1. CREATING A MARR RIGHTS CHARTER Marr College is working towards becoming a Rights Respecting School. The Rights Respecting School Award is an award given to schools by UNICEF when they believe that children’s rights are promoted throughout the school. In a rights respecting school, children learn about their rights and responsibilities. They learn that if they have rights, they need to respect the rights of others too.

2. REMEMBER Rights are inherent; they are something everyone has as a result of being born. No one has the power to give them to you or take them away from you. There are no conditions attached to them. People should know what their rights are. When we learn about rights, we learn that not only do we have them ourselves, but everyone else has them too, in the UK and everywhere around the globe. Everyone should be enjoying their own rights as long as this does not stop other people from enjoying their rights.

3. CREATING A RIGHTS CHARTER You might discuss human and children’s rights in some of your subjects and you have been learning about them in Tutor Time over the past year too (World Peace Day, Human Rights Day, Holocaust Memorial Day, etc). We would now like your help to create a whole school rights charter so everyone can learn more about their rights and how to action them.

4. WHY ARE WE MAKING A RIGHTS CHARTER? Creating a charter or agreement can be helpful in making the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) a real guide for adults and children on a day-to- day basis. It also helps everyone to learn more about some of the articles (rights) of the Convention that impact most on our lives at school. This is important as you must learn about all of your rights and how they affect you. Both the pupils and the adults in the school will decide what is written in the charter, how it will look and where they are displayed.

5. A CHARTER/AGREEMENT FOR A RIGHT- RESPECTING SCHOOL SHOULD SET OUT: the rights (articles) selected from the CRC which children, young people and adults consider to be the most important in their school. the actions agreed between all young people and adults to ensure that rights can be realised and enjoyed by everyone who has agreed to the charter. This is often done by everyone signing it.

6. PAIRED TASK We have chosen some Articles (rights) that we think are the most important to our life in school. We would like to narrow these down to about 5 or 6 and we need your help to do so. In pairs, rank the Articles (rights) that relate most to our school community. Write these in the diamond 9 with the most important at the top. Things to think about: Is the right important in our school? Why? Is it something that Marr College needs to work on to improve? (If yes, then it might be important that we focus on this right) Does it affect pupils in our school? In what ways? (Remember, no rights are more important than another! But some will affect our lives in school more than they do outside of school)

7. DIAMOND 9

8. DISCUSSION Now join up with another pair to discuss your choices. Did the other pair choose similarly or differently to you? Why? After your discussion feel free to change your original choices. Please send all diamond 9s to the RME department. They will then be collated to find out which Articles we will focus on in Marr College.