Personal development

The Personal Development curriculum at THS is designed to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and values they need to become responsible, respectful, and active citizens. We believe in fostering an inclusive environment that celebrates diversity and promotes equality of opportunity for all. Our curriculum thoroughly covers all aspects of PSHE, RSE, SMSC, British values and citizenship. 

Our program aims to:
Empower responsible citizens: We cultivate students who understand their rights and responsibilities, engage in their communities, and contribute positively to society.
Promote respect and inclusion: We create a safe space where students learn to value differences, practice empathy, and build positive relationships. Students are taught to challenge bullying or discriminatory behaviours.
Champion equality of opportunity: We will ensure all students have access to the resources and experiences they need to thrive, regardless of background or circumstance.
Develop strong character: We emphasize core values like honesty, integrity, and perseverance, preparing students to navigate life’s challenges with resilience.
Nurture physical health and mental well-being: We aim to equip students with strategies to manage stress, build confidence, and maintain positive mental health.
Build healthy relationships: As well as recognising unhealthy ones.
Prepare for the future: We intend for all our students to have guidance and support so they can make decisions about their future education and career paths. We will explore how to set and achieve goals and explore how others have done so.

The PD curriculum will be covered in several ways. Students will have two morning tutor sessions per week in which their tutors will deliver standardised content which they have adapted to their group. Tutors are given an hour every half term in order to go through the resources and adapt them as necessary. These sessions are carefully planned to sequentially build in complexity. Learning will be revisited over the 5 years. Student voice is actively sought and the curriculum will be regularly reviewed to ensure it’s effective co-construction with our young people (to ensure relevance). The quality of these sessions will be assessed via learning walks completed by the subject lead, head of year and SLT link.

There are two development days each year whereby students are taken off timetable and given time to explore PSHE, RSE and citizenship subjects in more depth. We aim to integrate the use of high quality external organisations as much as possible on these days to compliment delivery from the tutor. We aim to cover content on these days that may need exploring at more depth or would benefit from the delivery from subject specialists.

Students will also cover topics in their other subjects, for example healthy eating in food lessons and reproduction in science. Students will be assessed every half term to ascertain understanding and identify gaps in knowledge or misconceptions. Missed learning either from absence or gaps identified through assessments will be addressed in the contingency week when possible, or the second session of assessment week.

Whilst it is difficult to measure the impact of a subject without external assessments we believe that the effectiveness of our curriculum will become apparent through the behaviours and attitudes of our pupils. We will also use half termly summative assessments to monitor progress and understanding.

Students feel adequately prepared for life in the wider world as well as being able to handle challenges they face within school. We want students to be ‘active bystanders’ who are willing to challenge discrimination and violence in all its forms.

When they leave us at the end of year 11 students should have a clear understanding of their next steps with some idea how this links to their longer term goals. They should be aware of ways they can be active citizens in their communities, local and global. They will know how to vote and have enough understanding of the UK electoral process to be enfranchised at 18.

Students will have a good awareness of relationships in all their forms and be able to identify if a particular relationship is unhealthy or detrimental. They will be equipped with the skills to form meaningful, healthy and happy relationships throughout their lives.

Students should be able to make choices around their own health based on their learning on physical and mental health, diet, sleep, exercise and drugs. They should understand how health affects other aspects of our lives.

Students will be aware of the law and how it relates to the above topics, including the equality act, the laws on substances, marriage, consent among others.