Eleanor Service | Reporter
Here at St. Andrew’s and St. Bride’s, we are always striving to improve our school for the benefit of our pupils and for our community. As part of this goal, we have formed the ‘Making Rights Real Group’, led by Mr Dickie, a member of our Social Subjects Department. This group, a new addition to our school’s already impressive list of committees and groups with this common goal, includes pupils from across the year groups, to achieve a varied and balanced perspective. As a member, I am proud of all we have achieved in such a short space of time.
The aim is to educate pupils on their global rights as children, knowledge that is not only important for pupils, but for everybody. The path from our early days simply brainstorming ideas, to now, seems to have flown by, but so much has happened along the way.
In our earliest meetings, we were discussing how best to incorporate the core Christian values of our school, into the vital message behind children’s rights. After much deliberation, we constructed a charter that we felt best reflected both influences, aided by the many common values they shared.
Fast forward to now, and these initial ideas have been designed and refined into a comprehensive charter, that we are very excited to share with you all soon! Members of our group were even lucky enough to get a sneak peek into the design process, with a trip to the Homework Diary Company to see the design of the charter as it was happening. We worked alongside professional graphic designers to refine the charter and logo, into a finished product that we are all very proud of, and we hope you will all love as much as we do!
A copy of the charter will be displayed in every classroom, to make the message clear and accessible to all. It will also be incorporated into the literacy initiatives in the school. Every S1-S3 pupil is given time every day to read, and as part of this, they will now be given bookmarks as well, each one with the ‘Making Rights Real’ charter on the back. But that’s not all! Banners will soon be hung in the street, proudly displaying the charter, and showing what an important part of school life children’s rights are.
As of right now, we cannot share the actual design of the charter that will be rolled out across the school, but we are proud to share the final design of the logo that will represent ‘Making Rights Real’ in our school:
We have also created a new mission statement to accompany this logo, that we feel really represents our goals and values:
“As an inclusive community of faith and learning we are committed to providing the highest quality of education in an environment that respects the rights, dignity and voice of each person.”
We hope to do even more in the future, with plans to expand into a bonified committee in the coming months. One of our long-term goals is to integrate education on rights into the curriculum, across the departments. As it stands, Modern Studies already does an entire unit in S1 on rights, and the initiative has been trialled in other subjects as well. English, Drama and History have all began trying this, with great success. Our ultimate hope at the end of all our hard work is to achieve the ‘Rights Respecting School’ award, a goal we are determined to meet!
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