As the United Nations celebrated 30 years of its Convention on the Rights of the Child, Birmingham City Council is highlighting its schools’ successes in the Unicef Rights Respecting Schools programme.
Virtually half (251) of all schools across the city, from nursery through to secondary, are embedding children’s rights in daily school life through the Unicef Rights Respecting School award. Of these, 88 have reached bronze standard, 86 silver, 13 gold and 64 are starting their journey having registered with the programme.
Birmingham nursery schools have been instrumental in promoting the case for nursery schools nationally to be able to apply for the gold (full Rights Respecting) award. Up until 2018 nursery schools could only achieve up to the silver stage. Goodway nursery became the first nursery school in Birmingham and the second within the whole of the UK to achieve the Gold Award in July 2018. Other nurseries within Birmingham have already registered their intent to apply for the Gold Award in 2020.
Unicef says that Birmingham “continues to be one of the leading local authorities in England, working with Unicef UK to promote and realise the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in educational settings”.
