St. Cadoc's Rights-Respecting Schools

Prior to home-learning, as part of our learning & teaching about rights, the Ambassadors visited classes to raise awareness of the UNCRC and further develop our pupils’ knowledge of rights. The children loved learning from the older pupils and the Ambassadors were able to use their voice, creativity and knowledge to enhance understanding throughout the school!

Here are some examples of the Ambassador’s interactive presentations, focused on the UNCRC, the nature of rights, Climate Change, World Children’s Day and Human Rights:

Article 1:
Everyone under the age of 18 has all the
rights in the Convention.

Miss Mackay & the The Rights Ambassadors 😊

Within each classroom, a Class Charter is displayed which reminds us all of the importance of respect and kindness when interacting with one another; they ensure that respect is at the heart of each room within our school. The Charters state their rights and how they can be respected by pupils (rights-holders) and adults (duty-bearers). The children worked with their class teachers at the beginning of the year to create these, using their own brilliant ideas. Here are some examples of our fabulous Class Charters:

We also have a Playground Charter to help us to respect rights in the surrounding areas of our school building, during break and lunch times. The eye-catching design was created by a Primary 5 pupil, who won the whole-school competition, to illustrate kind and respectful behaviour when playing. It is displayed throughout our school to remind us all to respect Article 31 – The right to relax and play.

Miss Mackay & the The Rights Ambassadors 😊

Hello and welcome to the St Cadoc’s Rights Respecting Schools blog!

Here, you will find the latest up-to-date information as we progress in our journey to achieve the UNICEF Gold Rights Respecting Schools award, through our commitment to the Rights of the Child.

On the 20th November 1989, the world committed to an international set of promises for every child on Earth – the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. ‘Rights’ are universal, unconditional and inalienable – they are things that every child has and should be able to do, and cannot be taken away. UNICEF protects and promotes these rights to ensure that every child around the world is healthy, educated, treated fairly, listened to, protected, and kept safe from harm. Please click here to take a closer look at children’s rights, as enshrined within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

What have we achieved so far? 

St Cadoc’s was first awarded the Silver award in 2017 as the ways in which we learn, laugh, play and worship together, showing love, respect, care and support, reflected our dedication to children’s rights. A rights-respecting ethos is at the heart of everything we do at St Cadoc’s and underpins our school values of Love, Achieve, Respect and Kindness. We respect the rights of all and promote the dignity, self-esteem and full development of each person, recognising the strengths and talents of each member of our school community. Importantly, we recognise that it is our responsibility to make meaningful contributions to ensure a better and fairer world for future generations, through our growing understanding and appreciation of children’s rights and human rights more broadly. We were extremely proud to receive the Silver Rights Respecting School award.

Why are we striving to become a Gold rights-respecting school? 

As some time has now passed, our Silver re-accreditation visit will take place in April where we will re-affirm our dedication to children’s rights by sharing the wonderful efforts of our pupils and school community to learn about rights. Moving forward, we intend to demonstrate how we have embedded children’s rights throughout the school, within our policies, practise and ethos, and achieve the Gold award. It is our duty to equip our pupils with a strong knowledge of rights and support them to become ‘active global citizens’ who can advocate for their rights and for the rights of others.

Thank you for reading this introductory post – we really can’t wait to share more with you moving forward! Our fabulous Rights Ambassadors will be keeping you up-to-date with our rights learning and journey to Gold. The Ambassadors are proactive and passionate about providing a voice for all children in our school; their views are respected and our SMT aim to use these to improve the life of our school, whenever possible.

This fantastic illustration, made by one of our pupils whilst learning at home, summarises the importance and nature of the Rights of the Child:  

Miss Mackay & the The Rights Ambassadors 😊