Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE)

Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) is a mandatory element of the Curriculum for Wales, encompassing many themes taught to all children throughout their school lives. RSE makes up a significant proportion of the Health and Well-being ‘Area of Learning and Experience’.

In Wales, the mandatory themes which have been identified include; Personal Developments and Relationships, Empowerment, Safety and Respect and Health and Well-being. These themes include different strands which are taught at a developmentally appropriate level.

The RSE curriculum is aimed to be highly inclusive and primarily directed to teach the children about safety, respect, resilience, identity, acceptance and diversity, all of which are interwoven into topics and current issues.

It includes elements which we believe will scaffold the pupils to learn how to be a healthy, confident individuals. We encourage our pupils to become the best versions of themselves in all aspects of their growth and development.

In the federation of Tavernspite and Templeton Schools, we have designed our own RSE Scheme of Work which combines the statutory guidance provided by Welsh Government.

The Welsh government has provided guidance to schools on how to provide RSE that is age-appropriate and relevant to pupils’ developmental stage, but it has given schools the flexibility to design their own programme of teaching that reflects diversity and difference in relationships, sex, gender and sexuality.

Our pupils have completed activities in class to share what they would like to see when designing their RSE curriculum. The main values taken from this was that our RSE curriculum needs to be honest, engaging and unique.

With this in mind, we have created a scheme of work which is developmentally appropriate and takes a holistic approach by providing cross curricular experiences for our pupils. By including many stakeholders in its development – staff, healthy school leaders, governors and pupils – we have taken time to develop this curriculum to make the activities fun, interesting and memorable.

The focus will be on building relationships based on mutual trust, and developing mental and emotional wellbeing, resilience and empathy.

Parents are no longer allowed to withdraw their children from the RSE curriculum. However, to reassure parents our RSE scheme of work is posted below. Please contact the school if you have any questions.