Personal & Character Development

Subject aim

The aim of the Personal Development and Character curriculum is to enable students to become effective members of society, able to take advantage of future opportunities, contribute to their community as an active citizen, and navigate a changing world guided by strong moral principles.

To achieve this, we equip students with the knowledge and understanding of the real world, developing the whole person so that students have the personal attributes to sit alongside their academic knowledge. This involves equipping them with the knowledge and competencies to remain safe and healthy, to understand the employment opportunities which exist and how to take advantage of these, to interact with people from diverse backgrounds with respect and tolerance, to form and sustain healthy and committed relationships, and to develop a strong moral compass which guides them in their decisions.

Our curriculum is built around six key themes, the components of which are carefully sequenced and built upon over the five/seven year learning journey, toward a vision of excellence and expertise. These key themes are:

Key theme 1 – Developing my character and values.

Key theme 2 – Treating others with respect and compassion.

Key theme 3 – Being healthy.

Key theme 4 – Being safe.

Key theme 5 – Being a global citizen.

Key theme 6 – Being successful in life.

This ensures that our curriculum covers all statutory and non-statutory aspects of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE); Citizenship; PSHE; SMSC (Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development); CEIAG (Careers education and guidance); British values; and Personal Finance. No one key theme is studied in isolation, as the themes interweave amongst each other, allowing for greater understanding about concepts and ideas.

Curriculum coverage:

Personal and character development is delivered through a discrete programme in PD lessons and two form times per week, across all key stages. It is also supported within academic disciplines (where overlaps exist), the school’s assembly programme, our period 6 enrichment and reading programme, 1:1 careers support, and drop-down experience days with external experts delivering programmes e.g. Restart a heart or Yorkshire Building Society Financial Education programme. This is all carefully mapped and sequenced to ensure coherence and coverage.

The PD and character curriculum is spiralled to ensure that appropriate knowledge is acquired at the right developmental stages for each student at Temple Moor. This allows students to explore key concepts from past years and continually build on them, which is of increasing importance because of the dynamic and diverse Britain we live in today.

An overview of the curriculum is shown below:

Each unit is planned to evoke curiosity in all students‘ minds, providing opportunity to explore different viewpoints, including their own, on different social issues which are relevant to life in 21^st century society. Dialogue and informed discussion sit at the heart of each lesson. Each lesson is also underpinned with cumulative and iterative low stakes testing, intelligently designed to improve knowledge retention as well as identifying misconceptions and lost knowledge to inform the next steps in teaching.

Personal Development Curriculum Statement 

---

Contact details to find out more about our curriculum

Contact details about the PD and character curriculum:

Y7 – Mr Sutton (Y6/7 transition Phase leader) suttonm@tmhs.rklt.co.uk

Y8/9 – Miss Matthews (KS3 Phase leader) matthewsh@tmhs.rklt.co.uk

Y10/11 – Miss French (KS4 Phase leader) frenchr@tmhs.rklt.co.uk

Y12/13 – Miss Cowlard (KS5 Phase leader) cowlardr@tmhs.rklt.co.uk