Personal and social mission

Joe Hayman believes the acid test of good personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) lies in being able to respond to what is happening in children’s lives. Although today’s pupils are faced with a bewildering range of challenges relating to technology and social media, he argues that PSHE can address the underlying universal issues of “self-esteem, making good decisions and understanding risk”.

Hayman has been working in children and young people’s services for a decade, but admits that his entry into the sector came about by accident rather than design. He had been looking for a job in international development and “fell into” a temporary administrative position at the Youth Justice Board, where he ended up staying for four-and-a-half years, eventually becoming its youth inclusion programme manager.

He then took up a post at the education charity ContinYou, where he worked as a director, playing a central role in helping schools respond to the previous government’s extended schools agenda, before being promoted to deputy chief executive of the organisation. On paper, Hayman’s subsequent move to the top job at the PSHE Association was a logical step. But what happened between leaving ContinYou in 2011 and taking up his new post was less predictable.

Hayman, 33, is the son of crossbench peer and former Labour minister Baroness Helene Hayman and has lived a “privileged” existence in London for most of his life. He was considering following in the footsteps of his mother and getting into national politics in order to make his own “positive contribution” to society, but realised he knew little about the communities across the UK that he sought to represent.

In an idealistic leap of faith, Hayman decided to take three months off work and tour the UK, interviewing more than a thousand people about the state of modern society. The results of his sabbatical were documented in a book, British Voices, which charts the views of people from Romford to Rochdale on issues such as immigration, class and obesity.

“I had all the academic skills, but lacked an understanding of what was going on in the world,” he explains. “Two key things came out of the book: people feel there isn’t as strong a sense of community as there once was, and it’s a complicated world for people to negotiate. For me, that’s what personal, social, health and economic education is all about. When the job came up, it was a no-brainer to apply.”

Although Hayman has been in the job for less than three months, he speaks about what he wants to achieve for PSHE education as if it were a lifelong aim.

He has come to the role at a time when the future of PSHE is uncertain. In January, a survey by teaching union NASUWT revealed that many schools are planning to cut back on PSHE provision as the government places more emphasis on results in academic subjects.

Earlier this month, the government’s draft national curriculum stated that “all schools” should make “provision” for teaching PSHE – but ministers have stopped short of making the subject statutory in schools.

Preparation for work
Hayman is concerned the subject will be increasingly pushed out by the pursuit of academic rigour. “Education is about more than academic attainment,” he says. “If children with good exam results make bad choices about life and don’t know how to handle themselves in a work situation, they’re not going to thrive in the way we all want them to.”

Just two weeks ago, a cross-party group of MPs secured time in the parliamentary diary for a debate and vote on making PSHE a requirement in schools.

But the government’s contribution to the debate was limited, as ministers await the results of a consultation into PSHE, launched more than 18 months ago in July 2011.

Education and early years minister Elizabeth Truss has said the results will be published in “due course”. But Hayman warns that there is no time to waste. “The world doesn’t stand still – there are things happening in the playground every day,” he adds.

Hayman wants Ofsted to use school inspections to increase scrutiny over how PSHE is delivered. He wants his organisation to refocus its efforts on connecting with schools at a local level, given the growth in the number of academies and autonomous learning providers.

“My overwhelming priority is to be a support to teachers, heads and governors,” he explains. “Schools have an increasing level of autonomy and they are best placed to respond to the needs of their pupils. Key for us is to help them make the link between what’s happening in the playground and what they’re trying to achieve.”

He also wants his organisation to become more involved in supporting PSHE teaching in practical ways by helping to produce evidence-based resources and quality-assuring PSHE programmes for schools.

“There are organisations that have specialisms in particular areas, such as body image or self-esteem, but they don’t have expertise around delivering talks in school and knowledge of how to get into schools,” he says.

“The anecdotal evidence is that the quality of resources and materials is patchy. There’s a wide range of people producing resources around the many issues that make up PSHE. They’re all very well intentioned, but we fail in our obligations to youn