Personal Development

Personal Development is at the heart of everything we do at New Close and we believe that it should be at the centre of the pupil’s learning journey. Our aim is to support children to develop the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to manage their lives, now and in the future. Personal Development helps pupils to thrive as individuals and build their own character through their primary education.

Our Personal Development offer is under-pinned by our Vision and Values. It is weaved into, and a crucial part, of everything we do from our relationships with the children, to our strong curriculum and extra-curricular opportunities. We view Personal Development as holistic, striking the balance between giving the children meaningful experiences, which they remember forever, without making events tokenistic and sacrificing too much of their daily curriculum offer.

Intent

Our Personal Development offer is developed to fulfil the following four aims.

1. For our children to learn

To ensure that all children have access to a broad and balanced curriculum, so they can develop a deep understanding of knowledge and skills in each subject.

This includes developing our children’s understanding of Personal Development topics including, but not limited to: health, British Values, Protected Characteristics, Relationships and Sex Education and e-Safety.

2. For our children to grow

To develop the character of our children and ensure they develop behaviours and habits to become effective learners. This includes developing our set of New Close values (respect, resilience, responsibility, aspiration, pride, positivity) which helps prepare our children for life in the modern world and a diverse and ever-changing community and work place.

This includes student leadership opportunities and ensuring that our older pupils are given responsibility and have a role in supporting our younger pupils. 

3. For our children to love

To develop children’s understanding of morality in themselves and others, develop social skills and understand society, build a firm set of personal beliefs and to engage in the community they live, alongside understanding the communities of others.

Our children follow the school rules and learn the importance of treating others how they want to be treated. They learn that showing love, compassion and empathy towards others makes the world a better place.

This includes raising awareness of environmental issues, charities and teaching our children the importance of showing love towards our planet and all creation.

4. For our community to flourish

To ensure that children feel confident to express their beliefs and take action, whilst understanding and appreciating how other people’s actions are driven by their beliefs, thoughts, feelings and experiences.

We ensure that all children feel that they belong in our special community, so – combined with our high aspiration and expectations – they feel safe, encouraged and prepared to flourish both during their time at New Close and beyond.

Implementation

Pupils’ Personal Development grows throughout their time at New Close Primary School. Whilst it is not explicitly taught as a subject, it is embedded through everything we do and is at the heart of our curriculum and all policies and procedures.

All children experience the same offer and we ensure that any necessary adaptations are made for disadvantaged pupils and children with special educational needs and disabilities. As described in more detail in our SEND Policy and Pupil Premium Strategy, we allocate the necessary funding to ensure that all our pupils are included in all aspects and elements of school life so they feel that they belong and can flourish.

As well as a specific, curriculum-focused offer for each class, many of the opportunities for our children to develop personally are embedded into the areas below.

• New Close Values
• PSHE and RSE Curriculum
• E-Safety teaching and learning
• British Values and Equalities - the Protected Characteristics 
• The teaching of Emotional Literacy and Mental Health through our Thrive programme
• Progression in Oracy
• Opportunities for Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural (SMSC) development
• RE Curriculum
• House System
• Student Leadership Opportunities 
• Extra-Curricular Opportunities
• Community Links and Service 
• Strong links with our Military Community

Impact

Pupils develop a positive mind-set and have high aspirations of themselves. This enables them to be courageous, showing determination and self-belief to try new things and see mistakes as opportunities to learn. Therefore, our pupils flourish in all areas: academically, emotionally and personally.

Our pupils build strong foundations during their time at New Close: they hold positive school memories and their Personal Development sets them up for their future.

The Head Teacher and PD Lead consistently monitors the impact of our Personal Development offer through observations, monitoring and the ongoing assessment of pupils through the Thrive Online profiling. We use whole-school pupil surveys, at least once a year, to ensure that pupils’ voice is a large part of assessing the impact of Personal Development. We also use Parent View, and responses to both parent and staff surveys, as additional evidence of the impact of our Personal Development curriculum.