PSHE is a comprehensive, non-statutory school subject. It acts as an “umbrella” curriculum that equips children with the essential life skills, knowledge, and attributes they need to keep themselves healthy, safe, and prepared for life and work in modern Britain.
While PSHE as a whole is not legally mandatory, schools are required to provide a broad and balanced curriculum that promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, cultural, mental, and physical development. Most primary schools use PSHE to deliver both their statutory requirements and wider life skills.
What primary PSHE typically covers:
Health and Well-being: Healthy eating, physical activity, dental health, and emotional/mental well-being.
Personal Safety: Road safety, fire safety, water safety, and online safety.
Economic Education: Basic financial literacy (saving, spending, what money is).
Careers & Aspirations: Goal setting, teamwork, and looking to the future.
In primary schools, RSE is often referred to under the statutory banner of RSHE (Relationships, Sex, and Health Education).
Under UK law, there is a strict and important distinction between “Relationships” and “Sex” education at the primary school level:
Relationships Education is compulsory for all primary school children. Its definition is focused entirely on the fundamental building blocks of positive, safe, and healthy relationships. It does not cover sexual relationships.
What it covers: Families and the people who care for them, caring friendships, respectful relationships (including online), and how to stay safe. It also explicitly teaches body boundaries, privacy, and how to recognise and report abuse or unsafe situations.
Sex Education is not compulsory in primary schools. The DfE leaves it to individual schools to decide if they want to teach an age-appropriate sex education program. At Sutton, we deliver Sex Education in Year 5 & 6.
What it covers: Age-appropriate concepts of human reproduction, conception, and how a baby is conceived and born, building on the mandatory Science National Curriculum.
Parental Rights: Parents have a right to withdraw their children from any primary sex education lessons that fall outside the mandatory Science National Curriculum (which covers basic biological life cycles and puberty)
At Sutton we use the Jigsaw resource to help us deliver quality PSHE and RSE teaching and learning. Jigsaw is a comprehensive, “mindful” approach to PSHE and RSE for primary schools. It is designed as a whole-school, spiral curriculum where all year groups work on the same theme, or “Puzzle,” at the same time, allowing for shared school assemblies and a consistent, school-wide focus on topics
Jigsaw Relationship and Health Education
Jigsaw and PSED Early-learning-goals
Jigsaw information leaflet for parents and carers 2026