Personal
Development

The curriculum is designed to go beyond a mere fulfilment of the legal requirements of educating the pupils about careers, drugs, work-related learning and sex and relationships. At Maghull High School we believe that it is important that the Personal Development curriculum lives up to its relevant and challenging nature. While the programmes of study for each year group are informed by the National Curriculum’s guidelines, the lessons are very much tailored to the interests and needs of our students. This ensures that we address real issues in a meaningful and practical way as is appropriate to each year group. 

We believe that a happy student will be a successful student. Personal Development is a subject that aims to equip pupils with the confidence to make informed decisions about many of the personal and ethical issues that they do and will face in life. By following this approach, we hope that all students will be motivated to be successful with every challenge and have the confidence to use a wide range of social skills. 

Financial education allows our students to have the skills, knowledge and confidence to manage their money well, now and in the future. 

Most financial literacy is taught through our normal curriculum and underpinned by the programme of study within our Maths and PD curriculum.

Students have a variety of opportunities to learn about money – working on projects with primary schools teaching about finance, running small businesses, running the book shop, and raising money for charities throughout the year. Our Sixth Form programme of study includes a variety of modules on financial education including managing a budget and student loans. 

We were successful in becoming a Centre of Excellence for Financial Education in 2015 and re-accredited again in 2018 for a further three years. 

Citizenship is delivered to our students in all year groups on a rolling programme. Details of what is taught and when it is taught are outlined in the overview below. 

Although it is not an examination subject, we regard Citizenship as a crucial aspect of our students’ learning programme. We cover the National Curriculum requirements for Citizenship in both Key Stages 3 and 4 and the following broad themes are covered-

• Human Rights- What are they and how are they protected?
• The role of Parliament-What is Parliament and how does it work?
• Government spending-How does Parliament raise money and how is it spent?
• The role of community-What is community and how and why do people contribute to it?
• Financial literacy-How do individuals manage their money efficiently?

This is an explicit aspect of our Citizenship provision and is also something that is promoted in all subjects when and where appropriate as an aid to student learning but also as an important aspect of our ‘Prevent’ strategy-

Maghull High School tackle topical, controversial and challenging issues ‘head on’ through curriculum delivery. 

Pupils are able to develop their awareness of how people should have freedom to practise religious beliefs, to promote tolerance and acceptance for all religions and people in Britain who contribute to our British culture. 

We also enable our pupils to explore why extremist views do not fit in to our British democratic views and the detrimental impact that this can have both on our society and on a global basis.

Pupils consider the causes of terrorism, study modern case studies (such as the events in Paris on 13th November 2015 and the Manchester Arena bombing) and celebrate freedom of speech, tolerance and democracy as part of our British value