Children learn the importance of their rights

Project
Unicef UK Rights Respecting Schools Award

Purpose
To create safe and inspiring places to learn, where children are respected, their talents are nurtured and they are able to thrive

Funding
Schools pay an annual fee of £2 a pupil, with a reduction to £1.25 after gold membership is achieved. In Scotland the programme is funded by a Scottish government grant until March 2025

Background
In the early 2000s the UK Committee for Unicef (Unicef UK) was delivering assemblies and lessons for schools around children’s rights. But it wanted to create a longer-term programme that would create lasting change. This ambition was driven by a 2007 Unicef report, Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries, which ranked the UK last for overall child wellbeing and fifth for children’s educational wellbeing.

In 2007 Unicef UK piloted Rights Respecting Schools in five local authorities, with Department for Education funding, and in 2010 the Rights Respecting Schools Award was rolled out more widely.

Action
The Rights Respecting Schools Award is a membership-based programme with an annual subscription that covers the cost of running the scheme and gives schools access to resources, training and support. The award recognises a school’s achievement in putting the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into practice within the school and beyond. The convention has 54 articles that cover all aspects of a child’s life and set out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights all children are entitled to.

The programme is open to primary schools, secondary schools, nursery schools, schools for children and young people with special educational needs and pupil referral units across the UK. It covers three areas. The first, “teaching and learning about rights”, ensures children and adults in the school understand the convention. The second “teaching and learning through rights – ethos and relationships” ensures children, young people and adults collaborate to create a school community based on equality, dignity, respect, non-discrimination and participation. The third, “teaching and learning for rights – participation, empowerment and action” empowers children to enjoy and exercise their rights and to promote the rights of others.

Schools work through bronze, silver and gold levels and it can take up to four years to achieve gold status. The process involves a review of policies, values and ethos as well as delivering activities and lessons. “We say these are the outcomes that we want, but you can go about it in different ways,” says Frances Bestley, programme director since 2010.

Among other outcomes, children at a Rights Respecting School should understand the concepts of fairness and equity and be able to describe how the school promotes them and puts them into practice. School systems to address disagreements, conflict and prejudicial attitudes and actions should be seen to be transparent, fair and effective by children and adults. The school should be able to show that bullying, violent and discriminatory behaviour is rare or steadily declining.

“The first thing you would see if you went into a Rights Respecting School would be noticeboards talking about rights and about the convention, and lots of labelled displays making a direct link between its articles and the children’s learning,” says Bestley. “Hopefully you would also notice really good relationships between adults and children, and between children and children – generally, there’s a real feeling of respect, of children being listened to and their views being taken seriously.”

In December 2021 Unicef UK launched the “Article of the Week” resource, with activities for primary and secondary schools linked to a particular article of the convention. “Often schools start in September, looking at the right to education,” explains Bestley. “They might create class charters, which are agreements about how you treat one another in your class – that might be linked to the right to education, the right to be safe, the right to have your voice heard. Then they talk about the actions that they might take to make sure those rights are met.”

Children might deliver assemblies on particular rights, talking about what they mean in their school, community and the world in general. “A lot of schools are talking about having Ukrainian refugees, and there’s an article about refugees having the same rights as everybody else,” says Bestley.

Unicef UK professional advisers work with teachers and staff, providing training, lesson plans, guidance and, when a school is ready, an assessment.

To achieve bronze, which takes around three to six months, a school must show it has introduced the programme’s three core strands, including setting up a pupil-led steering group consisting of children from all year groups and adults such as teachers, support staff, governors or parents. The school must also complete an action plan showing how it intends to achieve the silver award and appoint a co-ordinator.

To achieve silver and gold, schools must provide evidence they have met nine outcomes. For example, to achieve silver the school must show that “many children and young people can describe how they are included and valued at school and can describe how their actions and those of others contribute to this.” At gold “nearly all” children and young people should be able to describe how everyone is included and valued, and the school must be actively working towards or sustaining a strong culture of inclusion. Since the pandemic silver assessments have been online, while gold assessments can be online or face-to-face.

Staff training sessions now take place virtually after a successful move online during the pandemic. Schools are also encouraged to hold regular in-house training sessions, often led by pupils, to develop understanding among teachers and students. Online resources include questionnaires that can be used to track and evidence outcomes, posters, leaflets, games, videos, songs, and lesson plans.

Gold and silver schools must be re-accredited every three years, although if something happens that undermines a school’s Respecting Rights status the programme director might ask for an earlier re-accreditation. Awards can be suspended in exceptional circumstances.

The annual fee is linked to the number of pupils in a school. To encourage schools to progress to the gold award, where the greatest impact for children is seen, the fee is reduced once that is achieved.

Outcome
Nearly 5,000 schools are working through the award with more than 1.6 million children attending a Rights Respecting School. Results from surveys of more than 190,000 pupils and 20,000 school staff and reports from 600 head teachers, collated by Unicef UK between 2017 and 2019, show teachers and pupils feel the programme makes a tangible difference. In all, 90 per cent of head teachers in Rights Respecting Schools reported a noticeable or significant impact on pupils developing positive relationships and 89 per cent reported noticeable or significant impact on reducing bullying or exclusions.

In gold schools, 84 per cent of children said they feel safe at school, an 11 per cent rise since the schools started the programme, and 78 per cent said they like the way they are, a rise of eight per cent.

“Teachers tell us it makes a huge difference, because it makes them think about their relationship with the children differently,” says Bestley. Rights not only set standards that children can expect, but also empower children to challenge when these standards are not met, she explains. “It makes an enormous difference to children – it empowers them because they know their entitlement, and to feel safe and listened to and respected is so powerful,” she says.

What’s next?
The programme is holding a virtual conference in October to celebrate its 15th anniversary. The conference is open to teachers and other staff from schools already involved in the Rights Respecting Schools Award as well as those looking to find out more about the programme and professionals in the field of rights-based education.

• If you think your project is worthy of inclusion, email supporting data to derren.hayes@markallengroup.com