'We did not come here to fear the future. We came here to shape it.' - Barack Obama

We were delighted to receive our Rights Respecting Silver award in July 2023. The assessor was very impressed with how confidently the children articulated their knowledge and understanding of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Here are some examples from the report: 

The curriculum gives opportunities for children to find out about rights and a key stage two pupil explained that “It’s a key part of our school, it’s in history, RE, Tuesday assemblies and even in our guided reading. When asked to say more about how it linked to guided reading, he explained that in a text that they are reading, “It mentions freedom, and so they are not accessing their rights and it’s important to speak out and fight back.”

Children knew and understood that not all children in the United Kingdom were not able to access their rights and gave examples such as those “Living in an environment that is not safe for them,” and “Being abused or not listened to because of their skin colour or religion.”

It was evident that children benefited from understanding how rights and respect supported good relationships which contributes to pupils’ enjoyment of school; one child explained that “There’s always people who care, teachers will always find someone to sit with you and sometimes you don’t have to, because people will just come up to you.”

If you would like to read the whole report - please see below.

We are now continuing on our Rights Respecting Schools Award journey - working towards our Gold award. Over 1.5 million children in the UK attend a Rights Respecting School and nearly 5,000 schools up and down the country are working through the Award - using the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as their guide. The Rights Respecting Schools Award helps schools to embed the values of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in daily school life - it is based on principles of equality, dignity, respect, non-discrimination and participation - the UNCRC aligns very well with our school's vision and values, as well as our work on equality and diversity across the school. RRSA encourages children to become outward looking, responsible, active citizens.

There are 3 strands to the Rights Respecting Schools work - 

Strand A: Teaching and learning about rights; 

Strand B: Teaching and learning through rights – ethos and relationships  

Strand C: Teaching and learning for rights – participation, empowerment and action. 

For examples of work we have done towards each strand, please see the presentation - Buckland School's Journey to Silver.