Life Skills

Life Skills at Cardinal Langley RC High School aims to provide a coherent programme of personal, health, social, citizenship and careers education. Our aims for Life Skills is to equip pupils to live healthy, safe productive, capable, responsible and balanced lives through core themes of Relationship and Sex Education, Citizenship, economic wellbeing and Careers Education Information and Guidance.

Our intent is to provide a Life Skills curriculum that provides opportunities for pupils to reflect on and clarify their own values and attitudes and explore complex and sometimes conflicting range of values and attitudes they encounter now and in the future.

Life Skills aims to help pupils to:

  • Identify their personal qualities, attitudes, skills, attributes and achievements and what influences these.
  • Explore their attitudes, values and beliefs about them and develop the skills, language and strategies needed to manage any issues should they encounter them in their lives.
  • Promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
  • Equip all pupils with the knowledge and skills they need to stay safe and be able to communicate when they do not feel safe.
  • Ensure children become valuable and fully rounded members of society who treat others with respect and tolerance, regardless of background.
  • Ensure children are equipped to skills and knowledge necessary to enjoy economic wellbeing in the future.
  • Promote the basic British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance for those of different faiths and beliefs.
  • Provide expert independent, up-to-date careers guidance that gives our pupils the best information and opportunities available and helps them progress into further education, training and employment (guided by the 8 Gatsby Benchmarks).

Life Skills has a significant contribution to pupil’s SMSC development, their behaviour and safety and it promotes pupils’ wellbeing and this is built into our curriculum plans. Life Skills promotes personal development by helping pupils to build their confidence, resilience and self-esteem, and to identify and manage risk, make informed choices and understand what influences their decisions. It provokes challenging questions about health and wellbeing, relationships and living in the wider world.

Life Skills is taught to years 7-10 every fortnight and is taught through dedicated form tutors who have built up the necessary relationships to deliver some of the more sensitive topics that Life Skills contains. This allows form tutors to identify early any potential triggers to students in their group and ensure these are dealt with sensitively and appropriately. This also allows any safeguarding issues to be identified early due to the positive relationships built up by form tutors with their groups.

The three core themes are covered in our KS3 and KS4 curriculum.

  • Relationship and Sex Education.
  • Citizenship.
  • Careers Education, Information and Advice.

Key Stage 3

Key Stage 4