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What Children Will Cover in School

The Life Skills Education Charity focuses its resources on the threats children face growing up, and the skills and knowledge they need to tackle these threats and stay safe today and in the future.

These areas fit within the Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) and Citizenship subjects of the National Curriculum, which is statutory for all schools. Each school implements its PSHE curriculum differently and uses a range of resources. If your child’s school is using some or all of the Life Skills suite of programmes, it is demonstrating its commitment to your child’s health, wellbeing, long term safety and future.

Want to find out more about the curriculum? The full PSHE National Curriculum is available on GOV.UK, and the national body for PSHE publishes a whole school programme of study from which many school schemes are designed.

The Life Skills programmes

Life Skills Primary — DAaRT (Year 5 or 6)

Our unique and successfully evaluated 10 week primary programme, Drug, Alcohol and Resilience Training (DAaRT), is usually delivered in Year 5 or 6. A cross curricular approach covers multiple PSHE and Citizenship objectives alongside the literacy, science and numeracy curriculums.

PSHE and Citizenship

  • Healthy lifestyles
  • Medicines, vaccinations and allergies
  • Mental health and wellbeing
  • Risk, health effects and the law around drugs, alcohol, nicotine and vaping
  • Mental health, stress and pressure
  • Ourselves, protected characteristics
  • Ourselves, relationships
  • Personal identity
  • Managing peer pressure
  • Response to challenges and resilience
  • Bullying
  • Staying safe and healthy
  • Building resilience
  • Support networks
  • Risk and consequences
  • Positive decision making
  • Rules and the law
  • Emergency responding
  • Respect, prejudice and discrimination
  • Keeping safe
  • Responsibilities
  • Managing transition between classes and schools
  • Online safety and reporting wrongdoing

Science

  • Recognise the impact of diet, exercise, drugs and lifestyle on the way the body functions
  • Circulation and the circulatory system, heart and blood vessels
  • Helpful and harmful drugs
  • Addiction

Literacy

  • Speaking and listening
  • Reading aloud
  • Information retrieval
  • Drafting skills
  • Vocabulary and the use of a glossary
  • Report writing, the DAaRT report
  • Writing for an audience, graduation
  • Providing reason and justification for a view
  • Reading and comprehension skills, recall and summarising
  • Distinguishing between fact and opinion
  • Paired and group discussion, collaborative learning
  • Structured questioning
  • Question and answer sessions
  • Completion of a written workbook

Numeracy

  • Cost and money
  • Percentages
STaRS — Years 1 to 4

Our programme for Years 1 to 4 is called STaRS: Year 1 “Little STaRS”, Year 2 “Super STaRS”, Year 3 “Shooting STaRS” and Year 4 “Mega STaRS”, supporting your school in delivering age appropriate content around:

  • Medicines
  • Feelings, friendships and peer pressure
  • Feelings, stress and worry
  • Alcohol and vaping (Year 3/4 only)
  • Difference and diversity
  • People who help us, accidents, emergencies and support networks
  • People who help us stay healthy
  • Healthy lifestyle
  • Staying safe at home, including household products
  • Staying safe outside, railways, water, roads, fireworks
  • Computer and online safety, sharing media and managing time online
See the STaRS guidance sheets
Web Warriors — Year 5

Web Warriors is an online safety resource for Year 5 or 6. Topics and skills covered include: the meaning of being online, online safety and the risks involved, recommended age restrictions, receiving messages from strangers, illegal online activity, and getting help.

See the Web Warriors guidance sheet
Moving On — Year 6

Our Moving On programme is specifically for children approaching the transition to secondary school, and uses skills taught in the DAaRT programme within the context of the first few weeks at secondary school. Topics and skills covered include: the challenges of moving on, recognising and dealing with stress, communication skills, recalling previous successful “first times”, and differences.

See the Moving On guidance sheet
Decision Maker — Years 1 to 6

The Life Skills Decision Maker resource covers Years 1 to 6 and includes age appropriate content around:

  • Medicines and drugs
  • Staying safe at home
  • Computer safety, online safety, sharing media
  • Difference, gender, sex, race, disability, religion, sexual orientation, misogyny
  • Staying safe outside, roads, fireworks, railway, water
  • Alcohol and vaping
  • Knives
  • Solvents and psychoactive substances

In addition, the following factors around decision making are also included:

  • Empathy, respect, stress and worry, bullying, feelings and friendships
  • Decision making, considering risk and consequences, choices, options, desirability, fact and opinion
  • Pressure and peer pressure, social pressure and media
  • Communication
  • Goals, health
  • The law, rules and theft
  • Peer pressure and saying no
See the Decision Maker guidance sheets About the SKILL decision making model