Personal Development Team
Every member of staff is involved in personal development. Our form tutors play the greatest role in ensuring all our students are guided each day to be even better versions of themselves. In introducing the team, we do not want to neglect the hours that go into extracurricular work, planning for
educational visits and rewards and the relentless pursuit to offer our community experiences that will enrich their lives and develop them as children of God.
Mr Passarello oversees personal development in school and is supported by Mrs Darlington. He line manages the PSHE directors and works with them to ensure both the PSHE curriculum and the work done in forms to support personal development. This year we have two specialist teachers of PSHE who teach mixed groups at both Key Stages following the PSHE Association Framework and ensuring that we are fully compliant with both the Department For Education’s statutory guidance for RSE and the Catholic Education Service guidance on SRE.
Mr Passarello
Deputy Head
Ms Darlington
Assistant Head
Mr Hancock
Director of PSHE
Mrs Mckechnie
Director of PSHE
Ms Begum
Specialist PSHE Teacher
Ms Cox
Specialist PSHE Teacher
Personal Development Themes
Our weekly themes are designed to incorporate the weekly Gospel message, key themes identified via our safeguarding knowledge and aspects of personal development that we aim to revisit throughout the year. We link themes to fundamental British Values and we ensure that key days of celebration in a variety of faiths.
We meet weekly with the Safeguarding Lead (DSL) and the coordinators of PSHE to ensure that our PSHE bulletin is reflective of the needs of our community. We use CPOMS logs to be reflective of current trends. For example; after spikes in Operation Encompass referrals we will ensure that we signpost support to students about how to report incidents of domestic violence. We give autonomy to Year Teams to develop themes that are pertinent to their groups. An example is our partnership with the Tough Cookies organisation. These came to work with all of Year 8 in 2023/24
to respond to CPOMS trends related to peer-on-peer abuse. This resulted in a marked drop in POP abuse logs in Year 8 for the remainder of the year.
What our students say about PD activities
- Our Culture days have been really special. Everyone gets involved and is proud to wear their traditional dress.
- I loved listening to the guest speaker talk about knife crime. It really has made me a supporter of anti-knife crime.
- I like the PSHE bulletin on Thursday mornings. You can tell it’s been made to help us with important issues and matters.
- There are many opportunities for me to get involved in leadership activities. I am especially proud to be a ‘Guardian Angel’.
