Carronshore Primary School is a mainstream, non-denominational primary school in the village of the same name. It offers education from nursery to Primary 7 and is managed by Falkirk Council.  Here, they share more about their work to become a UNICEF Rights Respecting School.

Our journey to become a UNICEF Rights Respecting School began after involvement in the Falkirk Children and Young People’s group which supported pupils to update some council documents using more child friendly language. Alongside this we started to build a general knowledge and understanding of rights, hosting an event for the group which aimed to find out if young people knew what was needed to survive, what was a right and what was a ‘want’. The event was attended by more than 100 staff and pupils. We have also supported some of our pupils to visit the Scottish Parliament and share their views about sustainability and climate change.  

Pupil voice and children’s rights champions

In school, we already had established our termly Talking Circles. Facilitated by our P6 pupils, the whole school participates and discusses topics the children have chosen.The Talking Circles groups allow the young people to have their voices heard, with the P6 pupils then meeting with the management team to discuss feedback. This is entirely child-led. In addition, individual class charters are created at the start of every new school year. Young people create the content and the charters are referred to throughout the year in lessons when dealing with any issues.  

Our Children’s Rights Champion steering group meet regularly to discuss how to ensure we are Rights Respecting School both in policy and practice. We hear from the parents and carers of pupils who are part of the steering group that they discuss their work outside of the meetings, helping to ensure the message and plans are spread throughout the school community.  In addition, our Children’s Rights leader in our early learning setting promotes rights in an age-appropriate way for nursery children.

Addressing issues and understanding challenges

Our culture at Carronshore has always been a caring, nurturing one. We embrace a holistic approach when dealing with our young people and their families, including when it comes to addressing issues or understanding challenges.  

We developed a number of ways to ensure pupils could share their feelings, including the creation of a feelings wall to highlight the different emotions a young person might feel, even at a very young age. Our worry box invites children to ‘post’ their worries and our Education Welfare Officer offers support, either through talking through the worries or arranging any further support that may be required. When it comes to attendance concerns, we look at what the barriers are for the children being in school and how we can remove them.  

We also have partnerships with several local agencies to support our children and families should we feel more intervention is needed. 

Using child rights language

Children’s rights focused language was used to adapt school policies and, along with our steering group, we created child friendly version to make it more user friendly for our young people and their families. These documents are referred to when dealing with any issues in school and are centred on using rights respecting language.  

When dealing with negative behaviour we refer to our restorative practice policy and rights and responsibilities document which uses rights respecting language to encourage our young people to think careful about how their behaviour impacts other pupils, or how their behaviour means another pupil is being denied their rights. This has had a positive impact on behaviour in our school and encourages our children to think about how their behaviour affects others. 

Staff training opportunities

Our staff are supported to attend a range of training courses to ensure they are enhancing the work we do in school already.  Resources about children’s rights has proven an excellent tool for staff and we want to be able to signpost our parents to similar parent-focused resources.  

Inclusive environments

Our priority is getting it right for all our young people. When we asked pupils for feedback, they said they feel “supported in school and know anything they say is listened to”.  We strive to ensure our school is fully inclusive, we have an enhanced provision in our school, and we can adapt to suit everyone’s needs and abilities. 

Our school used the “Speak out stay Safe” programme from NSPCC to encourage the children to speak out and have their voices heard. We adapted the programme to suit our ASN children who may not be able to verbalise their thoughts and feelings to make sure their voices can still be heard. 

As a school, we are embedding the UNCRC in all we do, embracing children’s rights and our journey to be a Rights Respecting school. We hope to raise awareness across staff, pupils and the wider school community about what children’s rights are, what they mean in practice and what it means to each of our pupils as well as how we as a school community are ensuring rights are realised.   

For more information about Carronshore Primary School and their work, follow their school accounts on X (formerly Twitter) – @carronshoreps @EWOCarronshore.