We are fully aligned with the new RSHE Guidance 2025, with our whole-school, skills-based curriculum (‘The BIG 5’ and ‘The BIG 3 & ME’) designed to equip pupils, teachers, and parents with the tools, confidence, and frameworks to deliver effective, preventative, and participatory RSHE from early years onwards.
Intent
Similar to many like-minded organisations, we welcome the spirit of the new RSHE guidance for English primary schools, published in July 2025. In particular, the guiding principles that emphasise pupil voice, skill building, whole-school approach, parent/carer involvement and careful sequencing are very much in sync with 'The BIG 5' approach for KS1 and KS2.
The guidance states that schools should recognise that positive relationship skills are essential to preventative work and begin as soon as children start school, chiming with our early years programme 'The BIG 3 + ME' , a finalist in the Teach Early Years Awards, in their words "representing the very best in teaching resources in 2025".
Implementation
We are aligned with calls from the educational community to ensure the intent of the guidance is followed through with support for implementation for practitioners. To this end, we are updating/have updated our KS1 and KS2 resources to more fully meet the details of the RSHE requirements for online and offline safety. We continue to use relatable stories and scenarios in every single lesson module for enabling children to explore their own values and feelings.
As per usual, we refer settings to trusted providers with expertise in drugs and alcohol education and assume that schools have their sex education provision in place already.
We continue our approach to train teachers as facilitators rather than knowledge transmitters. As part of the Reimagining RSHE Trailblazers group, we are adopting the ‘safe uncertainty’ framework to make sure our curriculum is responsive to a changing world for our children, without teachers having to have all the answers but instead to develop the confidence to facilitate diverse viewpoints and manage ambiguities and complexities.
This is alongside the evidence based CASEL and mentally healthy schools frameworks upon which our programmes were designed.
Summary
Members of The BIG 5 or The BIG 3 + Me can be confident they are in line with the guiding principles if they use our whole-school approach and two-year rolling curriculum alongside their own sex education provision. We are in the process of updating and revising lessons to reflect the full curriculum requirements ready for January 2026.
How we align with each guiding principle (click below)
Teacher as facilitator/listener/role model; dialogic classroom; active learning based on framework from the EEF
Community Values Dialogues supplement RSHE caregiver consultations. They are a hugely effective facilitated circle time session with parents/caregivers, staff, and pupils to agree common values around RSHE and give practical support to employ techniques at home for respectful relationships.
Healthy and preventative behaviour and social-emotional skills built from the earliest age to navigate complexities later in life using Safe Uncertainty framework.
Starting from early years, we have a spiral curriculum based on the sequential SAFE curriculum for SEL learning from the EEF.
Learners are equipped with skills, habits and language to tackle issues as they arise and practitioners are equipped with the rituals and resources that can be used within and outside of explicit sessions
Our practitioner training and modelled sessions are geared towards cultivating facilitator confidence to role model social-emotional skills and facilitate participatory discussion for all children to feel seen and heard
The curriculum is designed for each year group to be considering the same values and themes at the same time, applied to stage appropriate stories and scenarios.