PSHE
PSHE and Citizenship is designed to promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and to prepare them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life. It seeks to support the development of certain personal qualities and attitudes in pupils. These include independence of mind, self-respect and respect for others, a sense of fairness and social justice, a respect for and tolerance of difference, a readiness to promote the well-being of the wider community and a concern for the natural world and the environment.
Citizenship prepares girls for playing a full and responsible part in society. It helps pupils to develop an understanding of how electoral systems work within a democracy and stresses the importance of voting. The course also enables pupils to make sense of taxation and the economy, and encourages to them to see how local issues can have an impact globally.
PSHE and Citizenship is a compulsory element of the curriculum for all girls in key stages 3 and 4. It is taught by form tutors in one dedicated lesson per week. Sometimes the year group meets as a whole for discussion, and teaching is complemented occasionally by presentations by outside speakers. Additionally, in Years 8 to 11, girls follow a course of lessons in Sexual Health Education taught by specialist staff as part of a carousel.
Sixth Formers have the opportunity to follow additional courses to supplement their A Level studies. We currently offer Financial Studies (IFS Certificate), Critical Thinking, General Studies, LAMDA (The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts) and Italian.
In addition, members of Year 12 are encouraged to participate in a range of extra-curricular activities including Community Service, Young Enterprise and the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. The Sixth Form are also invited to establish and run new clubs and societies for younger pupils.
In the weeks following the AS examinations the school offers an enrichment week where year 12 pupils are invited to attend a range of lectures and prepare university style seminars. In the summer term, Year 12 students follow a UCAS programme offering guidance regarding making a university application and writing a personal statement. This includes attending presentations from leading university admissions tutors.
Drugs talk
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Dealing with the issue of drugs is one of the most difficult challenges that form tutors have to have to face in PHSE lessons. It is perhaps the one subject where teachers are required to be both authoritative and inexperienced at the same time. This is why it is so useful to be able to invite people into school to talk about their experiences with drugs. Elizabeth-Burton Phillips' experiences took place within a middle class family, and among a group of friends from private schools. It is the story of how a drug dealer infiltrated that group of friends and groomed them into a life of heroin addiction. Elizabeth gave a moving, and at times quite shocking, account of what happened to her two sons. It really brought home the potential dangers connected with taking illegal drugs, and placed them in a familiar context.
Laura Stratford (11D) writes:
At the beginning of this term, Elizabeth Burton-Phillips visited Channing and spoke to the Senior School about how her family’s despair owing to her identical twin sons’ addiction to heroin. Mrs Burton-Phillips has spent the time since her son Nick’s death writing articles and talking to schools about the dangers of drugs.
Aided by a moving slideshow, Mrs Burton-Phillips briefly took us through the childhood of her twin sons, Nick and Simon. From being pageboys at a friend’s wedding to students studying for their GCSEs at a well known independent school, things at first seemed perfectly ordinary. However, that soon changed.She admitted to us how naive and ignorant her family had been about drugs. Even as a PSHE teacher, she didn’t emphasise enough their dangers to her students. At the age of 13, Nick and Simon started smoking cigarettes in the park or on the way to school, which was mainly due to peer pressure. However, she was unaware of this at the time, and was ignorant to how easily available drugs were. Between the ages of 13-14, they started to smoke cannabis, using ‘bongs’ and shared bottles of cider between them and their friends. When they reached 15-16, their drug use gradually progressed from ecstasy to cocaine.We then watched a video of Simon explaining how he got introduced to heroin. When he was 18, he used to go out with friends to the pub, have a few drinks and then smoke spliffs of weed with friends. However, when a new person entered his group of friends, no matter how friendly he seemed, he naively trusted him. Little did he know this would be the person who would deliberately lead him and his brother into addiction. He also talked about five of his friends, who are all still heroin addicts 10 years later. ‘All this stems from saying, yes.’Mrs Burton-Phillips described the emotions she felt, such as misplaced guilt, fear and embarrassment. She also described her sons becoming ‘unrecognisable’, both in appearance and personality and talked of the regular vicious confrontations she had to bear. Nick and Simon felt so isolated and helpless, they eventually became homeless. Even their mother drove around town into derelict places, to make sure they had something to eat. However, Mrs Burton-Phillips soon realised she had to cut off Nick and Simon if they were going to recover.Unfortunately, in February 2004 she received a knock on the door at 3am. She was told the devastating news by two police officers that her son Nick had died. Since then she has set up the ‘Nick Mills Foundation’ and released a book in May 2007 called, ‘Mum, Could You Lend Me 20 Quid?’. She decided to write this book because she feels it is important to educate parents on the dangers of being ignorant about drugs, and that complacency is not an option. So far she has received 4000 e-mails from mothers who live in fear of the ‘knock on the door’.Later, she showed us all she had left in memory of Nick; a box filled with syringes, spoons and pre-injection swabs. Fortunately, the death of Nick woke up Simon to the danger he was in, and now he has not used drugs in the four years since Nick’s death. At the end of the talk, I went up to her to ask a few questions, as I wanted to know Marie’s opinion (Nick and Simon’s older sister) of her brothers’ drug use. ‘She was so furious at what her brothers were doing, the anger she felt led to her becoming cut-off from them altogether. Today, there isn’t much of a loving sister and brother relationship between her and Simon.’
