Medway PSHE Project

ACTION

Partnership working between local authority public health departments and schools is crucial in meeting targets including preventing teenage pregnancy and substance misuse and improving mental health. Teachers have a statutory duty to promote pupils' spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development helping towards these targets, but often lack support with PSHE, due to its non-statutory footing.

Medway Council Child Health Team had been working with schools to improve relationship and sex education (RSE), but understood the importance of embedding this in a broader PSHE curriculum. In 2013, it sought help from the PSHE Association to improve the subject's consistency and sustainability across schools. "We had staff going into schools delivering RSE or a ‘carousel day' of lessons on subjects like healthy eating on the last day of term," explains Aeilish Geldenhuys, head of Medway's public health programme. "We wanted a more sustainable system, empowering schools to deliver their own PSHE through a standard approach, so all pupils were getting the same messages and level of knowledge. Lessons needed to be skill-based; not just passing on knowledge, but helping young people develop attributes to make the right choices and negotiate risk better."