Our Personal Development Programme is underpinned by our Catholic faith, through which our children develop a strong moral framework, sense of justice and the importance of taking care of the vulnerable and marginalised members of society. 

Our approach to the delivery of the Personal Development Programme enhances the life chances of all children, with a specific focus on closing the cultural capital gap for disadvantaged pupils by ensuring that they receive favourable opportunities to engage in a broad range of rich extra-curricular learning opportunities.

Our coherent Personal Development offer is woven through the taught curriculum and meaningful extra-curricular activities and events; it has been carefully created to ensure that it meets the needs of our children to enable them to thrive in modern Britain.

We strive to ensure that:

- Children are well-equipped to keep themselves physically and mentally safe and healthy, including having the skills to emotionally regulate; the life-skills they learn to ensure that they are well-informed to make positive choices that will lead to success both now and in the future.

- Children become compassionate, respectful, confident, resilient, open-minded, reflective and curious individuals, with a belief that they have the power to make a positive difference in the world.

- Children make exceptional progress spiritually, morally, socially and culturally; they feel a strong sense of belonging and are empowered to make a positive contribution to the local community and as global citizens.

Our Personal Development Programme has three key features:

1. Equipping our children with the knowledge, understanding and skills to make informed choices now and in the future.

2. Enabling our children to flourish as individuals.

3. Empowering our children to make a positive contribution to society.

 

Delivery of our Personal Development Programme:

Equipping our children with the knowledge, understanding and skills to make informed choices now and in the future:

Fundamental to the delivery of our Personal Development Programme are the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, which provide a framework for bringing current social issues and injustices into the children’s consciousness and creating in them a firm sense that they are global citizens with a responsibility to make choices that will positively impact other members of the community.  The CST principles are as follows: Care of Creation; Preferential Option for the Poor; Solidarity and Peace; Community and Participation; Dignity of Workers; and Dignity of All.  We focus on one principle each half term, with each year group taking responsibility for organising the school’s response to the call for action.

Our coherently planned and progressive curriculum for PSHE and RSHE ensures that our children have the knowledge and skills to make informed choices to enable them to be safe, healthy and successful. 

We follow the ‘Life to the Full’ programme for our RSHE curriculum, which is firmly rooted in the Catholic faith and the belief that children are created, chosen and loved by God.  This faith-based curriculum provides high quality teaching on love, relationships and dignity.

Our PSHE curriculum is based on the JIGSAW programme, through which children receive age-appropriate input on the following topics: Being Me in My World; Celebrating Difference; Dreams and Goals; Healthy Relationships; and Changing Me.  In addition, our curriculum is supplemented by activities and visits from providers such as road safety training in order to equip our children with the life-skills necessary to keep themselves safe.

The Zones of Regulation programme forms the foundations for teaching our children to become skilled in independent emotional regulation.  Through this, our children learn that all emotions are valid and appropriate; they learn to identify the most appropriate emotional state for each context.  Emphasis is placed on helping the children to recognise their emotional states, know what has led to those feelings, and developing skills to effectively regulate their emotions regardless of any challenges that they face.

The children learn the British Values of Democracy, The Rule of Law, Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect for and Tolerance of those with Different Beliefs and for those without Faith through discrete lessons.  We focus on exploring one of the values in depth each term through assemblies and other extra-curricular activities (Autumn: Democracy; Spring: The Rule of Law; Summer: Individual Liberty; with Mutual Respect and Tolerance being the foundation on which the other values are built).  In addition, the children experience these values first hand as they are golden thread which is woven through our implicit curriculum.

Enabling our children to flourish as individuals

Central to our children’s flourishing as individuals are the many opportunities they receive to grow in faith and spirituality.  Through daily worship, the children develop a deep faith and an understanding that they are known and treasured by God, instilling in them a strong sense that they are valued and worthy of love.  Our offer also extends to parents and carers, who are invited to participate in worship sessions alongside their children.

At St Joseph’s, we celebrate our children as individuals and we are passionate about nurturing their interests and talents, which are as unique as they are.  Our extra-curricular offer includes opportunities to engage in a wide variety of activities such as hip-hop dance, chess, learning a variety of musical instruments, sports, arts and STEM.

Each child takes part in an annual school trip, which provides them with opportunities to broaden their interests and develop vital character traits such as resilience, teamwork and problem-solving.  A range of visitors are invited to the school to introduce the children to a range of passions and interests and to inspire the children to continue to learn and grow.

Our bi-annual Enterprise Week enables our pupils to flourish as each class designs, makes and promotes products to sell.  The roles are rich and varied, based on the strengths of each individual child, and each child knows their contribution is highly valued.

Currently, we are working to enhance our outdoor learning provision, which will increase the children’s confidence in taking measured risks and enhance their survival skills.

Empowering our children to make a positive contribution to society

All children at St Joseph’s know that they are part of a community; our Mission Statement to ‘Live, love and learn in a caring Christian community’ permeates all that we do and seek to achieve.  Our children know that they have a responsibility to make a positive contribution to our school family, and this is reinforced by our SAINTS rules.  Each half term, children are rewarded for epitomising each one of our SAINTS rules.

 

Our children are part of ‘Houses’ within the school.  They earn house points for living out our SAINTS rules, and each half term, they work towards a collective reward for the house with the most overall points.  This reinforces their sense of belonging not only to the wider school community – through the consistently applied high expectations, but also to the house to which they belong.

 

Children have a wide range of leadership opportunities and responsibilities within the school.  Each child in Year 6 has a specific responsibility, including the Chaplaincy Team, House Captains, Sports Captains, Prefects, Digital Leaders and Librarians.  Some of these areas of responsibility are tailored and adapted to meet the needs of individual children to ensure that each child can be successful in making a positive contribution to our school community.

 

Younger children throughout the school also have rich opportunities to contribute positively to our school family through roles such as School Council, Eco Council, Playground Leaders and STEM Ambassadors.  Regular opportunities are sought for the younger children to engage with the older children through reading buddies and shared learning activities.

 

Our children also have many opportunities to make a positive contribution to wider society through our charity work, underpinned by the Gospel passage, where Jesus said: “Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13: 34-35).   Each term, we choose a specific cause to support (Autumn – local; Spring – national; and Summer – global).  We are a ‘friend’ of the local foodbank, and each year the Chaplaincy Team organise donations to be collected to supplement Christmas hampers.  Our ‘Spring giving’ coincides with our Lenten preparations and involves supporting a national charity.  Our ‘Summer giving’ focuses on the children’s identity as global citizens and providing support to communities overseas.  In addition, we regularly support charities that are linked to members of our school community, for example, the local hospice who have supported our families.

 

In addition to charity work, there are many other ways in which our children positively contribute to society, including hosting coffee mornings for elderly members of the community, singing at church concerts and offering their artwork for a local project.