Personal Development at Lime Hills Academy

Intent

The intent of our Personal Development curriculum is to encourage our students to become healthy, independent and responsible members of society, who understand how they are developing personally and socially, and give them the confidence to tackle many of the moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up.

At Lime Hills Academy the Personal Development curriculum runs through everything that we do so that students have a:

The personal development curriculum is inclusive of PSHE to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and prepare them for the opportunities and responsibilities of life.

The curriculum focuses on various aspects of personal development, including mental and physical health, relationships, E Safety, cultural diversity and religion, financial decision-making, career development and employability, British Values, and self-awareness.

Learning outside the Classroom

Personal Development is at the heart of all enrichment, trips and educational visits as they help enhance the social, personal and emotional development of all our students. They help teach life skills, build on social skills and improve independence and self- confidence. This planned into the curriculum to engage all learners rather than a few.

“Learning Outside the Classroom is the use of places other than the classroom for teaching and learning. It is about getting children and young people out and about, providing them with challenging, exciting and different experiences to help them learn”.

Council for Learning Outside the Classroom.

Recent research has highlighted the many benefits of learning outside the classroom. Ofsted have reported that learning beyond the classroom has contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils' personal, social and emotional development.

Learning outside the classroom in our setting can also promote more subtle changes in behaviours and attitudes that can lead to increased health and wellbeing and social, emotional and mental health development. Learning outside the classroom is an essential backdrop that makes participation and play possible.

Careers and Employability

Every young person needs high-quality career guidance to make educated, informed decisions about their future choices. Good career guidance is a vital part of increasing social mobility, supporting positive destinations and the quality of long-term outcomes. We measure the impact of the careers and employability entitlement through the Gatsby Benchmarks.

We support pupils and enable them to make informed choices about opportunities available to them through education, employment and training. This is achieved by:

• Raising aspirations of pupils, inspiring them to achieve their full potential.
• Providing information advice and guidance that pupils understand.
• Enabling pupils to experience first-hand opportunities about the world of work and the skills required.
• Promoting equality, diversity, social mobility and challenging stereotypes.
• Empowering pupils to plan, make decisions and manage their own futures.
• Enabling pupils to sustain employability and achieve personal and economic wellbeing throughout their lives.

To bring employability to life we also use a range of Peter Jones’s employability challenges to develop employability skills and thinking.

Religious Education Curriculum

At Lime Hills Academy we explore different religions and ideas as part of the Personal Development and British Values focus. It is important that students understand different religions for life in Modern Britain.

Lime Hills Academy actively promotes British Values

The British Values fall into the following broad areas:

Promotion of these values is in order to ensure that young people leave school understanding the importance of respect and are prepared for life in modern Britain.

Implementation

We deliver our core PSHE through a sequenced, spiral curriculum using Jigsaw that builds on prior learning as students’ progress through school.

We have weekly focus themes rotating E Safety, British Values, Careers & Employability and Religious Education.

Making a difference to individual students

It is not enough for us to teach our pupils, we provide time for them to explore values, attitudes and beliefs through open discussion, allowing them to develop skills and strategies to manage issues should they arise in their lives outside. This is also linked to individual CPOMS reports and wider themes that come out of the end of term safeguarding reports delivered through safety weeks. We have carefully considered the needs of our students and consider Personal Development to be incredibly important to prepare our students for issues faced by young people today.

We also encourage participation in enrichment beyond school and broker some of these opportunities as well as celebrating some real successes that students have had such as Cadets, Rugby, Running and BMXing.

Accreditation

AQA Unit Award Scheme

Lime Hills Life Skills Certificates

Policies linked to personal development include:

RHSE Policy including Relationships Education, Health Education and Sex Education

British Values

Behaviour and Relationships Policy

CLF Online Safety Policy

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Statement

Student Friendly Policies