St Andrew's Church of England Primary School, SCARF school for over 20 years, 37% free school meals, Oswaldtwistle
“It’s the personal touch and the quality of the resources. Everything is there.”
Choosing SCARF
Tina Wilkinson, headteacher at St Andrew’s Primary School, had been aware of Coram Life Education’s work for some time and pupils at the school had previously taken part in Life Bus sessions. As Tina recalls it was something they wanted to come back to, and seeing a presentation on SCARF at a local school inspired them to sign up to the programme: “We thought wow, we must sign up, and we’ve not looked back since. We book up every year.”
Tina says that SCARF is a comprehensive resource that teachers can follow and add to as they need: “When we are using it, we know we’ve got everything covered for PSHE, all the resources are there for us.” But Tina also highlights that “it’s the people that make the programme” and the children benefit enormously from the workshops with their CLE (Coram Life Education) educator, Karen, as she says: “It’s not just a PSHE resource, we’ve known the staff at CLE for a long time, and we trust them, and they’ve got to know the children over the years. The children always look forward to seeing Karen.”
A flexible programme for teachers
Tina says that the teachers really like the flexibility of SCARF and it has helped them hugely in their busy roles: “SCARF makes it so easy. If someone is covering for a teacher, it’s all planned, it’s all there ready. Our teachers use it as a guide, but over time it’s helped them change the way they teach certain things too. It’s helped them with knowing what to do next and how they can adapt things for different year groups. It’s been invaluable.”
Tina continues: “I go into the classrooms and I speak to the children about what they’ve been doing and I can see it’s having an impact because the teachers enjoy their teaching when they don’t have to sit there planning and always thinking of things to say and do.”
The flexibility of the educator sessions has also been beneficial, as Tina explains: “The educator, Karen is so knowledgeable and makes the classes bespoke to us. I’ll chat with her about some of the issues we are seeing in class and she’ll tweak it to what we need and what we are doing.”
What SCARF means to pupils
Teachers at the school asked their pupils across a range of year groups what they learn in SCARF and what it means to them.
Many of the pupils highlighted the SCARF values, including safety and friendship. One pupil said: “The lessons teach us how to be safe and how to make our own decisions” whilst others referred to learning how to “be a good friend”, “being kind” and “treating friends how you want them to treat you back”. Others explained how they had been learning how to “keep ourselves healthy”, “protect ourselves” and “take responsibility”.
Pupils reported that they enjoyed the sessions, with one describing them as “super fun” and they liked meeting the CLE mascot ‘Harold the Giraffe’ who was “funny, joyful and positive”. One pupil added:
We learn new things every time we do a PSHE lesson” whilst another said “It’s good because we get to learn new things and it’s very important we know how to keep ourselves safe.”
Tina also highlighted the impact of having an external educator coming to the school to deliver the sessions: “The children respond really well to having somebody different coming in and then the staff can follow it up. When it’s something to do with relationships education, they quite like that it’s not their teacher, they feel if they want to ask something more embarrassing, they can.”
Tina adds that the sessions have been so important in relation to some of the issues seen at the school around use of social media and online bullying, “Our educator will come in and talk about how they go into lots of schools and they see lots of the same issues. It’s very powerful for the children to hear that this kind of thing impacts lots of children, it’s not just them. Hearing it from someone else is very important. It helps them to make the right decisions.”
Tina concludes that she would definitely recommend SCARF to other schools, “It’s the personal touch and the quality of the resources. Everything is there.”