Personal Development
At Drighlington Primary School we pride ourselves on the support we offer every child in their personal development. We don't believe personal development should be an add on to the curriculum; it is weaved through everything we do. Every lesson, assembly, educational visit, interaction; children are prepared for the wider world and leave our school with a strong sense of purpose and identity.
Our curriculum is personalised for our community and is enriched with special experiences which help to create resilience, life skills, knowledge of the wider world and understanding of others and their differences. The curriculum gives our children the knowledge they need to become a positive influence within the community while having fun along the way!
Today’s children and young people are growing up in an increasingly complex world and living their lives seamlessly on and offline. This presents many positive and exciting opportunities, but also includes challenges and risks. In this environment, children and young people need to know how to be safe and healthy, and how to manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way. Our aim is to develop skills and attributes such as resilience, self-esteem, risk-management, team-working and critical thinking.
Our PSHCE and Personal Development curriculums work alongside each other. Our PSHCE lessons are a mixture of 1 Decision and Mindmate. These lessons are carefully planned to cover areas such as
- Staying safe and healthy
- Relationships
- Being responsible
- Managing emotions
- Computer/online safety
- Our world and environment
- Hazards
- Mental health
Our assembly themes, visitors, educational visits and curriculum enhancements are all designed to empower children with the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to understand how to take care of themselves, physically and mentally, and how they can stay safe and thrive in an ever changing world.
Assemblies
Our assemblies our central to pupil's personal development at Drighlington Primary School. Each week we have a 'care, think and learn' statement which sets the theme for the week in school. These themes are carefully chosen to cover various social and moral areas such as Remembrance Day, Black History Month, disability and recycling. We also have various guest speakers who join us to deliver assemblies such as Pastor Barry, Reverend Patrick and our local PCSO and brass band.
We have also teamed up with Picture News to help develop their understanding and appreciation of the news.
Having age-appropriate conversations with your child about the news keeps them interested and informed about what’s happening in the world. They move from wanting to know what happens in MY world to what is happening in THE world and their place in it. Every Wednesday, we have our Picture News assembly where we are able to share a whole range of topics and together make more sense of different events, issues and stories from around the world.
Promoting the nine protected characteristics
The Equality Act became law in 2010. It covers everyone in Britain and protects people from discrimination, harassment and victimisation. Everyone in Britain is protected. This is because the Equality Act protects people against discrimination because of the protected characteristics that we all have. Under the Equality Act, there are nine Protected Characteristics that we teach throughout our PSHCE/Personal development curriculum. These are:
- Age
- Disability
- Gender identity
- Race
- Religion or belief
- Marriage or civil partnership
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
- Pregnancy and maternity.
British Values
We are committed to the active promotion of the four fundamental British Values through our Personal Development and PSHCE curriculums. These British Values are:
- Democracy
- The rule of law
- Individual liberty
- Mutual respect and tolerance.
To recall these at Drighlington Primary we use the acronym 'I Really Do Matter'
Extra Curricular Clubs
At Drighlington Primary we provide a range of after school clubs for children across all year groups. We offer clubs such as: TTRockstars club, Football, craft club, glockenspiel club, choir and many more. The sporting clubs develop pupils' understanding of maintaining an active lifestyle and keeping physically healthy. Other clubs promote opportunities for the children to thrive beyond the academic. All clubs are inclusive and mostly free.
Educational visits and visitors
Within the curriculum, there are planned opportunities for trips and visitors to support children’s learning and their personal development. Children are given opportunities to engage with experiences first hand that they might not otherwise have had the opportunity to. Children can draw on these experiences to build their background knowledge. These educational visits have been carefully chosen to enhance the learning experience for each year group. These also include visits to places of worship and visitors coming into school to share their knowledge and expertise. We like to include our parents and local community in these experiences too.
Links to the community
We believe it is important for our children to feel they belong to the wider community. Taking part in community events help to build our children's resilience, form meaningful connections and grow our personal confidence. Our children take part in lots of community events including visits to the local nursing home, singing at the church and attending Drighlington Gala and Drigfest.
School Council
At Drighlington Primary School we are a true democracy and value the opinions of all our children. We also like to give children the opportunity to be leaders and role models to others. Our school council is one of the ways children can advocate for themselves and each other. Lots of the decisions made in school are put through a class voting system run by our School Council representatives in each class. These representatives are elected by their peers and meet regularly to discuss school matters such as how to improve the playground and where PTA money should be spent. We even had one of our school council get through to the final stages of the Leeds Child Mayor competition.
