Personal Development and Wellbeing

One Life - a Personal Development Curriculum for All

One Life, which is a universal offer for personal development, explicitly teaches all children how to live their ‘one life’ well. The clear end goal of the programme is to ensure that all pupils know how to live a healthy, safe and happy life and know to manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way.

Children are growing up in an ever increasingly complex and changing world. The world now could be described as secular, digital, dopamine drowning and one which brings new challenges for our young people. To ensure we can meet this ambitious end goal, we must be counter-cultural and teach our children the knowledge and skills they need to thrive. One Life offers this for our children. It teaches children to do what is good and right in the hope that if they know better, they will choose better. It is deeply rooted in recent research from psychologists, social physiologists and doctors.

At the heart of One Life is building strong mental, physical and social fitness. Each statutory requirement has been broken down into age-appropriate content which has been sequenced and connected to ensure that children know more and do better. The content is repeated deliberately to ensure that children know more, remember more and do more with it. The content also covers children’s spiritual, moral, cultural and social development whilst ensuring that they grow with their character with British Values at the heart.

The whole programme supports an Educational Psychology Service mission, of ‘Relate to Educate,’ which helps schools to build the intentional culture which enables children to develop, learn, adapt and thrive. One Life helps to shape all levels of the school setting including: ethos, policy, procedure and everyday interactions. It provides the power and the practical tools to adapt to the emotional and developmental needs of all young people, including those who are the most in need. This programme places a huge emphasis on relationships, respect, responsibility and restoration which have shown to be more effective in addressing issues of discipline and conflict rather than traditional behavioural approaches, where systems rely on the use of rewards and sanctions to encourage compliance.

One Life helps to offer a relational approach into practice addressing the following:

• Developing Relationships (staff to pupil, pupil to pupil and pupil to self)
• Responding and Calming (supports co-regulation leading to improved self-regulation, calm responses, and managing crisis well)
• Repairing and Restoring (staff to pupil, pupil to pupil and pupil to self)
• Supporting inclusion (helps to support experiences of adversity and trauma as well as addressing the impact of being over-sanitised and entitled)
• Setting boundaries (for themselves and understanding others) (Wakefield Educational Psychology Service, Relate to Educate, August 2023)

The programme goes beyond the statutory requirements for RSHE to ensure that children really understand themselves, and how to show up as their best selves in this increasingly demanding and challenging world. It helps them to build their self-awareness and knowledge, so they can exercise their free will with love and care, for both themselves and others.

This programme of work covers the following statutory components of the Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education guidance and ensures that all of this content is taught and not told:
• Families and People who Care for Me
• Caring Friendships
• Respectful Relationships
• Online Relationships
• Being Safe
• Personal Safety

Physical Health and Mental Well-being:
• Mental Wellbeing
• Online Safety and Harms
• Physical Health and Fitness
• Healthy Eating
• Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco -Y5/Y6
• Health and Prevention
• Basic First Aid
• Changing Adolescent Body (Developing Bodies) -Y5/6
This should not be taught before year 4. Pupils should know: 1. about growth, change and the changing adolescent body. This topic should include the human lifecycle. Puberty should be mentioned as a stage in this process. 2. the key facts about the menstrual cycle, including physical and emotional changes.

One Life also supports the Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development and ethos as well as promoting British Values and the Equal Opportunities Act and supports the awareness of the Protected Characteristics. It supports culture, character and personal attributes and growth for every pupil.

Curriculum Documents 

Personal Curriculum Development INTENT:

Personal Curriculum Development Key Vocabulary: