Rights Respecting Education (RRE)

UNICEF is the world’s leading organisation for children and their rights. In 1989, governments across the world promised all children the same rights by adopting the UN Convention on the Rights of the child. 

What is a Rights Respecting school?                                                          

A rights-respecting school is a community where children’s rights are learned, taught, practised, respected, protected and promoted. Young people and the school community learn about children’s rights by putting them into practice every day.

At Oakley Infant School, we put the United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child (UNCRC) at the heart of everything we do. It is embedded in the school ethos, aims, values and curriculum. It is evident in the relationships and language of rights and respect between all members of our school’s community. We believe that happy and safe children are better learners.

School Voice Ambassadors

Article 12 – The right to be listened and to be taken seriously. Pupil voice is of the upmost importance at Oakley Infant School. The School Voice ambassadors are elected every year following our Democracy week. Our focus group meets to discuss future school events, class and school issues and focus on areas for whole school improvement.

The School Voice Ambassadors lead an assembly at the start of each school year to ensure that every pupil is aware of the Convention and what their rights are. During the year they are also involved in other special days which highlight one or more of those rights. These have included Anti-bullying week and raising funds and awareness for a number of good causes including the Australian Bush Fire in 2020

Pupils have the opportunity to have their voices heard through classroom discussion, assemblies, decisions made by our active ‘School Voice ambassadors and subject pupil conferencing.                    

The children have chosen particular rights which they feel are important to them and have formed the school's focus rights;

UNCRC Tree

In our entrance hall, our tree is displayed adorned with ribbons and acorns. At the start of the year during our RRE week, the children each have a ribbon and take it to be tied on the tree to be tied on and to represent that every child has a voice and a right to be heard. There are 42 acorns on the tree and this is to represent the number of articles in the charter.

RRE Woodland Animals

Each of our focus rights is represented by a different woodland animal. Following our Rights Respecting Education week, the animals take it in turns to visit each of the classrooms and help the children to understand about each of the rights.