As part of our journey towards becoming a Rights Respecting School, we explored the ABCDE of Children’s Rights.  Through this process, the children now understand that their rights are always there no matter what (unconditional) and that they apply to every child without discrimination (universal). We made a classroom display to remind us.

Our next step was to develop a charter for our school/class.  We started by exploring the UNCRC (Convention or Rights for Children) articles to decide what rights felt most relevant within our school environment.  Through discussion, debating and voting, the children agreed to incorporate 4 rights:

Article 12  –  Respect for Children’s Views – Our children’s views will be sought on all matters concerning them.  Their views will be taken seriously and considered.

Article 13 –  Freedom of Expression – Our children have the right to share their views and opinions freely.

Article 29  – Aims of Education – Education should develop the personality,  talents and abilities of all our pupils.

Article 31  – Rest, play, culture, arts – Our children have the right to play and rest.

A summary of Children’s rights can be found here:

https://www.unicef.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/UNCRC_summary-1_1.pdf

We then explored each of our chosen articles in turn to agree on actions for pupils and adults to uphold within each right.  Together, we decided on a display to represent our Charter.  The petals on the flowers are our 4 chosen rights.  The leaves on the left are pupil (Duty Holders) actions and the leaves on the right are adult (Duty Bearers) actions.  The roots represent the pupils and adults in our school community.

Duty Holders (pupils) will…..                               Duty Bearers (adults) will

(31 – Play and rest)

(29 – Aims of Education)

(13 – Freedom of Expression)

(12 – Respect for children’s views)

We included Article 12  in our charter which is one of 4 Guiding Principles of the CRC.  We wanted to include the other 3 other in some way too so Article 2 (Anti-discrimination) is the rain, Article 3 (Best interests of the child) is the sun and Article 6 (Life, Survival and Development) is the soil.

Our final task was to ask every pupil and staff member to agree and sign our Charter to show our commitment to uphold it.

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