KEILLS PRIMARY RECEIVES RRS AWARD

We did it! Keills Primary School have achieved their RRS (Rights Respecting Schools) Bronze Award! We have now been recognised as a school committed to placing the UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) at the heart of the school ethos and working towards becoming a Rights Respecting School.

We have already begun the next stage of our journey by working towards the Silver Award. This involves teaching and learning about rights; teaching and learning through rights (by applying rights respecting language and attitudes and encouraging children to share their views and make decisions regarding the life of the school either through group/class/school discussions or our Pupil Council); and teaching and learning for rights (developing as rights respecting citizens). We currently do this through whole school KIT (Keills Improvement Team) meetings, where we participate in various activities.

Mrs Baker has been helping us with learning about children’s rights. On a Wednesday afternoon we all go in the hall and work in groups and talk about rights. It is really fun and a good thing to learn about. (G. Ch. Gp)

We have been learning about the ABCDE of Rights. They are facts that explain the rights of the child. A – Rights are for ALL children; B – Rights are there at BIRTH; C – Rights CANNOT be taken away; D – Rights DO NOT have to be earnt and E – All rights are EQUALLY important. We feel that it is important that everyone and every child should know about the ABCDE of rights. We have managed to learn about the ABCDE of right quickly from our kit meetings with everyone altogether. (G. Gp)

All children have rights. We are rights holders. Rights holders are all children under the age of eighteen. Duty bearers work for the government to protect all children’s rights. Examples of duty bearers are teachers, doctors, nurses and police. We didn’t know this before and now we do. It was interesting to learn. We know teachers, cooks and all the staff in the school are duty bearers. (C.S. Gp)

We have learned that we have rights. We’ve learned about the SHANARRI indicators – Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible and Included and how they link to the articles. There is a lot to learn about the SHANARRI indicators and how they are linked to the articles. We’re feeling good about learning it all. It is fun! (Ch. M. Gp)

In KIT meetings we have lots of teams and we work together. We discuss our rights and how we can improve our school. We all get our say and our rights. We have made posters about issues in school linked to our rights, values and the SHANARRI indicators. They are also linked to taking care of our environment. We also looked at the main rights – Development, Survival, Protection and Participation and created freeze frames for others to guess which one it was. We have a big display all about our rights. We can’t believe how big our display on the wall is. It is cool and it is also really bright and colourful. It is helpful because now we know our rights and we didn’t know that before. (S.B. Gp)
One of the most important articles is article number three – Adults must do what’s best for me. We have fifty-four articles. The first forty-two are for the children, and forty-two up to fifty-four are for the government. There are a lot of articles to learn about, but we are looking forward to it. We like learning about rights because it is fun and interesting. (C. Sk. Gp)

We have been learning that we should respect ourselves, each other, our property, our environment and our rights. We also use the Golden Rule – Treat others the way you want to be treated. It is very important to learn about rights. (G. Ch. Gp)

We have been rebuilding our Pupil Council. The Pupil Council is letting us access one of our rights. The right we are accessing is the right to be listened to and be heard and taken seriously. It is article number 12. We have been having Pupil Council meetings often. People had been asking to get waterproofs. Then we got them! Yay! Now we can go out in the rainy weather! (G. Ch. Gp)

We are all very happy that we’ve received the Bronze Award. We’ve worked really hard for the award. Our next goal is Silver! (Ch. M. Gp)
Well done to all!