Are PSHE lessons good enough?

[YourAquaTurtle]

I'm quite hands off with what my DD (14) is being taught at school when it comes to PSHE. I've had a quick look through some of the lesson plans and they look a bit basic (e.g. periods, relationships, wellbeing). Do you think that schools are doing enough here? What's everyone's experiences? And do you think I should be doing something extra to help her with all of this stuff, thanks

It’s very dependent on the school tbh. Best schools have dedicated pshe teaching staff and timetables lessons. Schools doing it poorly have drop down days or delivered by tutors. Some schools teach it very well indeed. Others dont. It is compulsory.

I would always see it as my role as a parent to teach my child about relationships, periods, sex education, finances etc.

The school content would be an extra, that I might need to check for accuracy/quality etc.

Where I live, the whole local authority teaches to the same plan with the same resources and there’s no deviation from it. Parents are then provided with extra links to websites for them to discuss further at home.
Personally I would also chat it through with her, see what she knows already, see if she feels okay about it all and if there’s anything else she needs/ wants to know.

I wouldn’t rely on school for important life knowledge like this. I don’t think parents can afford to be ‘hands off’ about any of this stuff. At 14 I would have already had lots of conversations about all that kind of thing, it would be part of normal life dialogue.

We've found it quite hard getting hold of decent info around eldest DD's PSHE lesson plans which sometimes makes me think they organise them down to the wire... it would be good if that meant they were being reactive to "trends" but I don't believe this is the case.

I don’t think schools should be spending time on this - it’s a parents responsibility.

They are absolutely not sufficient. My experience has been that key topics covered in PHSE lessons are delivered too late to be useful to a proportion of the children.

Form teachers providing information on sex and relationships who are deeply embarrassed about what they're talking about to a group of 30 giggling or checked out teens is woeful. They're not trained to deliver the content. One of DDs teachers skipped the contraception lesson because he decided he didn't want to teach it. And a class situation, where the kids are themselves embarrassed or egging each other on is not the best to take in this information or ask questions.

Or teachers approaching retirement, coming across as entirely disconnected from a teens' experience, delivering information about drugs to kids who already know more than they do.

Or teachers talking about wellbeing, about having a bath or going for a walk when you feel stressed to children who have mental health conditions. Those kids being made to feel broken because a hot bath doesn't cure their anxiety or depression. No actual help (and potential harm) provided for the children who are anxious, depressed, self harming, or anorexic because teachers aren't therapists.

You need to be talking about all these things at home. Use the curriculum as a topic list of good conversations to have and keep revisiting

Definitely agree with the role of a parent in all this, not good enough in school and found that DD was coming home scared or confused orjust really embarrassed. Have found an app called we are luna that I primarily got her for period tracking, but it's got all this info and she goes to it for Qs that frankly I don't have the medical know-how for (and some of the time I'm sure she's just embarrassed coming to me for). Not sure if anyone else has heard of it? But yeah, that's my experience. In short - not sufficient.

I don’t see it as the school’s responsibility tbh. Partly because my teens aren’t going to pay much attention to teachers about topics that they’ve known about for years but also because I’m not convinced that schools go as deep as a parent would because they are dodging parental complaints and don’t want to be accused of scaring kids prematurely because “their child would never do X”

I think that this is also true when people say that kids at school should have lessons about things like mortgages. Teens are not realistically going to care until they are buying a house or whatever and not everyone will be buying a house in future so you could argue that it’s elitist. If the goal is retaining the info then teaching it at uni would have more impact since that’s the age where people start having debt like student loan. (I know that not everyone goes to uni btw!)

Yy to the info being too late. Teaching 13 year olds that smoking and vaping is bad for you is silly when kids are starting in primary school these days. While that info might have been more time appropriate decades ago, the info needs to be discussed at a much younger age.

It’s not the schools responsibility, and they can only provide the absolute basics anyway as otherwise they’d be confronted with angry parents. Health, social and cultural guidance is a a family matter.

You see the same arguments about teaching sex education in year 5ish. There are some parents who feel that it’s tmi for their sensitive child who hasn’t even had puberty stuff like periods explained to them.

PSHE is the absolute basics and any level of engaged parenting will be doing it at home.
it’s done in school for the parents that just don’t bother.

I disagree that it’s the basics. It’s actually very comprehensive and covers loads, if done well. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62cea352e90e071e789ea9bf/Relationships_Education_RSE_and_Health_Education.pdf

I would be looking for a decent book aimed at her age that is published by a reputable publisher. I had a great one that I read from cover to cover because it was all about sex and relationships and bodies - kids want to know about these things.

Why would you need to buy a book to explain to your DC’s about sex and relationships? These are family discussions which start with toddlers with age appropriate language and continue.

Because it’s something the child can refer back to in their own time that is slightly better than googling it. It’s not a substitute for conversations it’s an addition.

I just saw them as supplementary to what we were talking about a home. Mainly pointing out positive and negative relationship or friendship behaviour in films and tv shows. Talking early on about the bigger picture that school is just the start of it. Sex, relationships, equal load of household stuff and mental load. Housing both rented and owning, mortgages, bills etc everything to help prepare them for adulthood.

Plus asking what they did cover in PSHE to have a talk about how they felt about what was said that day.

I teach secondary pshe and am genuinely surprised at how little some parents talk about all of the stuff on the page curriculum with their children.

I wouldn’t rely on phse lessons to be at all useful. Of course you need to teach and talk to her about that stuff, you’re her parent.

Each school is different - some take it seriously and some don't but there is a PSHE curriculum that every school should follow but it will definitely need topping up with how you want them to behave and on finances etc.

one thing that I don't think is covered enough is social media usage and how to use it safely.

After Adolescence on Netflix this should really be covered in more detail.

What do you think? is social media covered enough in your children's school?

It's all very well saying parents should do it. But what happens when parents don't/can't? You end up with ill-equipped children heading out into the adult World, probably ending up with all kinds of social and medical problems that cost society in the long term. We really need a way to "catch" the kids who have inadequate parents, and realistically, school is the only place to do it.

I think it depends by school/ area. My DD wasn't taught much at any school, whereas DS was taught so much in Y6. They went into detail about everything! I left the meeting a bit 😲 then he went into high school and is being taught less detail than he was in primary.

To be fair, I think they should cover basics incase any children are not taught anything but I personally think it's down to parents to cover. I've had in depth conversations about everything with DD, least so with DS but DH will pick up with him. I think it's really important for teens to know about periods/ sex/ consent / relationships but talking about it opens communication and i would rather that than it be taboo honestly.

They tend to be bought in packages now from external companies as schools don’t have the staff to plan appropriate lessons for all age groups. The ones we use rubbish and feels very much like ticking a box. That said, it is a parent’s responsibility to teach their children about sex, relationships, drug and alcohol use etc.

Very much agree that these topics are primarily a parental responsibility. None of it is a big "sit down and have The Talk" deal if we're normalising honest and age appropriate conversations in families from an early age.