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Elaine Primary School

RHE

Relationships and Health Education (RHE)

At Elaine Primary School, Relationships and Health Education (RHE) is an essential pillar of our personal development curriculum. We believe that high-quality RHE is a powerful vehicle for social justice, equipping our pupils with the emotional literacy, self-advocacy, and critical thinking skills they need to navigate modern society safely and confidently. Underpinned by our core school values of Excellence, Love, Aspiration, Individuality, Nurture, and Engagement (ELAINE), our RHE curriculum is designed to foster self-esteem, mutual respect, and a deep appreciation for diversity.

Rather than presenting RHE as an isolated subject, we deliver a highly progressive, cohesive, and fully inclusive curriculum that prepares all children—including those with SEND and our most vulnerable learners—for the opportunities, responsibilities, and experiences of later life.

Our Curriculum Design

To ensure systematic progression and age-appropriate depth, we utilise the Kapow scheme for RHE. In a spiral curriculum, key themes are introduced in the early years and revisited with increasing complexity as children progress through the school, ensuring that learning is consolidated and retained in their long-term memory.

  • Contextualised Learning: We look beyond a generic curriculum framework. In alignment with our robust culture of vigilance, our RHE sequences are carefully contextualised to address specific, localised challenges. This includes delivering targeted lessons on online safety risks, digital footprint management, and understanding healthy vs. unhealthy relationship dynamics.
  • Vocabulary and Oracy: We explicitly teach the precise vocabulary of social cognition and emotional self-regulation. Children are taught to articulate their feelings, set boundaries, and respect the boundaries of others using structured speaking frames during daily classroom interactions.
  • Critical Thinking Integration: Using our school-wide critical thinking scaffolds, such as Perspective Glasses and the Opinion Continuum, children learn to explore different viewpoints, debate ethical situations respectfully, and evaluate the consequences of actions on themselves and their wider community.

Therapeutic Foundations and Emotional Regulation

Our RHE curriculum works in perfect harmony with our gold-standard, trauma-informed approach, validated by the Attachment and Trauma Sensitive School Award (ATSSA) at Gold Level.

  • Zones of Regulation: In all year groups, we explicitly teach children how to recognise, identify, and manage their emotional states using the Zones of Regulation framework. This teaching provides pupils with a personalised toolkit of self-calming and co-regulation strategies to navigate setbacks with resilience.
  • Restorative Practice: When peer conflicts arise, we use them as powerful, real-world learning opportunities. Staff guide children through our consistent, four-step restorative script—focusing on Repair, Restore, Respect, and Reintegrate—to help pupils understand who was affected by their actions and how to resolve issues collaboratively.
  • Targeted Support: For children requiring deeper emotional support, our qualified Thrive Practitioner and ELSA-trained staff deliver bespoke, small-group interventions within The DEN to bridge emotional developmental gaps and build social confidence.

Healthy Relationships and Safety in Key Stage 2

As our pupils grow, we introduce more advanced modules to prepare them for the transition to secondary school:

  • Healthy Relationship Training: In upper Key Stage 2, pupils engage in specialised, mature workshops that explore complex relationship scenarios, digital citizenship, and peer pressure. This training helps children understand their rights and responsibilities within friendships and family units.
  • Online Safety & Personal Safeguarding: Supported by visits from external partners, such as the NSPCC and local emergency services, children receive explicit instruction on personal safety, recognising hazards, and knowing exactly how to respond to dangers both online and in the real world.
  • Inclusion and Protected Characteristics: In alignment with our school development priorities, our curriculum proactively celebrates diversity and teaches respect for all protected characteristics, ensuring our pupils grow into tolerant, open-minded citizens who celebrate differences in race, culture, faith, and family structures.

Working in Partnership with Families

We view parents and carers as our most vital co-educators. We maintain absolute transparency regarding our RHE curriculum, ensuring that families are fully informed and actively consulted on the content we teach.

  • RHE Parent Consultations: We host statutory parent consultation events, strategically timetabled at the start of the academic year to share our curriculum overviews, demonstrate classroom resources, and address any parental queries.
  • The Parent Café: Facilitated by our Home School Support Worker, the Parent Café provides an ongoing, warm space where families can access practical advice, discuss RHE topics, and replicate our trauma-informed language and regulation strategies within the home.

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