Learning for Life - KS3 & KS4

The aims and rationale of the curriculum in Years 7 - 11 in Learning for Life are:

To equip students with the knowledge to keep themselves healthy and function successfully in the world beyond school. This includes ensuring that they can make informed choices about relationships and know how to have a safe relationship; ensuring that they understand how money works in a practical sense; exploring British values, covering law and politics; and developing positive practices to improve mental health and wellbeing, as well as an understanding of how to have a healthy lifestyle. Students should develop the skills needed to manage money, make informed political decisions, make choices about friendships and intimate relationships, and manage their emotions and mental wellbeing. 

The Learning for Life curriculum has been constructed in consultation with appropriate agencies such as The PSHE Association, as well as the HGS pastoral, learning support and careers advice teams. It is delivered by a wide range of teachers at HGS once a fortnight. It includes a variety of quality-assured external providers, including Phase, Herts Young Homeless and the Alcohol Education Trust. The areas of study include the statutory content from the Citizenship curriculum and the statutory RSE curriculum. Computing, Philosophy and Ethics, Geography, History and Science also deliver some aspects of the statutory content. Students learn about each topic area every year and the intention is that they will build on their understanding of topics in an age-appropriate manner.

The topics will potentially be delivered at different times of year to different classes in order to ensure that external speakers are available, but the content across the year will be the same for every class. If students take Full Course PE, they will have a condensed KS4 Learning for Life experience, but the statutory content will still be delivered to them by the PE department using the resources delivered to the rest of the school. There will also be further drop-down days and whole-school assemblies to enable students to cover the statutory content in depth.

All content covered in Learning for Life is compulsory. Should you have any further queries, please contact Mrs Foster at emily.foster@hgs.herts.sch.uk.