Relationships and Sex Education - information for parents
10/03/2022
Dear Parent/Carer,
As part of the Welsh Government’s new Curriculum for Wales initiative linked to ‘Successful Futures’, there is now a requirement for maintained schools to deliver relationships and sexuality education (RSE) lessons to the children across the whole school. The purpose of this letter is to provide you with further information regarding this.
The statutory guidance relating to relationships and sexuality has been recently finalised and can be found here:
The mandatory elements of this guidance (Relationships and Sexuality Education Code) sit within the above but, for ease of access, can be found here:
curriculum-for-wales-relationships-sexuality-education-code.pdf (gov.wales)
As the guidance and code are both statutory, you do not have the right to withdraw your child from these elements of the curriculum. However, clearly, we want to make sure that you are aware of what we are teaching / discussing in order that you have an understanding of what your child is covering and may talk to you about. This approach helps massively with safeguarding the children, for example in talking about appropriate / inappropriate touch, but also means that children receive an informed and unbiased understanding of a range of sensitive issues rather than picking up often misguided ideas from friends or off the internet.
To help us to develop our approach, we have decided to use a scheme designed specifically to address issues in a structured and age-appropriate way. The scheme is called ‘Jigsaw’ and you can find more detail about it in the attached document and here:
Jigsaw-Curriculum-for-Wales.pdf (jigsawpshe.com)
Hopefully this helps to clarify how we aim to deliver this important aspect of the New Curriculum for Wales. The planning for this element of the curriculum will be shared with you in the normal way on the topic planners. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, please feel to contact me.
Regards,
Simon Bates