Life Lessons

Cutting staff workload & In The News!

"These resources have been invaluable to cut staff workload and to support student learning. Resources are up to date and follow what is currently happening in local/national and international news. PSHE/Personal development is at the heart of everything we do so these resources are an asset to us." - Head of School Curriculum

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Student engagement & feedback.

"Quick message just to say we delivered our first two life lessons yesterday and they were awesome. One child stated during the lesson 'this is the best PSHE lesson of my life'."

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Engaging & adaptable for SEMH support.

"I rely on Life Lessons extensively to support my small group interventions on critical topics such as hate crime, knife crime, diversity, discrimination, and online safety. The ready-made materials allow me to quickly select resources tailored to my students, who are primarily visual learners, and the engaging videos and discussion questions spark meaningful conversations. The platform is user-friendly, making it easy to navigate and adapt sessions based on safeguarding concerns or specific group dynamics. The weekly "In the News" lessons are particularly impactful, as they use real-world examples to make the content more relatable and engaging for students. This approach fosters deeper understanding and participation, especially when discussing sensitive or complex topics. Looking ahead, I’m planning to expand into areas such as friendships, relationships, and intimate relationships, where Life Lessons will continue to provide valuable support. Additionally, it’s helping us address an increasing need for Social, Emotional, and Mental Health (SEMH) support, bridging the gap even though we’re not an SEMH-focused provision. Life Lessons has become a valuable resource for addressing critical issues and fostering both personal and social growth among my students." Pupil Support Assistant at a Special Education school.

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Staying up to date with changing statutory requirements!

“With updated statutory requirements for teaching Relationships and Sex education it has never been more challenging for teachers of the subject. The Life Lessons video library enables our team to deliver highly engaging lessons, pupils see people like them in the videos, talking about things that they can relate to.

Our teachers feel more confident and are better placed to facilitate discussions. I’d recommend other Heads look into becoming Life Lessons schools also.” Head at a secondary school in Kennington, London. 

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Facilitating safe & meaningful conversations.

“The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from staff and students so far using Life Lessons. It’s helping our pupils and teachers to have these important conversations in a safe and meaningful way.” - Headteacher 

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Consilium Academies: Excellent RSHE Curriculum Leads to Improvements in Student Behaviour and Attendance

Kate Hewson, Head of Personal Development for Consilium Academies, discusses clear links between excellent RSHE curriculum and the improvements of student behaviour and attendance at Consilium Academies.

About Consilium Academies 

Consilium Academies have been using Life Lessons since early 2022. They were approved as a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) and academy sponsor in January 2015 and have three hubs and nine schools supported by a Central Team. 

Specific Challenges and Problems Consilium Academies Faced before Life Lessons

The first thing that drew us to Life Lessons was the up to date content in the videos. Previously, when we had used RSHE resources, we found they were quite outdated. Our students didn’t recognize people that looked like them or sounded like them. The resources seemed very old fashioned and lacked inclusion for LGBTQ+ students.

I have found that when it comes to sourcing resources it can be a minefield, and when it comes to trying to find something appropriate that can take an awful lot of teachers’ time. So instead, teachers were planning and creating their own resources but with that comes the problem of confidence and subject knowledge. Our PSHE leads really struggled with confidence in knowing that what they were putting out there for the students was accurate as well as being inclusive and diverse enough. 

Purchasing Life Lessons for Consilium Academies Schools

When we found the Life Lessons resources, we felt that they ticked all the boxes. It was real life, it was relatable. There was that diversity and the security of knowing that a team of people who are experts in the field have thought about what’s going into each resource and ensuring all bases are covered. 

When it comes to teaching RSHE, there was always a lack of confidence from teachers regarding knowing what to say, concern about saying the wrong thing or conversations going down an unexpected path as teachers can never anticipate a question that a student may ask. Therefore, having reliable resources that help manage those conversations is vital to keep conversations on track and give the teachers support. 

What are the consequences of RSHE materials not being relatable to students? 
Issues in Student Confidence 

The inability and lack of opportunity to speak about certain issues lead to confidence issues in many of our schools. Especially where the cohorts are extremely diverse in terms of ethnicity, sexuality and advantage versus disadvantage. We get pockets of students who stay in their own groups and who do not feel confident talking about their differences. This lack of confidence was correlating directly with a lack of engagement in RSHE lessons. 

We have noticed that since we changed our PSHE provision to Life Lessons our students have become more confident to talk and give their own opinions. They are more involved in discussion, debate and speaking to people who aren’t in their social circles because the resources allow them to understand someone else’s point of view, that just because someone’s different to you, it doesn’t mean that they’re totally unrelatable. 

Changes in Student Behaviours 

We also saw changes in behaviour when we switched to Life Lessons. Previously if students weren’t engaging with the subject matter or felt that topics that interested them were not being discussed, it led to behavioural issues. For example, we had students who were struggling to understand their own sexuality and wanted to discuss this topic in a safe classroom environment. When the resources are not accessible or relevant to the diversity of them and their community, it can lead to frustration, behavioural issues and attendance issues in school. 

Therefore, getting the diversity and inclusivity right in RSHE/PSHE lessons and the curriculum is so important for all of the other parts of school.

Benefits Consilium Academies have Gained from Having a Number of Schools use Life Lessons
Consistency

As a trust it is massively advantageous for me as the curriculum lead, knowing that there’s consistency. Since the schools in our trust are very geographically diverse there can be a lack of opportunity for sharing, peer visits and seeing teachers seeing practice and best practice in other places. We do have an online community but it can be difficult to share things online, so having knowledge that the same high quality resource is being used in all our schools makes that job a lot easier. 

With the resources we can focus as a trust on how we are adapting the Life Lessons resources to make them unique for our context. We discuss the lessons, if they have been used, which activities have been taken and if there was any feedback from the students. Having the resources makes those conversations between schools a lot richer. Before we were using resources that had been created by staff or sourced online. That made it difficult to talk about quality assurance and to share best practice. At trust level there is a massive benefit to have that alignment of one resource. 

Improved Behaviour

The other benefit of all the schools in our trust using the same resources means we always have available material to use. Some of our staff use Life Lessons resources for form time and assemblies. If we have an issue we are experiencing in school or in the wider community we can also address it using Life Lessons resources. Schools can communicate about how they have used the resources to address these issues and that makes all of us more reactive and proactive when it comes to exploring these issues. For example, in one of our schools we had a bit of a spike in play fighting and other sorts of silly behaviour and we tackled that in terms of looking at Life lessons resources that centered around consent, looking at inappropriate and inappropriate touch. It was easy to know that we could do that really quickly because we have resources that were there and available to use. 

 

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South Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit Project: Increasing Student Engagement with RSHE Lessons

In this case study we examine the South Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit Project to increase student engagement with RSHE lessons using Life Lessons.

In 2022 the South Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) commissioned Life Lessons to support 17 secondary schools in South Yorkshire to deliver outstanding Relationships sex and health education (RSHE). 

This partnership is part of the VRUs prevention strand, with evidence showing that high quality RSE can lead to a reduction in violence.

Measures of impact for the project included improvements to teacher confidence in delivering lessons covering topics such as consent, healthy relationships and sexual violence. An improvement among students to be able to discuss topics in the safe space of the classroom. Respect towards those with protected characteristics and a general improvement in the engagement of students with lesson material. 

The project runs until Dec 2023, and this case study shares the experience of one school involved.

South Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit Project seeks to increase student engagement with Relationships and Sex Education (RSHE) lessons and materials. This case study examines how the use of Life Lessons’ resources and lesson library have helped them achieve this goal.

Background: Meadowhead School Academy Trust

Home to 1912 diverse students from year 7 to year 13, Meadowhead School is based in the south of Sheffield. They deliver RSHE during a specifically timetabled lesson named Ethics, for which they have two hours of delivery time for Ethics at KS3 and one hour at KS4 and KS5. Their ethics lessons covers RSHE, citizenship, careers, religious studies and living in the wider world in a curriculum that builds on student knowledge each year.

Meadowhead School has a team of 11 dedicated staff members, each with experience in delivering PSHE previously, however, some started as non-specialists in the department. The main focus on ethics is RSHE as that was deemed as the subject that affected students the most whether this be transitioning into secondary school, mental health, drugs and safe sex. The staff at meadowhead understood that this broad curriculum, which deals with many sensitive topics, needed to be approached with sensitivity and careful consideration of the issues that young people face. They also identified a need to make the material as accessible and engaging to their students as possible.  

The Aims of the Violence Reduction Unit Project

The Government recommendation that schools need to provide RSHE to students aged 16-18 seemed momentous and time consuming considering that Meadowhead School had just started the creation and delivery of content to sixth form. The staff felt pressure to create or source appropriate resources and lessons as well as search for appropriate video clips that were not only age relevant to the students but also include subject matter they would relate to.

One of the largest challenges Meadowhead School school faced when delivering RSHE lessons was students’ reluctance to verbally engage with the topics that were being taught. Often, lessons felt more like lectures and students seemed nervous in engaging in conversations with their peers. This then became a main focus on the project; to improve oracy engagement during RSHE lessons. 

Using Life Lessons Resources and Lesson Library

When the project first began, Meadowhead School school was extremely excited when given access to Life Lesson’s resources and lesson library. Life Lessons have created a vast array of high quality lessons that are accessible to students and age appropriate with accompanying videos featuring peers and experts.

Meadowhead were able to seamlessly integrate Life Lessons’ videos into their existing resources which added to the quality of the lessons being delivered. The library of lessons aided in future planning, alleviating pressures on staff to put time aside to prepare RSHE lessons and helping to focus and embed lessons that staff did not know how best to tackle such as media resilience, discrimination, inclusion and extremism.

Findings of the Violence Reduction Unit Project
Time Saver

The ethics department at Meadowhead school collectively feel that Life Lessons is a wonderful educational tool that provides high quality resources and lessons. From the moment Life Lessons was introduced, staff were excited to have resources that were age appropriate, high quality and engaging for staff to deliver and students to access. Staff have saved hours of time that would have been spent searching for content, tasks and relatable videos. 

Expert Videos

The expert videos in the video library were a highlight for the Meadowhead School team, especially the experts who spoke on difficult topics such as drugs, first aid, female genital mutilation (FGM) and contraception. These videos have been embedded throughout the schemes of learning from Y7-13. 

Head of ethics, Natalie Shea, said “there is a great balance between being informative without being scary or patronising”. As a department, Meadowhead School felt supported by the videos to deliver the attached content, especially on FGM and first aid – “even as a specialist, it gives me reassurance that I am teaching it in a safe and factual way”.

Staff Confidence 

There are some Meadowhead staff members who started as non-specialists, for whom the videos and the content provided in the lesson library has given the confidence to plan lessons. Using the Life Lessons videos and lesson library, these staff members now have the confidence to create a lesson that is fit for purpose and meets the needs of the pupils within their classroom. Having the ‘teacher support’ element of the platform has also allowed for meaningful support for staff who need additional guidance during tricky conversations or after a difficult issue has arisen. 

Delivering Lessons to Vulnerable Students

Meadowhead School has also been able to use the Life Lessons in their on-site engagement centre. Having lessons that are fast paced, with opportunities for discussion and supporting videos has proved very useful in supporting not only students, but staff in delivering sensitive content in a safe way to the most vulnerable pupils.

Improving Student Engagement

One of the main focus points of the project was improving student oracy and engagement with the RSHE subject matter. Through the use of Life Lessons the ethics departments have been able to support and facilitate in-depth conversations. Having Life Lessons has improved student engagement and the depth of discussion between teacher, students and between themselves as peers.

The peer led videos have helped students to feel represented and supported; by seeing peers that look like them, have had similar experiences and are open to talking about these experiences, in turn has led to a wide variety of discussions and increased engagement in our ethics classrooms. As a result, staff have been able to use the ‘peer-led’ discussions as a starting point for students to be able to open up about their own experiences and talk about their own thoughts, values and morals, supported and guided by what they had seen in the videos.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Meadowhead School has greatly benefited from implementing Life Lessons. They have seen that Life Lessons have had a significant impact on student engagement across all year groups. Life Lessons have also supported their RSHE curriculum and enabled staff to extend their own professional learning and confidence on a variety of subjects, irrespective of teaching experience.

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