Rights Respecting Schools Award
As part of our ongoing work on the ‘Rights Respecting School Award’, we aim to be a school that puts children’s rights at the heart of school life. This helps to ensure that we create a safe and inspiring place to learn, where children are respected, their talents are nurtured and they are able to thrive. We use the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as our guide and regularly cover different children’s rights (e.g. ‘The right to education’ and ‘The right to play’) in our weekly assemblies. Alongside this, we draw out links within our curriculum (e.g. how the Great Fire of London would have impacted the right to food and a safe home).
We emphasise that these rights are for all children and seek to support children in our country and around the world where those rights may not be met (e.g. raising money for Children in Need ensures that we are supporting children in their ‘right to health and health services’ and their ‘right to education’). Last year (2024-25) the school council led a campaign to ensure everyone has access to the food that they need. They organised collections for One Can Trust food bank, visited the food bank and subsequently led a whole-school assembly on the work of One Can Trust. After this, they were inspired to write a letter to our local MP to encourage further support for One Can Trust (and other similar food banks). He visited the school to meet the school councillors and hear their concerns before establishing a link between One Can Trust and a local business to drive further support.
Our school council also work hard within the school to ensure we are meeting children’s rights. They regularly lead surveys in class, most recently listening to children's views about fairness before implementing changes to make the school a fairer place. (ensuring that we are upholding their ‘right to be heard’). In the 2022-23 academic year, we achieved a Bronze Award for our work done in school. In 2023-24, we achieved our Silver Award, recognising how we had embedded these rights across the school. We are now working on achieving the Gold Award and are hoping to achieve that this academic year.
If you would like more information on RRSA, please visit https://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/the-rrsa/about-the-rrsa/.
There are some useful videos that also give more information:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4udqAY2Bqc&ab_channel=UNICEF
