Personal development – Social and Emotional Learning and Development

At Dickens Heath Community Primary School, social and emotional learning (SEL) is central to pupils’ personal development and is embedded throughout the school’s culture, curriculum, and pastoral support. SEL helps pupils develop the social, emotional, and behavioural skills needed to become confident, resilient, and well-rounded individuals.

5 Social and Emotional competencies

The five core SEL competencies are essential skills for children’s development and effective learning, supporting positive behaviour, mental health and well-being, academic achievement, and positive outcomes later in life.

There five core social and emotional competencies are:

1. Self-awareness

Self-awareness is: the ability to recognise emotions and thoughts and to understand how they influence behaviour and being aware of our strengths and having a belief in oneself (self-efficacy).

2. Self-management

Self-management and self-regulation is the ability to understand and regulate emotions, thoughts and behaviour in different situations.

3. Social awareness

Social awareness is the ability to understand the perspective of others and to empathise.

4. Relationship skills

Relationship skills is concerned with our ability to interact positively: to recognise, to express and to regulate our emotions.

5. Responsible decision making

Responsible decision making is the ability to problem solve and make constructive choices.

The image below highlights the vital role that schools play in the social and emotional development of its children.

There are varying ways that we promote social and emotional learning.  These may include:

• Cultivating a safe and inclusive classroom where children feel they belong
• Modelling and encouraging emotional regulation
• Teaching active listening
• Collaborative learning activities
• Regular emotional check-ins
• Opportunities for self-reflection
• Identifying children who may need further support
• Interventions to support ongoing development

How SEL Supports Personal Development at Dickens Heath

1. Nurturing Emotional Intelligence and Well-Being
SEL at Dickens Heath helps pupils understand and manage their emotions, build self-awareness, and develop constructive ways of expressing themselves. This is part of the school’s nurturing approach — recognising emotional development as essential for self-confidence, empathy, and positive relationships.

Impact: Pupils are better equipped to cope with challenges, regulate behaviour, and build positive relationships.

2. Building Resilience, Responsibility and Confidence
Through SEL, pupils learn perseverance, responsibility for actions, and how to approach problems with a growth mindset. The school’s DHREACH drivers — such as nurturing emotional intelligence and teaching responsibility — explicitly reinforce these character traits across the curriculum.

Impact: Children show increased confidence in learning, self-motivation, and aspiration to achieve.

3. Supporting Positive Relationships and Social Skills
SEL competencies underpin the development of communication, empathy, teamwork, and respect. These skills are cultivated through whole-school ethos, PSHE (Jigsaw), nurture groups, and structured opportunities like ‘Playground Pals’ who support peers and model positive social behaviour.

Impact: Pupils form meaningful friendships, understand others’ perspectives, and contribute positively to the school community.

4. Promoting Behaviour, Attitudes and Moral Understanding
SEL helps pupils make responsible choices, follow the school’s behaviour expectations, and understand the impact of their actions on others. The school’s emphasis on kindness, respect, and emotional intelligence reinforces socially responsible conduct.

Impact: Children develop ethical awareness, self-regulation, and a sense of belonging and safety.

5. Enhancing Life-Ready Skills Through a Whole-School Approach
Dickens Heath integrates SEL into daily routines, curriculum design, and wellbeing strategies, ensuring SEL is lived as well as taught.

Impact: Pupils gain transferable life skills that support long-term success — including emotional resilience, communication, and self-care.

Our approaches to delivering social and emotional learning are informed by the Education Endowment Foundation.  Information can be found in the guidance report and recommendations poster below:

Reading for social and emotional learning

There are many ways that social and emotional learning can be meaningfully combined with our academic curriculum through reading great books!  We seize teachable moments to talk to children about a character's actions, along with developing pupil's vocabulary to describe emotions and to develop self and social awareness.

Jigsaw PSHE

Our Jigsaw programme also focuses on the social and emotional development of our children through its progressive curriculum.  The mapping of this is shown here:

Graduated approach to supporting social and emotional needs and development

For our children, we identify three broad categories of SEL interventions:

• School-level approaches to developing a positive school ethos, which also aim to support greater engagement in learning;
• Universal programmes which generally take place in the classroom with the whole class; and
• More specialised programmes which use elements of SEL and are targeted at students with particular social or emotional needs.

Targeted social and emotional support - The Mulberry Bush curriculum

We use the Mulberry Bush Curriculum for targeted intervention work to support the social and emotional needs and development of our children. 

The Emotional and Social curriculum is a sequence of planned experiences which support children to practice and achieve proficiency in content and applied learning skills. The Mulberry Bush Emotional and Social curriculum focuses learning on the five core competencies of successful emotional and social development.

Assessing social and emotional needs

• We want every child to have all the right conditions to thrive.  We want to ensure that every child gets the support they need to engage fully with their education whilst at Dickens Heath.
• A variety of assessments will be used to inform our pastoral support for children including Boxall profiles, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaires (SDQs) and Seascale assessments.  They allow support staff to understand and work more effectively with children in a way that’s sensitive to the needs of the child being assessed.                
• The Boxall Profile is an assessment of a child’s social and emotional aptitudes. It was developed through many years of research by Educational Psychologist, Marjorie Boxall and has been used widely in schools and for research for over 20 years.
• Boxall Profile generate unique lesson plans tailored to each child’s specific SEMH needs and will effectively tackle individual challenges as well as evidence levels of needs across groups.
• Although the Boxall Profile is a useful tool for identifying strengths and areas for development, the views of parents/carers, teaching staff and, most importantly, the children themselves are also taken into consideration both within classrooms and when accessing support such as Nurture Group.
• Boxall assessments are typically completed every six months to monitor and track development and progress towards personal goals.