What’s Actually The Point Of PSHE? The Useful Lessons I Still Use 25 Years Later
Last Tuesday after school, I found my 11-year-old daughter Mia hunched over the kitchen table, stabbing a peer pressure worksheet with a blunt coloured pencil. “This is all such rubbish,” she said, without looking up. “None of this ever happens in real life. Why do we even waste time on PSHE?”
I leaned against the counter and turned the spaghetti down a notch, where it was bubbling close to overflowing. My first instinct was to agree. When I was at secondary school in the late 90s, PSHE was always dumped last period on a Friday, taught by our PE teacher who spent the first 10 minutes complaining about the year 11 rugby team’s muddy boots. Half the time we watched grainy 1980s road safety videos, the other half we filled in word searches while he marked match reports. For years I couldn’t have named a single useful thing I learned in those weekly sessions.
But standing there watching Mia scowl, I realised three of the small, unremarkable skills I use most as an adult came directly from those messy, unscripted afternoons. None were on an exam. None felt like a big deal at the time.
The first came from a rainy Tuesday in year 9, when our regular teacher was off sick and a supply youth worker turned up with no worksheets. The all-weather pitch was flooded, we were all hyper stuck inside, and she didn’t even yell at us to sit down. She just said everyone got peer pressure wrong. “Just say no” was useless, she explained, because people don’t ask once. They nag, call you boring, tease you until you cave. What actually works is the broken record technique.
She dragged me and my friend Sarah – who could nag anyone into anything – up to the front. Sarah pulled out every line I’d have caved to: “No one else is saying no, don’t be boring,” “It’s just one cigarette,” “I won’t be your mate if you don’t.” Every time, I just said evenly, “No thanks, I don’t smoke.” Four repetitions in, Sarah ran out of lines and huffed back to her seat. It sounds stupidly simple, but I still use that trick every month. I used it six weeks ago, when other netball club mums pushed me to sign Mia up for an expensive weekend tournament that would have meant missing my mum’s 70th birthday lunch. First I said, “We can’t make that one, sorry.” They pushed about team commitment and falling behind. I just repeated, “It doesn’t work for us right now, thanks.” Third time, they dropped it. A decade ago I’d have rambled through a lie about a doctor’s appointment and felt guilty for a week.
It works for kids too, and you don’t need a formal lesson to practice. We mess around with it in the car on the way to school, role-playing silly scenarios – pestering for fast food, begging to skip homework – so the rhythm feels normal. I also never make Mia justify saying no to physical contact she doesn’t want, even a hug from a distant great-aunt at Christmas. She doesn’t owe anyone a long explanation for a small boundary.
The second lesson came in year 7, from our form tutor Mrs Henderson, who kept peppermint creams in her desk and let us sit on the carpet even though we thought we were too grown up. She skipped the standard stranger danger talk and just talked about secrets. Most secrets are lovely, she said: surprise birthdays, the new puppy your dad doesn’t know about. Those feel light and exciting. But if someone says you can never tell anyone, ever, or you’ll get in trouble, or someone will get hurt? That secret makes your tummy feel tight and wobbly, and you never have to keep it. If the first adult doesn’t listen, tell another, until someone does.
I thought of that two years later, when my closest friend told me her older cousin had been touching her when their parents were out, and made me swear not to tell. I found Mrs Henderson after registration the next day, and it was handled properly. I still use that framing now as a parent. I don’t ban all secrets in our house, because that just teaches kids to hide everything. Instead, we name the difference during ordinary moments, like wrapping my partner’s birthday present. “This is a fun secret, isn’t it?” I’ll say to Mia and her 8-year-old brother Jake. “It feels exciting, not wobbly. Wobbly secrets always get told to me, grandma, or your teacher, no matter what anyone says.” Last term, that worked when an older boy on Mia’s walk home pressured her to hide his vape from staff, saying she’d get excluded if she told. She recognised the tight tummy feeling immediately, and we sorted it with the head of year within two days.
The third skill came from a sixth form PSHE unit on relationships. The rule was simple: before you argue your side, you have to repeat the other person’s point back correctly, to their satisfaction. I was paired with a boy who wanted to scrap school uniform entirely; I thought uniform prevented teasing over cheap, unbranded clothes. I had to acknowledge he was right that uniform limits self-expression and costs parents a fortune when kids grow out of blazers every six months. He had to acknowledge I had a point that it removes one daily source of bullying and makes mornings easier. By the time we’d both done that, we didn’t feel like yelling anymore.
I pull that trick out every week when Mia and Jake fight. Last week they screamed because Jake knocked over Mia’s half-built Lego city while running for grandma’s call. Before assigning blame, I asked Mia to name Jake’s side: “He was in a hurry and didn’t see it.” Then Jake had to say, “Mia spent three nights building that and she’s sad it broke.” Half the tension drained before anyone said sorry. It works for adult disagreements too, stopping the jump to overblown lines like “you never help” when the truth is just a forgotten task after a late work call. It takes 30 seconds, no prep required.
By the time I finished telling Mia all this, the spaghetti was done and I was draining it at the sink. She rolled her eyes so hard I thought they’d get stuck – standard for 11-year-olds – but she stopped stabbing the worksheet. “Okay,” she said, “but I still have to answer this. What do I put for resisting peer pressure?” “Put broken record first,” I said. “Just say the same short no over and over, don’t over-explain.” She wrote it down, huffing, and asked for a breadstick before tea.
I know a lot of criticism of modern PSHE is fair. I help out in Mia’s primary once a week, and I’ve seen how patchy it is: some teachers plan thoughtful, memorable lessons, others just put on a pre-made video and catch up on marking. Lots of resources are generic, and anything about social media is usually out of date before it leaves the printer.
But the useful parts were never the worksheets or end-of-unit quizzes. They’re the tiny, specific scripts for situations most of us never think to cover at home. I always assumed I’d teach my kids all this myself, but between laundry, work deadlines, packed lunches and the general chaos of daily life, it’s easy to never get to the specific stuff until after it’s already come up.
Last week I overheard Mia on a video call to her friend, who was upset because girls in their year were pressuring her to send a private photo to the group chat. “Just keep saying you don’t want to,” Mia said. “You don’t have to give them a reason. They’ll get bored eventually.” I didn’t interrupt, just kept loading the dishwasher. I don’t know if she got that from my story or her recent PSHE lesson, and it doesn’t really matter. Some of it sticks, some gets forgotten along with the word searches and old road safety videos. You don’t notice it working until you need it.
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