Relationships & Sex Education (RSE)

Teaching RSE

An important part of the Jigsaw PSHE programme is delivered through the ‘Relationships’ and ‘Changing Me’ puzzle pieces which are covered in the summer term.

There are four main aims of teaching RSE:

• To enable children to understand and respect their bodies
• To help children develop positive and healthy relationships appropriate to their age and development
• To support children to have positive self-esteem and body image
• To empower them to be safe and safeguarded.

Each year group will be taught appropriate to their age and developmental stage. At no point will a child be taught something that is inappropriate; and if a question from a child arises and the teacher feels it would be inappropriate to answer, (for example, because of its mature or explicit nature), this information with be shared with you by your child’s class teacher.

The question will not be answered to the child or class if it is outside the remit of that year group’s programme.

Below is a summary of RSE coverage within the Jigsaw scheme for each year group:

• Foundation Stage – Growing up: how we have changed since we were babies
• Year 1 – Boys’ and girls’ bodies; naming body parts
• Year 2 – Boys’ and girls’ bodies; body parts and respecting privacy (which parts of the body are private and why this is)
• Year 3 – How babies grow and how boys’ and girls’ bodies change as they grow older
• Year 4 – Internal and external reproductive body parts, body changes in girls and menstruation
• Year 5 – Puberty for boys and girls, and conception
• Year 6 – Puberty for boys and girls and understanding conception to birth of a baby

Further information about how the school approaches the teaching of Relationships and Sex Education through the Jigsaw programme can be found within the documents listed below:

Relationships & sex education Policy

Overview for Parents

Parent/Carer guide to Relationships & Sex Education

LGBQT information

RSE Vocabulary & LQBTQTerminology

You can also find out more information by visiting the government website – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education

The new guidance focuses on healthy relationships and keeping children safe in the modern world. It also covers a wide range of topics relating to physical and mental health, wellbeing, safeguarding and healthy relationships.

Learning about the emotional, social and physical aspects of growing up will give children and young people the information, skills and positive values to have safe, fulfilling relationships and help them take responsibility for their own well-being.

Consequently, from September 2020, Relationships, along with Health Education, will be statutory, and form part of the National Curriculum. For Secondary schools Sex Education will also become statutory. However, the DfE continue to recommend that all primary schools should have a sex education programme tailored to the age and the physical and emotional maturity of the pupils. Where schools provide sex education at key stages 1 and 2, parents will have the right to withdraw their child from sex education but not from statutory Relationships Education, Health Education or what is taught in the Science National curriculum.