Bowlee Park School is first in Rochdale borough to receive UNICEF’s Gold Rights Respecting Award

The Rights Respecting School Council receiving their gold certificate with Kathryn Gorton (front left) and Catherine Mullane (front right) both lead teachers for Rights Respecting Schools with Headteacher Aleksandra Hartshorne (back left) and Assistant Head Claire Smith (back right)

Bowlee Park School has become the first in the Rochdale borough to receive UNICEF’s Gold Rights Respecting Award.

Gold is only granted by UNICEF UK to schools that have fully embedded children’s rights throughout the school in its policies, practice and ethos.

Bowlee Park already boasted the only silver award in Rochdale but their hard work in recent years, despite the constraints of the pandemic, has seen them recognised with a gold award, which was presented in an assembly this week.

In order to achieve the award, schools must show sufficient evidence to a professional adviser that children, young people and adults have a thorough understanding of child rights, and rights-respecting attitudes and language are embedded across the school.

After receiving their silver award three years ago, the school was encouraged to push for gold and was able to achieve it despite the impact of the pandemic, which forced the school to adapt their rights’ team in line with the covid bubble advice set out by the government.

They were visited remotely by a professional adviser in December, who spoke with children, staff and parents, and they were clearly impressed with the work being done on children’s rights, as well as other issues such as climate change and the refugee situation.

Assistant head Claire Smith said: “Since we came back in September we’ve gone back to having a team again.

“There’s been a lot of change because bubbles could mix once again. We’ve got children representing us from right across school.

“A lot of things have been done remotely and it has been a lot more challenging and I think that to have children as young as three talk confidently about the convention and about rights and how we teach rights at school, is really quite phenomenal.”

The school has also been contacted by the World Education Summit, which is set to take place in March this year, about producing videos on children’s rights.