As our updated S4S School Health & Wellbeing Service brochure has just been made available to schools for the new financial year from April 2025, I find myself thinking back to the different work that I’ve done over this past year or so.
It’s always useful to reflect on the different work and projects that I’ve been involved with; one of the benefits of being an independent education consultant is that I get to work with all sorts of professionals, schools and organisations across the country, so variety is never too far away!
I know that I am lucky to do what I do, although it’s never something that I take for granted. The last 12 months has definitely been marked by some meaningful new collaborations with colleagues in the PSHE-sector. I’m always positive that this includes impactful contributions to the development of subject leaders, teachers, Governors, institutions and most importantly high-quality PSHE provision for children and young people. I appreciate all of the work that has come my way, but what are some of the highlights? Here are a few that come to mind…
This is a big passion of mine, so continuing my relationship with a local authority who commission my business, Health & Wellbeing in Schools, to design, deliver and organise bespoke training programmes and PSHE support to their schools in order to drive best practice in delivery of PSHE is always going to be up there!
Providing a range of Governor training sessions to support their understanding around PSHE and statutory RSHE-themes is something that I don’t feel is covered anywhere near enough for this important part of the school workforce, so the online training and ‘in-house’ sessions I have done with Governors and Trustees on a range of topics including sex education, food in schools, anti-bullying and children’s mental health is another big tick for me!
And of course, being able to connect and work with so many new and existing customers via the S4S School Health & Wellbeing Service’s online training programme is a key part of our approach to improving PSHE provision in schools. We always try to keep a good range and variety of courses on offer, delivered either directly by me or by a number of awesome specialists from across the spectrum of PSHE. I’m always on the look-out for new people to work with and new session to offer to the school workforce, so please give me a shout if you have any interesting new ideas!
Working with schools across England, either in person or virtually, is my absolute bread and butter. For me, as a consultant there is no better way to improve PSHE in a school than getting stuck in with SLT or a PSHE subject lead and reviewing the curriculum and
provision and all the things that surround this, like resources, policies and the monitoring and evaluation of the subject. It’s great to be able to share best practice by working with a diverse range of schools and professionals; this is a definite advantage of being an independent consultant because there is no one school I’ve ever worked with that hasn’t had something unique or interesting to share.
I’ve really enjoyed building new relationships with new subject leaders and schools and maintaining those existing ones, some of whom I have worked with for well over a decade now in one way or another. It never gets old and there is ALWAYS something new to focus on in PSHE!
I always say that engaging with parents and carers is one of the cornerstones of effective PSHE programmes in schools. It’s long been this way, but since statutory RSHE came along, the need to be more organised, transparent and proactive with school-level communication and engagement around PSHE education is even more important. That’s why I consistently try to facilitate work with the wider school community in all of the schools that I directly work with to provide PSHE support.
I often use the analogy of an iceberg when it comes to parental interest or curiosity in PSHE. Whilst most schools might only ever see a few queries or questions from a small number of parents around PSHE/RSHE themes (the tip of the iceberg!), you can be assured that underneath this sits a level of much larger interest and potential concern that we should definitely seek to address.
The recent pieces of work I have done with a large primary MAT on reviewing and updating the information provided on their school’s website via their PSHE pages is a good example of how we can fairly simply provide all sorts of useful details to stakeholders, especially parents, around PSHE. I’ve also done dozens of parent information sessions in partnership with PSHE subject leaders and schools this year, which can sometimes be challenging but are always worthwhile. They serve as a useful reminder that the best PSHE should always seek to be a partnership between home and school.
I still get to be creative as a PSHE education consultant! Over the years, I’ve designed and written a heap of different learning and curriculum materials for different providers, including education businesses, charities, local authorities and individual schools who wanted to make their own bespoke lessons on a particular subject.
In the last 12 months I have worked closely with a large organisation to help them create a brand new primary phase PSHE/RSHE curriculum programme, which is due to fully
launch soon and then move into a new secondary resources phase. Creating new learning materials can be a huge task and is always a labour of love, but it is very satisfying to sit back and see what it looks like when it is done.
You know what they say, if you stand still then you just go backwards…and this definitely applies to the world of PSHE in general! So I’ve tried a few new innovations lately to see what this feels like…
I’ve dipped my toes into a few blogs over the last 6 months or so (including this one!) to help spread the gospel of PSHE, which seem to have been well received. With the help of the marketing team at S4S, we’ve knocked these into shape and shared them with anyone who wants to read them! We also created a new ‘e-book’ on ‘Creating a Safe Learning Environment in PSHE’ to gather together some useful tips and strategies, making this freely available to colleagues. You can see it here if you didn’t catch it first time around – it’s free and you can also request a download if needed.
And I know it will sound a bit cheesy, but as a former PSHE lead in a school, I really understand how tough it can be to lead the subject, especially if you don’t have much time or budget to work with. So, to make sure that I give something back to a field that I am very proud to work in, I still love to produce our free half-termly PSHE bulletins and run our free termly PSHE Network Meetings in the hope that they will make the lives of PSHE subject leaders and teachers that little bit easier.
FREE PSHE NETWORK MEETING - WED MAY 7TH
So that’s all of the kind of stuff that I get up to! Reflecting on the different work that I have done in the past year, I am grateful and reminded why I choose to do what I do to. Here’s to another year of driving forward the most important subject in school together!
Are you an educator or school that is looking to collaborate around PSHE education? If so, let’s connect and talk about how we can work together! You can reach out to me and find out about the work that I do via any of the links below: ·
· Email: russell@schoolhwb.co.uk
· LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/russell-stanley-pshe
· S4S School Health & Wellbeing Service: https://www.services4schools.org.uk/school-health-wellbeing-service
· Health & Wellbeing in Schools website: www.schoolhwb.co.uk