Persona Life Skills maps to PSHE and RSE frameworks
Persona Life Skills maps to PSHE and RSE frameworks. PSHE – Personal, Social, Health and Economic education – is a subject taught in schools in the UK and in many international schools which follow the British curriculum. Equivalents in other curricula may be known as Personal Development, Character Education, Life Skills, Advisory, or Spiritual, Moral, Social & Cultural development (SMSC).
20-Jan-22
By Jo Malone, Director of Education
Persona Life Skills perfectly complements the UK's PSHE Association framework and the statutory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) framework.
In Persona Life Skills both frameworks are approached through the lenses of self-awareness, personal development and skills. Students are then encouraged to apply these skills in real-life scenarios that are familiar to all PSHE teachers. For example friendships, social media spaces, communities and work experience.
Personal, Social, Health & Economic Education (PSHE)
The PSHE Association framework emphasises social and emotional skills, and life skills such as living a healthy lifestyle, decision making, mental health and emotional wellbeing, positive relationships, social influences and so forth (see the table at the end of this blog).
The Persona Life Skills curriculum supports students in making healthy choices, with the help of deeper self-awareness via personality insights, learning how to adapt, and the importance of persevering in order to achieve something worthwhile.
This is closely linked to caring for your own and others’ wellbeing and mental health, by learning how to understand and adapt to the needs of the self and others, how to self-regulate when under pressure, and how to manage stress.
Students learn how to build more positive and productive relationships in different contexts, including at school, at work and in their social lives, testing their learning in challenging scenarios such as how to respond to social media posts, asking for help in class, or deciding when to use formal language.
Students learn to recognise and manage social influences in both online and offline settings, and how to think critically about these influences so that they become more self-aware and responsible in their reactions.
Relationships & Sex Education (RSE)
The range of independent learning modules and teacher facilitated modules help included in Persona Life Skills helps teachers to meet the UK's statutory RSE requirements. It is especially relevant in the areas related to talking about and managing emotions, healthy and improving relationships, and respect.
Persona’s personality insights concept is based on large scale behavioural science research, and developed with input from students, school inspectors, headteachers, and social & emotional learning experts.
It provides young people with a ‘thinking framework’ they can use to develop skillsets, cultivate more successful relationships and achieve positive outcomes in different situations, by learning to adapt their communication and behaviour.
Again, these skill sets are situated in real life situations, enabling students to deepen their understanding and make informed choices in areas such as consent, supporting friends, being an upstander, their own self-talk, and showing respect for self and others.
Life Skills framework mapping
Each of the 'life challenge' Island modules within Persona Life Skills focuses on helping students to develop three life skills.
When signed into the platform, teachers can view a Life Skills Framework page to see which Islands map against different areas of the PSHE Association and Relationships & Sex Education frameworks, helping them to select relevant modules that match their PSHE/RSE teaching objectives.
Other blogs on related themes:
Relationships and sex education
Personality, relationships and wellbeing
Relationships and the classroom
Persona Education offers free access to its Persona Life Skills e-learning platform for secondary schools and colleges interested in developing their pupils’ social & emotional life skills, to boost wellbeing and employability.
About the author: Jo Malone is a global education expert, with over two decades experience in teaching, e-learning, dialogic education and teacher training. A social and emotional learning (SEL) and PSHE thought-leader, she is Director of Education at the Bristol based edtech company Persona Education Ltd, providing onboarding, guidance and support for schools and colleges using the Persona Life Skills personality insights life skills e-learning app. www.persona-life.com
