Rights Respecting School
On the 20th November 1989 the world made a set of promises for every child on earth. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is an international statement of all of those promises.
UNICEF protects and promotes those rights and the Rights Respecting Schools Award seeks to put the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child at the heart of a school’s ethos and culture to make sure that every child is healthy, educated, treated fairly and listened to. They also make sure that all children are protected from violence, abuse and exploitation.
The Award recognises achievement in incorporating the Convention into a school’s planning, policies and practice. A Rights Respecting School teaches children’s rights and models rights and respect in all its relationships – between teacher / adults and pupils.
Being a Rights Respecting school has become part of our everyday school life and we are proud to have achieved Level 1 in July 2016 and are working towards achieving level 2 in the summer term 2018.
How can parents support their child to learn about the Convention at home?
- Take the time to ask your child what he/she has learnt each week regarding children’s rights and how they may show respect for those rights.
- Discuss the ideas learned in class linked to the focus of the week, and try to think of examples from your own experiences, or from the media, of rights being respected or denied.
- Discuss how your child or your family can promote respect for rights, or help those whose rights have been violated.
- Model using rights and respect language with your children.
- Ask your child’s opinion on children’s rights.
- Enjoy working with your child and their Rights Respecting Teddy.
Classroom Charters
As part of our commitment to being a Rights Respecting School, we design and create our own classroom and playground charters at the beginning of each School academic year.
After discussing all of the articles, we pick those which were most important to us. Each class then creates their own charter based on the rights of a child and how we, as responsible citizens, can respect those rights. Both staff (duty bearers) and children understand their roles in following the charters.
Our School Charter is an agreement between children and adults (duty bearers) in our school. They are shared values and principles based on the CRC. The children chose UNCRC articles which they felt was important to us. We then have agreed actions between all of the children and adults to ensure the rights can be realised and enjoyed by everyone.
We are Ambassadors and Thank You for your Support
Our RRSA leaders are Mrs Habicht and Miss Holcroft they works with the Children’s Pupil Voice group to gather opinions, thoughts and suggestions from all pupils so that appropriate action may be taken to improve our school, and to organise events and fundraising to support our local, national and international communities and charities.
Some of the work we have done this year includes:
Food donations
Our Year 3’s visited The Hawthorns Care Home to take food donations and sing some Harvest songs.
Poppy appeal
Thank you to all donations sent in to help support the Poppy appeal. Our children took part in 1 minute silence as well as making their own poppy for our Remembrance display in the School entrance.
Children in Need
Our children enjoyed coming into School dressed as book characters raising £244 for the BBC’s charity event.
Out Right- Paddington Bear
Out Right celebrates World Children’s Day and took place on 20th November. Out Right focuses on the rights of refugee children, in particular their right to be reunited with their family in the UK. This year’s campaign was a focus around Paddington Bear and how he was a refugee. The children in our school enjoyed completing a verity of activities linked to the right to be safe and raised by their parents.
School Development Plan
In November the Children’s Voice made a child friendly version of the School Development Plan looking at how we can improve our School.
RRSA Class Teddy
We also introduced Rights Respecting teddies. On a weekly basis one child from each class takes home one of the teddies to spend the weekend exploring how their rights are respected. This also helps other members of our family, carers and friends to learn about the rights of the child.
Number Day
Our children took part in NSPCC Number Day, each class had a sponsored maths challenge. Our School raised£2041.95. Thank you for all your support and sponsor money.
Community Posters
As part of RRSA Level 2 and linking with our Community, we designed posters to display around the community to raise awareness of Children’s rights.
