St Dominic’s gains unicef’s Bronze ‘Rights Committed’ Award

We have been busy working in partnership with Unicef on their ‘Rights Respecting Schools’ initiative, and are delighted that we have just been awarded Bronze-‘Rights Committed’.  We are now working towards Silver-‘Rights Aware’.

The Rights Respecting Schools Award uses the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as its guide and supports schools to embed the Convention in their practice to improve wellbeing and help all children and young people to realise their potential and be responsible, active citizens.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out the human rights of every person under the age of 18 and is the most complete statement on children’s rights treaty in history. The UK ratified the CRC in 1991.

Every child has rights, whatever their ethnicity, gender, religion, language, abilities or any other status.  The Convention has 54 articles in total that cover all aspects of a child’s life and set out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that all children everywhere are entitled to.  It also explains how adults and governments must work together to make sure all children can enjoy all their rights. The Convention considers that all rights are linked and no right is more important than another; the right to relax and play (article 31) and the right to freedom of expression (article 13) are as important as the right to be safe from violence (article 19) and the right to education (article 28).

St Dominic’s pupils and students identified their own rights in school and a pupil/student steering group was formed to guide the school community to achieve the Rights Respecting Schools Bronze Award.  The next stage, on the way to Silver, is to implement our action plan.