Keills Primary receives Rights Respecting School – Silver Award!
June 2023
On the 24th May, Keills Primary School underwent a Rights Respecting Schools Accreditation for the Silver Award. After almost 3 hours of the Argyll and Bute assessor, Christine Walker, asking questions to staff, parents and children about the teaching, learning and experiences within the school, she finally announced that we had indeed met the standard for UNICEF UK’s Rights Respecting School Award at Silver: Rights Aware. We were all delighted with this recognition – a massive achievement for our small school!
Over the last eighteen months everyone, staff and children, have worked so hard towards achieving the silver award. The process has focussed on teaching and learning about rights; teaching and learning through rights – developing our school ethos and relationships and, teaching and learning for rights – supporting and promoting child participation, empowerment and action. To be one of the fourteen schools within Argyll and Bute to have achieved Silver is certainly a credit to all within the school.
Special recognition for their efforts goes to our Steering group members – Kara, Ryan, Oonagh, Hamish, Erin, Willow, Robbie, and our additional volunteers – Ellie, Charlie, Keith, Caitlin, who spoke so confidently to Christine about the learning and events undertaken within the school and their personal thoughts and experiences. Afterwards some of the children shared their feelings. Robbie said, ‘I spoke to Christine Walker about our rights. I was a wee bit shy but afterwards I felt amazing.’ Charlie remarked, ‘I felt proud of what I’ve done.’ Hamish added, ‘I felt happy and excited.’ Willow stated she felt ‘amazing and proud’. Keith said, ‘I felt good when we got the Silver.’ While Caitlin announced, ‘I felt good. Then after I felt so amazing. Then when I heard we got Silver I wanted to scream with excitement!’ We were all very happy and delighted when the announcement was made.
We would also like to thank Alyson MacGillivray and Lorna McLellan, our Parent Council members who spoke to Christine at length about their thoughts about the school’s rights respecting journey.
In addition to this, we would also like to acknowledge our former pupils Clara and Scarlett who were in P.7 when we began our Rights Respecting journey. They played a key role in the Steering group and Pupil Council and set such a good example for others to follow.
Our next steps is of course aiming for the Gold Award, which is achieved when children’s rights are embedded throughout the school in polices, practice and the ethos. This is a long term process which will take approximately three years! It is however a journey we are committed to and are looking forward to undertaking!
Keills Primary Celebrate ‘Childhood Day’ June 2023
Games up the field at Keills!
On the 9th June, the children at Keills Primary had a challenging but fun morning participating in the ‘Childhood Day Mile’. The children took part in a range of sports activities which covered a distance of a mile to fundraise for the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children). The activities were planned and organised by our Rights Respecting Steering group and some additional helpers. These included travelling along the school trim trail, jumping over hurdles, an obstacle course, a football dribbling and scoring challenge as well as a conga style dance around the perimeter of the school playground.
The children have been learning about the work of the NSPCC and the support they provide for children. They have been learning and reinforcing one of the key messages – ‘Speak Out, Stay Safe’. This important message links directly to their rights which as a Rights Respecting School we are keen to share: Children have the right to be listened to and taken seriously; to be protected from being hurt or badly treated; and to help if they have been hurt, neglected and badly treated.
The children and staff would like to thank the support of our parents for their generous donations. We raised a total of £120. A fantastic achievement!
Article 1 and 2 – World Children’s Day November 2022
learned about World Children’s Day which is celebrated on 20th November every year, the date when world leaders adopted the UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) in 1989. One aspect of the event is for children and young people to learn about their rights.
Article 24 – World Water Day October 2022
Continuing with our work, linked to our Rights Respecting School (Article 24 – I have the right to good quality health care, to clean water and good food), and the SHANARRI indicator Healthy, we spent time this morning on practical water based activities. All the children experienced three different activities: learning about volume, experiencing the weight of water and experimenting with different filters. We have been learning about how easily we can access clean water and, what we need and use it for. We also looked at how other children around the world do not have access to clean water. We learned how some children have to travel long distances to fetch and carry heavy loads of water, how unsafe the water is and how having doing this impacts on other aspects of their life
Article 24 – Healthy Eating August 2022
To learn about our access to ‘Good Food’ we worked on the ‘Eatwell’ topic in our classes then came together for a ‘Fruit and Vegetable Food Tasting’ session to promote our 5 a day – incorporating as many different colours of the rainbow as possible. Children were encouraged to try new foods. The response was very positive!
The event gave our cook feedback which helped to inform her of ways of incorporating popular foods to snack time and to our salad bar. The support from our cook who prepared food and to our local CO-OP who donated an amazing selection of fruit and vegetables was invaluable as we would not have been able to achieve this.
We then had a Googlemeet with Argyll and Bute Catering Team to learn more about the school lunch menus. It was interesting to learn how much time and effort is put into making sure our meals are healthy and well balanced. We asked lots of questions and learned lots about the food/meals we access at school.
