Personal Development

At Wellesley Park Primary School, we place a great emphasis on the Personal Development of our children as we feel this is every bit as important as their academic performance.

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 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.

At our school, Personal Development has six main themes:

  • Spiritual, Moral, Social & Cultural Development

  • British Values

  • Relationship & Health Education (including PSHE)

  • Physical Development

  • Mental Wellbeing

  • Cultural Enrichment

PSHE

Assemblies

British Values

Enrichment

Houses

Equality and Diversity

We provide our children with a high-quality PSHE curriculum through Jigsaw PSHE. Every child has specific PSHE lessons each week as well as circle time and other opportunities to discuss personal, social and health matters. In Nursery and Reception, PSHE is part of the PSED prime area of learning as children are provided with the necessary skills they need to build relationships, discuss and understand their emotions and learn personal hygiene skills. 

Assemblies are an important aspect of our Personal Development curriculum. They give us an opportunity to discuss our school values and attributes as a collective so that children are able to see the importance that these have on our daily lives. We are also able to address areas of the PSHE curriculum that are pertinent to all children such as NSPCC PANTS, online safety and anti-bullying. Through our assemblies we are also able to highlight and teach children about British Values. We are also able to celebrate our achievements.

British Values enable children to feel part of a community and understand the country that we live in more. The values allow the children to develop their character and become effective citizens. We cover the British Values in our assemblies and ensure that there is clear understanding of the vocabulary. We also learn about them through our Picture News lessons where children learn more about the world we live in and are able to see the British Values in a context.

British Values are an important part of learning about equality and diversity. We want to ensure that our children understand how diverse our country is and why the British Values are important.

Another aspect of our Personal Development curriculum is the opportunities that we provide the children. We want to make sure that the children are presented with as diverse a range of experiences as possible to ensure that they have the cultural capital to make informed choices and to be successful and happy in the future. We ensure that there are trips planned into our curriculum, for example, visits to the theatre to see a pantomime and a trip to London. We invite visitors into our school to enrich our curriculum. We also provide children with a range of activities within school to enhance the children’s learning.

Extra Curricular

Community

Alongside enrichment within school, we also provide extracurricular opportunities for our children. There is a wide range of clubs available to children from Reception onwards. Please see our current Extra Curricular timetable.

As well as chosen extracurricular clubs, we also provide targeted clubs to those children who require extra support with areas of the curriculum. This may take the form of specific clubs such as phonics club before school.

We want our children to feel part of a community within school, whether that is through being part of their class or through membership of clubs or councils. We have a school council who has an impact on developments and decisions within the school. We also have an Eco School Council who ensure that the school is doing everything that it can for the environment – recycling, litter picking in the local area, reducing our energy consumption and building habitats for insects.

We also have a PTA group who fundraise for the school and provide brilliant opportunities for the school and community such as seasonal fairs, family discos and pre-loved book fairs. Events involve staff, families and community members which links to our values of belonging and participating.

In addition to this, we also have strong links with the community through events with the local library, the local churches and the town council, Rotary Club and Dementia Care home. This helps us with our curriculum but also ensures that our school and families feel like an important part of Wellington itself.

As part of our school community, each child belongs to one of our four houses: Blackdown, Exmoor, Mendip and Quantock. Our houses ensure every child belongs and has a sense of worth, through participation.

Equality and Diversity is integral to our Personal Development curriculum. Across the subject areas, knowledge is chosen to highlight equality and diversity at every opportunity. Our resources are chosen carefully to reflect the diverse nature of this country. We celebrate diversity, whether this is through the different languages spoken by children and staff or studying and celebrating world celebrations and festivals to ensure acceptance and tolerance.