academy, we use Dr Tim to help us recall our British values and refer to these in lessons and in incidental opportunities. More on how we have implemented British Values across our curriculum can be seen within our Britsh Values section. 

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 follow the link below to access the overview of what will be taught in RSE across school 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 concerns raised by our parents. 

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. Our year group long-term plans demonstrate links to SMSC or and the British values within the texts and topics we deliver within ou curriculum. 

'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

Year 6 children visited Nottingham Trent University's Clifton campus, gaining valuable insights into university life. They met current students who shared their experiences and course details. The children toured the campus, exploring its excellent facilities. The visit also included discussions about life beyond primary school, helping to prepare them for the next phase of their education.