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A whole-school approach embraces all personal development in a single programme based on the Christian faith.

The school

St Peter’s Collegiate School is a Church of England school in Wolverhampton. It is a mixed 11-18 comprehensive school with just over 1,000 students.

A whole-school approach

Until 2001, the school’s PSHE programme had been coordinated by year heads and taught by the group tutors. When an in-service day for all staff was held to plan the introduction of citizenship, staff decided during the day that a restructuring of the PSHE programme was needed. The new system was to involve the whole school.

Every full-time member of staff chose an area where they had expertise or an interest. Some teams were initially led by the heads of year but other experienced staff were asked to cover the remaining areas. Subsequently, new team leaders have emerged, so a new avenue for professional and career development has been created.

The benefits of the change are that:

• the status of personal development is raised across the school
• staff have a sense of ownership of the personal development areas they teach
• staff expertise is used more effectively
• there are more staff to share the workload
• there is a wider pool for generating ideas
• staff teach areas that they feel happy and confident to teach, so all the staff are committed and the quality of the lessons is improved
• a positive and motivated staff approach results in a more positive view of the programme by students.

The new programme: Christian Living

All aspects of the personal development curriculum, including citizenship, PSHE, RE, sex and relationship education and careers guidance, are brought together in a programme called Christian Living.

The programme is taught for one period a week, with different areas occupying the following number of weeks.

All students take an RE GCSE short course which supports the study of both Christian and Muslim society. The issues studied include abortion and euthanasia, marriage and the family, wealth and poverty. The central theme of the course is the application of ethical principles in daily life. The school intends this to be a practical, relevant approach to religious education. An important part of the programme for all year groups is a daily act of collective worship.

To help each subject department contribute as effectively as possible to personal development, the school has produced a handbook, a map of departmental work, and a policy statement for each department. The school has joined the Healthy Schools Initiative. It received accreditation for Emotional Health and Well-Being in 2002 and is seeking accreditation for the Sex and Relationships module in 2004.

The school actively supports national and international charities. The importance of charitable work is reinforced through the themes used in collective worship.

Coordination

The Christian Living programme is co-ordinated by the head of PSHE and citizenship and the head of RE. All full-time staff are organised into theme teams to teach the programme.

Teams are given time in June and July to plan for the next academic year on the basis of staff evaluations. In addition, each team has one or more blocks of three weeks when they are not required to teach the PHSE programme and this provides further time for planning and evaluation meetings.

Future developments

Citizenship issues will appear as a regular item on departmental agendas. Students will in future record citizenship learning elements in a citizenship diary.

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Page updated: Tuesday, August 10, 2004
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