Personal Development Curriculum

At Sir Jonathan North we provide opportunities for students to achieve their potential holistically and academically.  Our Personal Development curriculum and extra-curricular activities offer exceptional opportunities, which extend beyond the academic, technical or vocational. This reflects our intent to create good people. Our assembly programme celebrates both national and international events as well marking cultural and religious observations. We aim to prepare our students for life in modern Britain, as well as giving them an appreciation of the differences as well as commonalities across cultural, religious, ethnic and socio-economic communities. Recently we have secured an Eco Schools Green Flag award in recognition of the impact of the work done by the Eco Club. We have a careers action plan mapped against the Gatsby benchmarks and Work Experience is organised for all Year 10 students, (year on year we have had near 100% participation rate for the week). We are proud to work in partnership with many external bodies so students can participate in national programmes such as Young Enterprise; Youth Parliament elections, debate competitions, MFL Spelling Bees and Duke of Edinburgh Bronze and Silver Awards.

Our PDC offer is a response to the needs of our cohort and part of our intent to produce responsible, confident and tolerant young people, who are equipped to succeed and compete in the communities of the future. We promote the British Values, develop Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural (SMSC) principles and maintain the school’s 4 Rs of Resilience, Respect, Resourcefulness and Reflectiveness.

PDC Lessons

Students have one-hour long PDC lesson every week, on a rolling timetable with their form tutors. For PDC lessons, students are provided with a bespoke booklet for each module, roughly every half term. The PDC curriculum is a five-year ambitious and sequential curriculum. It is an age appropriate curriculum based around three core themes:

• Living in the Wider World – Including Citizenship and Careers
• Mental and Physical Health and Wellbeing
• Relationships

We ensure the content follows the new government statutory guidelines on Relationship, Sex and Health Education (RSE) that came into force from September 2020.

Outline of modules and example topics covered throughout the five-year plan (all topics are subject to change as we respond to the needs of our cohort:

Key:

• Living in the Wider World – Including Citizenship and Careers
• Mental and Physical Health and Wellbeing
• Relationships

		Year 7	Year 8	Year 9	Year 10	Year 11
Autumn term	Half term 1	Establishing friendships Independent travel skills Basic First Aid	Risks of energy drinks Alcohol and smoking Recreational drugs	Gang Culture Knife crime Risks online and offline	Reframe negative thoughts Emotional health Media and mental health	Perseverance and procrastination Managing exam stress
	Half term 2	Essential skills Careers and aspirations Challenging work stereotypes	Work/life balance Pay gap stereotypes Options for Year 9	Demonstrating strengths Workplace emotions Options for year 10	Electoral systems Targeted advertising Gambling and debt	CVs Post 16 applications Employability skills
Spring term	Half term 3	Living in a diverse society Bullying and cyber bullying Being an upstander	Challenging discrimination Gender Identity Protected Characteristics	Types of families Positive Family Relationships Conflict resolution	Relationships on and offline Consent Challenging victim blaming	Handling unwanted attention Relationships and abuse Sexual orientation
	Half term 4	Healthy diets Personal hygiene FGM	Daily wellbeing Developing resilience Mental health	Work life balance Healthy eating Body image	Media and gang culture Impact of drugs on others Managing peer pressure	Screening and self-examination Cosmetic body alterations
Summer term	Half term 5	Types of relationships Consent: seeking  Relationship stereotypes	Consent: law Contraception Sexting	Sexual choices STDs and safer sex Sexual risks in Social Media	Managing conflicts Inclusions in society Radicalisation	Changing family structures Fertility Forced marriage
	Half term 6	Citizen, Parliament, Monarch British Law Money choices: debt	The political system The justice system Human Rights	Employment Law Financial risks Legal and illegal finances	Learning at work Responsibilities at work Work Experience evaluations	EXAMS

Teaching and learning in PDC lessons replicates the whole school approach; it focuses on embedding positive routines and uses retrieval practice, interleaving and use of concrete examples in lessons in order for students to use the knowledge gained to be able to relate to situations they may come across outside of school.

• Interleaving – used across the year groups to revisit key components of the three core themes
• Dual coding – use of graphical organisers and keywords to help understand learning
• Retrieval Practice – used as starter and plenaries throughout the schemes of work
• Elaboration – scaffolded questioning to encourage detail and development of extended writing
• Concrete Examples – used the frequently to model good practice and lead to increased understanding and application of key themes in the wider world
• Teachers across the school support the school behaviour for learning practices in lessons to help maintain a positive learning environment. As a result, students remain on task and are actively involved during lesson time.