Cookie Policy

Legislation: Education/ Other
Lead Member of Staff: Leanne Burke
Publication / Revision Date: July 2023
Review Frequency: Annually
Date of last review: N/A
Date of next review: July 2024 (or as required)

Personal Development (PD)
Personal Development (PD) at Riverside Virtual College is extremely important as it supports all our students in their spiritual, moral, physical, emotional, cultural and intellectual development according to their needs, and regardless of their social and/or economic backgrounds. It promotes our young people’s wellbeing and enables them to make healthy and safe choices as well as developing their potential as resilient, and responsible citizens in our school, community and wider society.
Our personal development curriculum has been designed around the Ofsted 3is framework.
Intent
Our intent is to design and deliver a robust personal development curriculum that works to remove social and emotional and academic barriers that prevent students from reaching their full potential. Our intent is to:
⦁ Develop pupils’ confidence, and emotional resilience
⦁ Deepening students understanding and knowledge of the world around them so that they can keep themselves physically and mentally healthy and safe
⦁ Developing pupils’ character, by developing the values of Honesty, Integrity and Respect (HIR)
⦁ Develop young people’s aspirations and life opportunities
⦁ Promote student voice and help students to understand the life choices they can make
⦁ Develop self-knowledge and awareness
⦁ Increasing their knowledge and understanding of society, its laws and systems
⦁ Teaching skills of personal decision-making, problem-solving, and self-reflection
⦁ Confidence in the context of social relationships
⦁ Developing employability skills and providing quality career guidance
⦁ Use of teaching programmes which respond specifically to our students’ needs clearly defined learning outcomes for lessons
⦁ Enable pupils to feel safe and secure and improve their ability to achieve their full social, emotional and academic potential.
⦁ Empowering pupils by providing them with key information to be able to make informed decisions about their education
⦁ Develop a healthy and positive growth mind-set
⦁ Developing compassion, empathy and tolerance of others who are different to them
⦁ Developing confidence and self esteem
⦁ Build emotional intelligence
⦁ Improving communication skills
⦁ Helping pupils keep themselves safe from harm, both on and offline
⦁ Developing student culture capital to enhance life choices

Implementation
Our PD curriculum is designed and delivered by our PD team. Teaching staff also work to develop students’ personal development throughout the academic and vocational curriculum. We will also:
⦁ Plan and implement planned PD curriculum themes to ensure that pupils have the opportunity to become competent and confidence young people
⦁ Deliver bespoke SEL programmes
⦁ SMSC planned and embedded across the curriculum
⦁ Timetabled mentor support if/when required
⦁ Drop in sessions
⦁ Robust therapeutic support delivered by trained staff
⦁ External professional support through Educational Psychology service
⦁ Staff and parent referral process
Impact
We will plan, implement and deliver a PD curriculum that works to:
⦁ Develop well-rounded citizens with a clear understanding of values HIR
⦁ Develop healthy and safe relationships with peers
⦁ Young people who can challenge negative stereotypes
⦁ Students who have a good understanding of acceptance, diversity, citizenship and human rights
⦁ Young people that can demonstrate greater levels of resilience and motivation, and a growth mind set when faced with different types of challenge
⦁ Students that can make a positive contribution to their community
⦁ Students that are able to make informed positive decisions about their education
⦁ Students possess the cultural capital required to enable them to succeed in later life and to be able to make a positive contribution to society.
⦁ Students that are confident and prepared for the next step in their education
⦁ Students that have aspirational ambitions for their future

Careers Education
As part of our personal development offer we also provide careers education for years 10 and 11.
We aim to ensure that our pupils are aware of the types of careers that are available and to have a job to aspire to achieve. We also aim to break down any misconceptions or stereotypes our pupils may have about different careers.
Charity and Volunteering
We aim to encourage our pupils to want to help others and make our community a better place. We do this through our inhouse volunteering programme and also donating to local charities each term. This is decided by students during weekly assemblies.
Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development
We will actively work to develop:  
⦁ Responsible, respectful and active citizens who are able to play their part and become actively involved in public life as adults
⦁ Pupils’ understanding of the fundamental British values of democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law and mutual respect and tolerance
⦁ Pupils’ character, which Ofsted defines as a set of positive personal traits, dispositions and virtues that informs their motivation and guides their conduct so that they reflect wisely, learn eagerly, behave with integrity and cooperate consistently well with others
⦁ Pupils’ confidence, resilience and knowledge so that they can keep themselves mentally healthy
⦁ Pupils’ understanding of how to keep physically healthy, eat healthily and maintain an active lifestyle, including giving ample opportunities for pupils to be active during the school day and through extra-curricular activities and trips
⦁ Pupils’ age-appropriate understanding of healthy relationships through appropriate relationships and sex education
We will actively Promote: 
⦁ Equality of opportunity so that all pupils can thrive together, understanding that difference is a positive, not a negative, and that individual characteristics make people unique
⦁ An inclusive environment that meets the needs of all pupils, irrespective of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation
We will work to enable: 
⦁ Pupils to recognise online and offline risks to their wellbeing – key foci- risks from criminal and sexual exploitation (CSE/CCE) , domestic abuse, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, substance misuse, gang activity, radicalisation and extremism – and making them aware of the support available to them in and outside of school.
⦁ Pupils to recognise the dangers of inappropriate use of mobile technology and social media
We will work to Support:
⦁ Readiness for the next phase of education, training or employment so that pupils are equipped to make the transition successfully
We will Provide: 
⦁ An effective careers programme in line with the government’s statutory guidance on careers advice that offers pupils:
⦁ Unbiased careers advice
⦁ Experience of work, and
⦁ Contact with employers to encourage pupils to aspire, make good choices and understand what they need to do to reach and succeed in the careers to which they aspire
Riverside Education has planned a coherent approach to personal development and has worked to create an effective curriculum that upholds the Riverside ethos and reflects our core values of Honesty, Integrity and Respect.
All Riverside staff will help students to develop:
⦁ confidence and resilience
⦁ encourage students to make the most of their abilities
⦁ make informed healthy lifestyle choices
⦁ form healthy relationships
⦁ respect the differences between people
Reinforcements of rules
⦁ Coherent and consistent key messages from all staff, across all sites
⦁ Content and teaching approaches which match the needs of all students including SEND
⦁ Supporting staff in the planning and delivery of the Personal Development
Curriculum
⦁ A regular revision of policy and practice
⦁ A wide range of teaching approaches can be used and we particularly encourage active learning methods, which involve the full participation of all the students
⦁ Ground rules will be negotiated when appropriate and the sensitivity of the work will be recognised, safeguarding the interests of individual students
⦁ The work will be regularly monitored and evaluated by teaching staff and SLT
Applied learning
⦁ Life Skills
⦁ Work based Learning Programme
⦁ Enrichment
⦁ Peer mentoring programme
⦁ Health and Safety student reps

Outside support
We value the contributions made to our PD curriculum from external support as this helps us to enhance the overall educational experience of all of our young people. Our school will work closely with a selection of outside agencies such as:
⦁ NSPCC
⦁ Local Police Liaison Officers
⦁ Local church groups
⦁ Educational psychologists
Confidentiality
Some students may choose to discuss personal issues with individual members of the school community. While staff want to be supportive, it is clear that they work within child protection guidelines and clearly state they may not be able to guarantee confidentiality.

Our school will also deliver a robust Relationships and sex education (RSE) curriculum.