Horsenden Primary School, SCARF school since December 2021, 18.40% free school meals, Ealing
“SCARF is incredibly flexible, teachers like using it and most importantly, the children really enjoy it!”
Teachers at Horsenden Primary School in Ealing have been using our SCARF resources since December 2021. We spoke to head teacher, Emma Appelby about the school’s journey to becoming a SCARF school and the difference it’s made to their pupils and teachers.
Identifying the need for a new PSHE scheme
Emma Appelby, head teacher at Horsenden Primary School, says that the school has been on quite a journey in terms of curriculum development” and after developing a bespoke curriculum across a number of subjects, decided to do the same for PSHE: “We’d been doing deep dives with our children about the curriculum - where they tell us what they’ve learned and how engaging they find it - and thought we should do the same thing for PSHE.
Following children’s feedback on the previous scheme, Emma knew they “needed to do something differently as what we were using didn’t match the rest of our curriculum.” Emma recalls that the school looked at a range of different PSHE schemes but chose SCARF for “its absolute clarity” , as she explains “The way the units and lessons are named, there’s nothing complicated about it. It’s not trying to make PSHE a subject that children don’t understand.”
Benefits for children and teachers
Since using the SCARF resources, Emma has noticed a huge difference in children’s understanding of PSHE and has seen the benefits of embedding its values across the whole school. She says "“Before, our children didn’t really understand what PSHE was. Now they are absolutely clear – in SCARF, we learn about our relationships, we learn about keeping ourselves safe. Now when we talk to the children, they can tell us exactly what they are learning and they understand that it is progressive and that the skills become more complicated.” Emma adds, “There has been a positive impact on children understanding their roles and responsibilities and their rights.”
Teachers really like the flexibility of SCARF lesson planning and its adaptability to fit within other parts of the curriculum and mental health resources. The SCARF values blend into the school’s key values and feed into their lessons on empowerment and relationships. As Emma explains, “Our teachers feel they can use SCARF flexibly, they can work the MindUP programme and circle times into it where they need to. We use it as a whole scheme but we adapt it to suit the needs of our children. The teachers feel really empowered to do that.”
“Our PSHE leader loves that it is all in one place and she can find how and where a topic is taught, how it links to Ofsted and other things. And teachers know they can deliver a really great programme of PSHE without all the onerous paperwork.”
Emma is also the RSE lead and has found all of the SCARF resources really useful. She adds that she has seen the benefits of being able to share the SCARF resources with parents, in particular where there may be any concerns or questions about RSE and how that is taught, she can easily show parents the curriculum and talk it through with them.
Harold the Giraffe
Emma says that the school has fully embedded SCARF, completing all of the assembly resources and revisiting them regularly. The school even has its own SCARF mascot, Harold the Giraffe, complete with his own knitted scarf which was knitted by the school’s link officer! Emma says the children love to visit Harold in her office and he comes along to assemblies for Years 1 to 4, but even the older children in Year 5 & 6 have expressed wanting to see Harold in their assemblies too!
Emma says she would “highly recommend” SCARF and has already done so with other schools in the area. She concludes, “It ticks all of the boxes – it is very affordable, everything is there, it’s incredibly flexible, teachers like using it and most importantly, the children really enjoy it. I don’t think you can go wrong, who doesn’t love Harold?”