A Gateshead school has become one of around 600 schools across the UK to receive an award from UNICEF.
Eslington Primary School has been awarded Gold by UNICEF UK’s Rights Respecting Schools programme. UNICEF is an agency of the United Nations dedicated to the welfare of children with branches in 190 countries.
In November 2022, a Rights Respecting Advocate visited Eslington to assess the work staff and students do to embed children’s rights into the school’s practice and ethos. The report found that "the pupils at Eslington are living and breathing the rights-respecting approach".
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In order to achieve gold status a school must be able to demonstrate the following, among other, criteria:
- "Most children and young people are able to explain how school, and duty bearers, facilitate them to enjoy a wide range of their rights. They understand the concepts of fairness and equity and are able to describe how the school promotes such principles and puts them into practice."
- "Nearly all children and young people say they feel safe at school and can describe how becoming rights respecting contributes to this. The school can show that bullying, and violent and discriminatory behaviour is rare (or steadily declining). Most children and young people have trust in the school systems that enable them to report any sense of not feeling safe both within and beyond school."
- "Children and young people engage in action to campaign and/or advocate for the rights of children locally and globally. Most children and young people understand their role as global citizens."
Michelle Richards, Headteacher at Eslington Primary School, said: “We could not be prouder of our children and staff for their commitment to the Rights Respecting agenda.
“The UNICEF values are woven through every strand of our curriculum as we see this as a priority in today’s world. Putting children’s rights at the heart of our school was also noticed by Ofsted when we were once again graded ‘Outstanding’ for our school’s third consecutive inspection.
“A huge ‘thank you’ to our pupils, staff and entire school community for supporting this fantastic success and recognition of our values at Eslington.”
Kathryn Griffiths, RRSA Co-ordinator and Deputy Headteacher at Eslington School said: “Our journey has had a positive impact on the pupils’ learning and wellbeing.
“It has shown them that children are not excluded from anything and that their rights are valued, no matter what experiences they encounter. The Pupils and staff at Eslington see themselves as rights-respecting global citizens who want to make a real difference in the world, which is very well-reflected in the school’s shared values with UNICEF.”
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