Intent

At St Clement’s & St John’s Infant School, our vision is for every child to have confidence, compassion, creativity and curiosity in all areas of their learning, particularly Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE). 

It is our intent that all children will be ‘lifelong learners’ with the confidence and ability to develop their skills and understanding when having new experiences, meeting new challenges and finding themselves in unfamiliar situations.  

We offer a nurturing learning environment in which each child is encouraged to develop their full potential and where their achievements and successes are celebrated and rewarded.  As a school, we believe that children are all individuals and therefore, we aim to encourage mutual respect, responsibility and foster self-esteem in a happy and caring manner. The teaching and learning of PSHE using the Jigsaw programme supports this. Through using Jigsaw our children acquire knowledge, understanding and the skills they need to manage their lives now and in the future. It develops the qualities and attributes children need to thrive as individuals, family members and members of society and the global community.  

We aim to fulfil the new Statutory requirements of the National Curriculum for PSHE introduced in September 2020 through Jigsaw PSHE.  Jigsaw PSHE sets out a progressive and sequential programme evidenced by the developmental learning intentions written into the materials. It is a unique, progressive and effective scheme of work, aiming to prepare children for life, helping them really know and value who they truly are and understand how they relate to other people in this ever-changing world. 

The aim of teaching PSHE at our school is: 

• To develop pupils’ confidence to know how to be safe and healthy, and how to manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way. 

• To develop a compassion and empathy to support their own, and others’ wellbeing and attainment and help young people to become successful and happy adults who make a meaningful contribution to society. 

• To inspire pupils’ curiosity by encouraging them to question the foundations of healthy, respectful relationships, focusing on family and friendships, in all contexts, including online.  

•  To allow all children to develop resilience and character in creative ways to enable pupils to become happy, successful and productive members of society. Central to this is pupils’ ability to believe that they can achieve goals, both academic and personal; to stick to tasks that will help them achieve those goals, even when the reward may be distant or uncertain; and to recover from knocks and challenging periods in their lives. 

• To develop our key driver of communication by embedding opportunities throughout our PSHE curriculum.

Implementation

Jigsaw is implemented throughout the whole school during weekly whole class Jigsaw lessons, focusing on different topics each term.  It is embedded through all lessons and the whole school day with everyone supporting and encouraging the children they interact with to use the skills they are developing and to make links to other areas of learning. 

Effective teaching in these subjects ensure that core knowledge is broken down into units of manageable size and communicated clearly to pupils, in a carefully sequenced way, within a planned programme of lessons. Teaching will include sufficient opportunities and contexts for pupils to embed new knowledge so that it can be used confidently in real life situations. 

Through our PSHE curriculum, we believe we can enhance children’s education and help them to become caring, respectful and confident individuals. 

Impact

At St Clement’s & St John’s Infant School, we assess the implementation of our Jigsaw lessons to ensure we provide the support that is necessary for all children to achieve, including an understanding of British values necessary to make sense of their experiences, value themselves, respect others, appreciate differences and feel confident and informed as a British citizen. 

Jigsaw’s wide range of child-centred activities ensure the learning is enjoyable for pupils and teachers alike. Jigsaw has an assessment system, descriptors and exemplifications, so teachers can see the expected standard of learning that pupils should attain at the end of each unit of work, each year and each key stage. Jigsaw PSHE contains both formative and summative assessment opportunities that support teachers to assess PSHE knowledge and how these are applied within social and emotional skills development.