Mapping of Personal Development in the Curriculum
Developing Personal Development at Liskeard Hillfort Primary School
What is Personal Development (PD)?
Personal development is a thread that runs through all areas of school life: PD lessons, the wider curriculum, tutor time, assemblies, extra-curricular clubs etc.
What is the aim of PD?
The aim of Personal Development is to enable children to become effective members of society, contributing to the wider community, with a strong moral compass. To achieve this, we equip children with the knowledge and understanding of the real world. The curriculum is about ensuring children can make positive decisions, in potentially difficult circumstances, which they may face in their lives. We want to create a curriculum that evokes curiosity in all children’s minds, with them knowing that they can make a positive difference in their community, and which provides opportunity to explore different viewpoints, including their own, on different social issues.
How else is Personal Development taught?
Within Personal Development it is an aim to use external speakers and resources to help deliver a range of sessions with our students to ensure they are receiving expert support and information. These speakers are often arranged in conjunction with our ‘Platinum’ partnership with our long-term friends, the Plymouth Centre for Faith and Cultural Diversity, who support us with trips, visits and speakers. Previously we have also had St Martin’s Church, the Stay Safe team, the RNLI, Playground Leaders and the NSPCC in school to work with our children. We also use PSHE association resources.
Children also have ample opportunity in extra-curricular activities and enrichment opportunities to demonstrate and apply the learning from the Personal Development work. We offer:
- a wide range of school trips across the year groups, with residential experiences in Key Stage 2;
- a number of volunteering opportunities for children within the school. These include our School Councillors, our Play Leaders, our Librarians, the Administrator roles, the IT team, our Zoo Squad and our Stay Safe Mentors.
- an ample range of after-school enrichment activities for KS2 children – from Gardening Club to Cookery Club. We’re especially proud of our Sports and Arts Academies!
Across the school, our children reflect on the school values through much of their work. These are on display in every classroom: courage, resilience, aspiration, challenge and kindness. Alongside this, we also reflect on the fundamental British values: democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law, and mutual respect and tolerance for others.
How do we know if we are succeeding?
We hope that this very document assures parents and other stakeholders that we take Personal Development as an integral aspect of our work here at Hillfort. We are developing our children personally through the curriculum, and then through trips, clubs, assemblies, residential experiences – and so on!
We run a variety of surveys to see if our work in Personal Development is succeeding. We conduct regular ‘focus groups’ with children to talk through what is going well. More widely, we offer the following:
- twice yearly PASS surveys – a bi-annual survey of Pupil Attitude to Self and School (PASS) which offers an indication of children’s attitudes.
- Regular Thrive whole-class screening – to identify trends and movements of how children are feeling.
- And, of course, we’re exceptionally proud of our status as a centre-of-excellence for The Thrive Approach. We are so proud to be one of their ‘Ambassador Schools’!