We welcome Ofsted's report into PSHE education which paints a realistic picture of provision across the country. We will be considering the report carefully over the coming days and will be publishing a full response for our members shortly.
Chief Executive Joe Hayman said:
"The reality is that while there is outstanding practice in many schools, too many teachers go into PSHE lessons ill-equipped to deal with the extremely important and challenging issues the subject covers. Whether dealing with safeguarding areas of personal safety in relation to sex and relationships, substance misuse and issues related to mental health, it is obvious from the report that teachers need more training and more support.
The Ofsted report concludes that 60% of the schools surveyed provided good or outstanding PSHE education, a testament to the skill and hard work of the teachers in those schools and the commitment of senior management teams.
However, this still leaves a large percentage of schools where provision is far from ideal, meaning a significant proportion of children in this country are not receiving the high quality PSHE education they deserve.
We therefore agree with Ofsted that PSHE education ‘Is not yet good enough’ and want to work with schools and other partners to raise standards by providing quality resources, updated programmes of study, training and support to schools to effectively plan, deliver and assess their PSHE programmes, with assessment a particular priority as the Ofsted report suggests.
We also know we need to make the case at a local and a national level for PSHE education to be given the status it deserves. In that context, we call on the Department for Education to heed our request to make a more explicit link in the national curriculum framework between PSHE and schools’ statutory responsibilities. This would provide clarity for schools about the importance of PSHE education, a key recommendation of the Ofsted report. “
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