After Ofsted inspection this year, Josephine Smith’s school was judged ‘outstanding’ in all categories. Across five articles and five categories, she sets out the steps her team took to achieve this. Next up is Personal Development
Personal Development: As detailed in the Education Inspection Framework, this Ofsted judgement considers how our teaching keeps students safe, helps them determine their moral compass and prepares them for life - Adobe Stock

In this series of short articles, I am detailing the steps that we have taken to move our school from “overall good” to “outstanding” in all five categories (including Sixth Form Provision) after our inspection in November.

The inspection framework will be changing in September but while we have had a glimpse of the Ofsted Report Card proposals, the reality is that many schools will still be inspected this year under the current framework.

And of course much of what we know already about how schools are judged will also be relevant under the new framework, even if the terminology and the categories may change.

In this third of five articles, I address the Personal Development judgement. 

Acing your Ofsted: Five categories, five articles

    1. Quality of Education: Published February 26
    2. Behaviour and Attitudes: Published March 4
    3. Personal Development: Published March 11
    4. Leadership and Management: Published March 18
    5. Sixth Form Provision: Published March 24

Personal Development

I am sure you are really proud of the range of opportunities that staff afford your students both inside and outside the classroom. Only part of what we do after all is teach our young people subject content and prepare them for exams.

A Personal Development offer, as detailed in the updated Education Inspection Framework (see Ofsted, 2023), is likely to be the learning that keeps our students safe, helps them determine their moral compass, prepares them for life, gets them to question who they are, and helps them to find answers to the big questions about who they want to be. It is easy to feel inspired about being the adults that scope those opportunities for them.

We used to be officially “good” at that. It took us four years to turn our provision into something that we were excited to celebrate as “outstanding” during our recent inspection. Here’s how…

 

Auditing provision

We started by spending one day auditing what we already did. Two members of senior leadership looked at our form-time programme, our PSHE lesson schemes of learning, our assembly programme, our calendar of school trips, and our club offer. We considered our relationships and sex education (RSE) provision and looked at our careers reports (via the free Compass careers tool).

We soon realised that lots of good work was being done but much of it by people working in isolation. It was evident that attempts at connecting these different strands were mostly circumstantial.

In the knowledge of what good curriculum design looked like (see part one of this series) we saw that provision was not necessarily sequenced as purposefully as it might be.

Our next step then was to agree and articulate our Personal Development “intent”. You can read the result here.

We wanted students and staff to understand the aims and features of the Personal Development offer and talk about its purpose in school. The next part of the plan therefore was to make our offer more cohesive by mapping and sequencing provision.

The content of our tutor time and PSHE lessons and drop-down days are all guided by PSHE Association advice. We use “seven opportunities” to organise and deliver the health/wellbeing and relationships strands as well as the statutory responsibility to teach RSE.

 

 

Personal Development: Provision at Kesteven and Sleaford High School covers the seven areas as recommended by the PSHE Association (image: Kesteven and Sleaford High School)

 

It is also the way we prepare students for living in the wider world (including providing impartial careers information and advice aligned to the Gatsby Benchmarks – see further information).

We aim to tackle contextual safeguarding issues, we follow DfE advice on character education (DfE, 2019) and on SMSC including fundamental British values (DfE, 2014). Our own identified school priorities including building students’ resilience are all mapped too. Extra-curricular opportunities are offered to meet student demand and change accordingly.

Our seven interconnecting opportunities for Personal Development provision and delivery are:

  1. Assemblies (one a week for every key stage) .
  2. Tutor time (25 minutes every morning).
  3. PSHE lessons (one hour per-fortnight) and drop-down days (two per-year).
  4. Careers provision (one-to-one interviews, in PSHE lessons, assemblies and through special events).
  5. Clubs (at lunchtime and after school including a commitment to the Duke of Edinburgh programme, performing arts, sport and STEM activities).
  6. Trips and visits (throughout the year mapped for all year groups).
  7. Subject content (documented in schemes of learning).

Next, we wanted staff to see just how instrumental their contribution was. We did this by detailing the seven strands of our provision and staff’s various roles in them.

In effect we “branded” Personal Development, creating logos to present the different elements and infographics that now appear on PowerPoint slides and Personal Development documentation.

 

Our Personal Development curriculum

Part of our strategy was to appoint a subject leader for PSHE and Personal Development to oversee the mapping and content creation of the PSHE and tutor time scheme of learning and to oversee the assembly programme (careers leadership sits within our head of sixth form’s role).

Over a period of two years she has created a curriculum in the same way that other subject leaders have, identifying key knowledge to be learnt, sequencing a carefully constructed and age-appropriate route thorough some tricky subjects, and consulting with parents on the RSE element.

This colleague provides consistently presented tutor time resources that link to the weekly assembly themes and works closely with a wide range of staff to deliver the content in a consistent and well supported way.

We monitor the delivery of this area of school life like we do any subject area, and the subject leader attends subject leadership meetings, creating the same documentation and quality-assuring delivery as they do.

The subject leader for Personal Development is line-managed by our assistant head (behaviour and culture) enabling discussions that allow the curriculum to adapt and flex to contextual school need.

For example, our school is in a town with a railway level crossing and we weave work on safety on the railways into our programmes. This contextual approach was something that Ofsted inspectors commented on very favourably in our feedback.

 

Pupil Premium strategy

Our Personal Development programme and our Pupil Premium strategy are closely intertwined – something that was also commented on very positively in our inspection.

We use EVOLVE to manage our educational visits, trips and clubs and use its functionality to monitor and then promote take-up and participation by students. We expect tutors and trip leaders to encourage participation and actively look out for students who might not be accessing for financial reasons.

 

In summary: What should you focus on?

  • See Personal Development as part of your curriculum – to be planned and sequenced as carefully as any other subject.
  • Respond to the contextual needs of your school. Ensure content and opportunities are directly relevant to the young people in your setting.
  • Make sure your most vulnerable students are accessing the provision in a meaningful way.

 

  • Josephine Smith is headteacher of Kesteven and Sleaford High School, a secondary school in Lincolnshire which is part of the Robert Carre Trust. Find her previous contributions to SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/josephine-smith  

 

Further information & resources

Related articles

Acing your Ofsted: Leadership and Management

Acing your Ofsted: Sixth Form Provision

Acing your Ofsted: Behaviour and Attitudes