We’re developing new PSHE resources for schools!
We are very excited to have secured UKRI Impact Accelerator Account pilot funding to develop new Personal Social Health and Economic (PSHE) lesson resources for key stages 3 and 4.
Between September 2025 and February 2026 we will be working with Tooled Up Education, the PSHE Association, Internet Matters, and young people in years 7-10 to develop lesson plans that focus on the issues young people experience on social media, which are most important to them.
We’ll also be speaking to parents and teachers about the challenges they face in supporting young people’s social media use, and developing some guidance based on both their and young people’s feedback.
Why is this work needed?
Social media plays a central role in young people’s everyday lives, shaping how they connect, communicate, learn, and self-express. While it brings opportunities, it also brings challenges such as social comparison, online safety issues, misinformation, and exposure to harmful content, etc. Parents and teachers are becoming more aware of these challenges and want to support young people, yet many feel uncertain about how to keep up with the rapidly evolving digital landscape and often lack confidence in their own social media literacy.
PSHE lessons offer an invaluable opportunity to explore these issues safely and build critical digital literacy skills. However, existing classroom resources often focus narrowly on online safety, overlooking the subtle, everyday dynamics that young people themselves describe as most pressing. This project responds directly to that need. By collaborating with young people, teachers, and parents, it aims to co-create PSHE lessons and guidance that reflect real experiences, address authentic challenges, and empower both young people and the adults who support them to navigate social media with confidence and care.
What will we do?
We will run a series of workshops with young people and roundtables with parents and teachers, alongside regular meetings with our project partners. These conversations will ensure that the voices of students, families, and schools shape the lesson plans from the start. Based on this feedback, we will refine and test the resources before sharing them more widely.
Through workshops with schoolteachers and parents, we aim to understand how adults perceive their role in supporting young people’s social media use. These sessions help uncover the practical, emotional, and knowledge-related barriers they face-such as keeping up with changing online trends, balancing trust and supervision, and addressing sensitive topics that emerge in digital spaces.
Through workshops with young people, we aim to listen to students’ voices and understand how they perceive PSHE lessons and social media in their daily lives. These discussions provide valuable insights into what topics they find most relevant, how social media shapes their well-being and relationships, and what kinds of classroom activities they feel would be most engaging and useful.
Partners’ meetings are an essential part of the project’s co-production process. Representatives from the Tooled Up Education, the PSHE Association, Internet Matters, and Matthew Moss High School meet regularly to exchange updates, discuss preliminary findings, and shape future activities. These meetings help maintain close collaboration between research and practice, ensuring that the resources developed are evidence-informed, contextually relevant, and responsive to the lived realities of schools, families, and young people.
We are preparing to test the updated lesson plans in our partner school. These trials will help us understand how the materials function in real classroom environments and gather feedback from teachers and students to further refine and improve the resources.
What we aim to output?
First report: title
FIrst report on adults....
Paper Two: title
Second Paper on young people…
Second report: title
Second report on young people...
Paper One: title
Add text here.
Summary
A summary here.
Who will we collaborate?
PSHE Association
The national body for Personal, Social, Health and Economic education in England. A paid membership organisation and charity that works to support schools and teachers in delivering high-quality PSHE education. Offer a suite of quality-assured lesson plans, guidance, and advice for teachers and schools. Also provides training and professional development for educators to help them teach PSHE with confidence.
Internet Matters
Not-for-profit organisation dedicated to helping parents, carers, and professionals keep children safe online. Provides advice, resources, and practical tools to help families navigate the digital world and empower children to use technology safely and responsibly.
Tooled Up Education
A subscription-based digital platform that provides evidence-based resources to support parents, teachers, and school staff in raising and educating children. Once a school subscribes, all its parents and staff gain access to the platform's digital library, which contains articles and guides, podcasts, videos, and webinars.
Matthew Moss High School
A secondary school in Rochdale with a diverse student body (e.g., high % British Pakistani). The school has cultivated a strong, deeply ingrained culture over the past 15 years, centred on its core values: CHANGE (Composed, High standards, Agency, Numeracy and literacy, Growth mindset, Empathy). This framework is consistently used by all staff to promote a clear and shared understanding of expected behaviour and attitudes. Weekly self-regulation lessons for Year 7 are a key part of the school’s approach, contributing to a culture of open communication where students are empowered to speak up. The school banned mobile phones last year, which learners now respect, though online issues do still make their way to the classroom.