Charting Our Progress Towards Level Two Rights Respecting School

We hope our new school website will make it easier to chart our progress towards becoming a Rights Respecting School.

https://sciennesprimaryschool.com/rights-respecting-schools

Think Global, Act Local #showthelove

Sciennes Think Global, Act Local Assembly 2.2.18 from Sciennes Primary School

On Friday 2nd February we were delighted to welcome a delegation of eight teachers and staff from Laugarnesskóli Primary School in Reykjavik. Laugarnesskóli is the first Icelandic school to gain a Silver Unicef Rights Respecting Schools Award and we welcomed the opportunity to share practice and ideas.  After a tour of the school and classrooms, the Headteacher (Sigridur Heida Bragadottir) very kindly spoke at Assembly and gifted a beautiful book about Iceland for our Library. We are really looking forward to establishing a new International partnership between our schools.

As global citizens, pupils were encourage to participate in this year's Climate Coalition #showthelove climate action campaign, by noticing and recording evidence of climate change over the next few weeks. Like Sciennes, Laugarnesskóli is working towards its fifth green ECO flag and it would be wonderful to link on Eco topics too.

We concluded Week Three of our City of Edinburgh 'Be Resilient' Health and Wellbeing topic 'Have a Goal' by sharing pupil examples of goals they have recently set as a family.

Sigridur Heida Bragadottir, Headteacher of Rights Respecting School Laugarnesskóli, Reykjavik, Iceland addressing Assembly

Rightly Proud!

What a wonderful, memorable experience for our young people - Arwen, Thomas, Alma, Luis, Eilidh, Isaac, Eamon and Rachel - to have an opportunity to present their Together Alliance UNCRC mural of Children's Rights at the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday 13th December, hosted by Deputy Presiding Officer Linda Fabiani MSP and with a presentation from Maree Todd MSP, Minister for Childcare and Early Years.

P7 Sciennes pupils with MYSPs Joel, Suki and Thomas and Maree Todd MSP

Juliet Harris and Liz Millership (Together), Maree Todd MSP and Linda Fabiani MSP

2017 State of Children's Rights in Scotland published today

We were all rightly proud of our pupils' fantastic artwork and their confidence in presenting to such an esteemed group of adults, gathered Together to launch the 2017 Report into the State of Children's Rights in Scotland. It was a delight to see their artwork feature in the newly released publication and a joy to see Arwen find a picture of herself when she opened the booklet.

Thank you very much to Juliet Harris and Liz Millership from Together for looking after us so well and making everyone feel welcome and at ease. Particular thanks to all the parents who accompanied and supported the children's participation in this very special event.

Rightly proud pupils and parents

P7 explain the journey along the seven panels of their child rights mural, from 'The Policy Factory'  panel where children's voices are excluded to 'The Meadow of Rights' panel where "everyone can be who they are" and have their voices heard.

Cathy McCulloch (Director) and Chelsea Stinson, Children's Voices Project Manager from the Children's Parliament (based at Summerhall) approached us last year with this very exciting opportunity to work with Together - the Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights.

http://www.togetherscotland.org.uk/resources-and-networks/the-uncrc-in-scotland-seminar-series-2017 

As part of a seminar series on children's rights in law, practice and policy, Together and the Scottish Universities Insight Institute worked with international delegates to ensure that children and young people play a key role and that key messages from the seminars are accessible to everyone. Together commissioned artists Joanna Boyce, Yonnie and Lyver to work with our then P6 pupils to present key messages in a creative and engaging way. Three young people who had attended the seminars (Joel, Thomas and Suki) interpreted the key messages and themes then our P6 pupils (now P7) worked closely with the artists to visualise the imagery suggested, for example 'rights in the clouds', 'a policy factory', 'a meadow of rights' and 'connected Together in a daisy chain.'

Having adopted the name 'The Clan of Children's Rights', this group of pupils will continue supporting and developing our rights based learning at Sciennes (particularly in the Year of Young People 2018) and we sincerely thank all involved in this project for helping them gain the confidence, understanding and enthusiasm to take a lead role within our school.

 

Article 42

All adults and children should know about this convention.

Article 12

You have the right to an opinion and for it to be listened to and taken seriously.

Edinburgh Youth Social Action Summit for JGHS Cluster P6 Pupils

We are tremendously excited about an upcoming return visit to Sciennes on Thursday 15th June from WE Movement, again kindly arranged for us by London based Schools Co-ordinators Harriet Morgan and Louis Sherman,

Speakers from WE Movement have visited Sciennes twice to work with current P7 pupils, providing a wealth of opportunities for our children to embrace pupil leadership. Thursday 15th June will mark a return visit from the charity, where Speaker and Facilitators will work with P6 pupils from James Gillespie's High School Cluster: Tollcross Primary, Taobh na Pairce, Preston Street Primary, Royal Mile Primary and 24 representatives from Sciennes P6 classes in an Edinburgh Youth Summit to promote social action.

We are delighted to welcome Jesse Mintz, Senior Writer based in Toronto, who will join us on the day.

P6 pupils will take part in a special assembly at 10am and then split into three groups for workshops.

The format of the workshops fits ideally with our aims to develop pupil-led social action as part of the Junior Award Scheme for Schools  and our participation in Unicef's Rights Respecting Schools programme:

Team Building/Issues Module – exploring prevalent issues in society, and globally to build confidence, identify leadership skills and also get pupils thinking about issues they care about.
Reflective Module - enabling pupils to think how they can use their skills for issues that are important to them.  
Action Planning - putting pen to paper to create a tangible action plan for children to develop and put into practice.

www.we.org/gb 

WE MOVEMENT

WE Movement - From ME to WE -  is an international charity and educational partner that believes in a world where all young people are free to achieve their fullest potential as change-makers. Over the last 20 years, Free The Children has grown into an international movement supporting youth empowerment through educational service-learning initiatives in North America and the United Kingdom, and a holistic and sustainable international development model. It is supported by the Queen's Trust, the UN, Virgin Atlantic and has many international supporters -  Malala, Desmond Tutu, Prince Harry, Oprah will give a flavour. Their model is 'children helping children' and they promote pupil leadership and taking action, here and abroad. The scheme began in Canada, initiated  by one of the CEOs when he was 12, and is a social enterprise endeavour. 

For more information about WE Movement visit their website.

The 'WE Movement' programme fits extremely well with our well established Junior Awards Scheme Scotland (JASS) programme in P6 and P7 where pupils are asked to take their own action to achieve a 'Me and My World' element. JASS is a children's version of The Duke of Edinburgh Award, and the idea for it actually came from Sciennes! It is now adopted throughout Edinburgh and beyond so has been retitled Junior Award Scheme for Schools.

The Junior Award Scheme Schools (JASS) is an accredited learning programme, celebrating wider achievement, for young people (P6-S2). Sciennes and Tollcross Primary Schools have been implementing this scheme since we piloted it in 2009.
The concept emerged from a discussion during a Sciennes P7 visit to Lagganlia between Alice Brown, Gael Logan and Barry Hewitt who came up with the idea to set up a 'Duke of Edinburgh' style award scheme for upper primary pupils. The scheme has since been developed from a city wide, to UK wide to international programme.

There are three levels (bronze, silver and gold), each requiring a higher degree of commitment. Each level also includes four sections to be completed:

• My interest - a hobby or interest
• Get Active, Stay Active - involvement in a sport or physical activity
• Me and My World - a community or environmental project
• Adventure - a teamwork challenge through involvement in an outdoor activity (e.g Benmore and Lagganlia)

http://jassawardsciennes.blogspot.co.uk/

Sciennes helped develop an online version - eJASS.


WE Movement also fits well with our Unicef Rights Respecting Schools programme. We achieved Level One in May 2016 and our next steps are to continue to extend knowledge of UNCRC and to expand global citizenship. The WE Movement programme assists us with that. We have highlighted the relevance of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development since their launch in September 2015 and the programme also supports this extremely well.

It's Official! Unicef Rights Respecting Schools Level One Award!

Thank you very much to Gerry McMurtrie, Senior Professional Advisor for Rights Respecting Schools (Scotland) with UNICEF UK for all his advice, support, enthusiasm and encouragement.

Thank you also to Jen Drummond, City of Edinburgh Strategic Lead Unicef Rights Respecting Schools Award, and her team who visited school on Wednesday 11th May. They were so supportive in their verbal feedback on the day and also in subsequent detailed, helpful, written feedback received on Monday 31st May 2016, confirming our Level One Award. The team rightly acknowledged the tremendous support we receive from our wonderful Parent Council, many of whom participated in the inspection visit.

Well done all! Great Sciennes Team effort and achievement!

Read about our journey to becoming a Rights Respecting school on our RRSA blog, which includes a Timeline.