Rights Are at the Heart of St Francis Primary School and Nursery Class
Welcome to Our Rights Respecting Journey
In March 2024, we were proud to achieve the UNICEF Silver: Rights Aware Award, recognising the progress our school community had made in learning about children’s rights and putting them into practice.
Now, we are building on that achievement as we continue our journey towards Gold: Rights Respecting.
At St Francis’, we believe that every child should know their rights, experience their rights and feel empowered to stand up for the rights of others.
Our journey is rooted in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which sets out the rights of every child, everywhere.
What are children’s rights?
Children’s rights belong to every child. They are universal, unconditional, inherent, inalienable and indivisible.
The UNCRC sets out the rights that every child should be able to enjoy, including the right to be safe, healthy, educated, listened to, included and treated fairly.
Children’s rights are explained in the 54 articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. You can read about them here:
UN Convention for the Rights of the Child
Rights Holders and Duty Bearers
All children are rights holders. This means that every child has rights simply because they are a child.
Adults, including parents, carers, teachers, governments and other organisations, are duty bearers. Duty bearers have a responsibility to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights.
As a Rights Respecting School, we want our pupils to understand both their own rights and the important role that adults have in helping make those rights a reality.
Explore Children’s Rights
As we continue our journey towards Gold, we want pupils and families to feel confident learning about and talking about children’s rights.
We use child-friendly UNCRC symbols to help pupils recognise, understand and talk about the different rights contained within the Convention.
The UNCRC
The rights that guide everything we do.
Rights and the Wider World
We also make connections between children’s rights and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the Global Goals.
These help our pupils explore issues affecting children and communities around the world and think about how they can contribute to a fairer, safer and more sustainable future.
🔗 Find Out More
Families can explore further information about children’s rights and the UNCRC using the resources below.
Children’s Rights: A Guide for Parents and Families
OUR JOURNEY SO FAR
◆ MARCH 2024
SILVER: RIGHTS AWARE
Award achieved
● 2024–2026
BUILDING ON SILVER
Knowledge, practice and visibility
● 2026–27
DEEPENING OUR PRACTICE
Participation, action and impact
★ NEXT MILESTONE
GOLD: RIGHTS RESPECTING
Our clear destination
Silver is where we are. Gold is where we are going.
Our Rights Ambassadors
Our Rights Ambassadors play an important role in our journey towards Gold. They help to make children’s rights visible across our school, gather and represent pupil voice, share ideas and encourage others to stand up for their own rights and the rights of others.
Their voices matter. We want our pupils to know that they can participate, be listened to and help shape life at St Francis.
Meet Our Rights Ambassadors
Making Rights Real at St Francis’
Children’s rights should be more than something we learn about. We want rights to be understood, experienced and acted upon throughout everyday life at St Francis.
📖 Learning
Rights across our curriculum
💬 Pupil Voice
Listening to pupils and acting on their ideas
📣 Action
Standing up for rights and making a difference
👥 Community
Working together for a fairer world
♡ Wellbeing
Ensuring every child feels safe, valued and included
🌍 A Brighter Future
Supporting pupils to become active global citizens
Our Journey Towards Gold
As we continue our journey towards Gold, we will build on the strong foundations recognised through our Silver: Rights Aware Award.
We want to deepen pupils’ knowledge and understanding of rights, strengthen participation and pupil voice, and provide meaningful opportunities for children to take action on issues that matter to them.
Most importantly, we want children’s rights to be lived and experienced every day, through our relationships, learning, decisions and actions.
Thank you for following our journey towards Gold! 🏆
The Rights Ambassadors 😊
Together, we can make rights a reality for every child.
