School Curriculum: PSHE Debate

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Department: Department for Education

School Curriculum: PSHE

Earl Attlee Excerpts
Thursday 19th March 2015

(9 years, 2 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash
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The noble Lord makes a very good point. These skills are particularly important for underprivileged children. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, made a very good point recently: that in order to have social mobility, you need social immobility. We need to give particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds these soft skills, which is why we have such a big focus on character education. We would expect this to be inspected by Ofsted as part of SMSC and as part of a broad and balanced curriculum.

Earl Attlee Portrait Earl Attlee (Con)
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My Lords, what is Ofsted doing to ensure that schools properly cover PSHE?

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash
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As with other areas of the curriculum, PSHE and citizenship are not explicitly covered in the school curriculum inspection framework. However, in reporting, inspectors must consider how the school is meeting the needs of the range of pupils and pupils’ SMSC and cultural development to help to prepare them for life in modern Britain. Inspectors will also look at how effectively schools engage with parents in the development of their SMSC policy.