Baroness Masham of Ilton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Masham of Ilton on 2016-06-27.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to implement health education as a compulsory part of the PSHE curriculum, inspected by Ofsted, from age five to 18, in the light of the recommendation from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Primary Care and Public Health’s Inquiry Report into NHS England’s Five Year Forward View: Behaviour Change, Information and Signposting published in March 2016.

Lord Nash

All schools are required to teach a balanced and broadly based curriculum that promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils, and prepares them for adult life.

The national curriculum focuses on the essential knowledge children need so that teachers can design a wider school curriculum that is responsive to the needs of their pupils. This teaching can include a range of topics that fall under PSHE, such as health education and health awareness.

To help schools plan their provision, the PSHE Association has produced a suggested programme of study for schools to follow, which includes content about ‘Health and Wellbeing’.

Ofsted do not inspect individual curriculum subjects. Instead, the framework enables important aspects of PSHE to be considered in a proportionate and integrated way, linked to the core inspection areas.