We achieved our bronze award last session which recognised our commitment to children’s rights. We are now aiming for our silver award. This involves meeting a number of criteria in different categories to demonstrate our commitment and ongoing work to promote children’s right. We have to demonstrate the following:
- that right respecting values underpin the leadership and management of the school.
- that the whole school community learns about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
- The school has a rights respecting ethos.
How do we do this?
- When we are deciding on our priorities for improvements we take into account the views of all – staff pupils and parents. We do this through questionnaires and focus groups. All the pupils who participate in our focus groups tell us that this is an important thing to do, they enjoy the process and think we should keep doing it. We have most recently utilised Google apps to make this more efficient and ensure more young people can participate. Our new approach to the student council has been welcomed by the pupils and provides another leadership opportunity for our school House Captains which they have fully embraced. Through the Student Council we encourage all young people to express their views, through their class reps, and shape the future developments in the school.
- All young people learn about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child through lessons in social subjects. We have an active Global Goals Group which meets weekly for young people interested in promoting rights and they did a lot of work last year on fair trade and promoted this with our primary schools and their own class mates. This work has been recognised by Aberdeen City Council: the group has been shortlisted for the “Children’s Champion” Award in the Aberdeen Children and Young People’s Awards which take place on 28 September 2017. This year we are asking more departments to get involved by “adopting” one of the rights as part of their work. We have begun this with a competition designed by the young people.
- We believe we have always had a positive and rights respecting ethos. Evidence of this has come from parents, pupils and staff. Through our curriculum we try to ensure we have pathways for all learners. We provide a range of extra curricular learning and encourage and support young people to get involved in sporting, citizenship and work and enterprise opportunities in the school and the wider community. This was praised by Education Scotland when they visited the school in 2015. Our school fund supports learning in and out of school to make sure that no youngster misses out on any opportunity. We will be working to further improve participation using money from our Pupil Equity Fund.
We are hopeful that all our work will be re
cognised by the assessors at their visit in October.
For information about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), Fairtrade or the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) then click on the links below:
Unicef https://www.unicef.org.uk/
Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland https://www.cypcs.org.uk/
2018 Year of Young People http://yoyp2018.scot/
Childline https://www.childline.org.uk/
Save the Children http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/child-rights/un-convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child
Fairtrade Foundation http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/
Aberdeen for a Fairer World http://www.afairerworld.org.uk/
The Sustainable Development Goals https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300
Launchpad https://launchpad.unicef.org.uk/
The World’s Largest Lesson /http://worldslargestlesson.globalgoals.org/