Level 1 award for St Paschal Baylon

In January 2016 St Paschal Baylon Catholic Primary School in Childwall embarked on a journey to become a UNICEF Rights Respecting School.

A steering committee was established with children from different year groups, two staff members and a governor.

They held weekly meetings and produced a monthly newsletter focusing on a particular article from the convention so that gradually the whole school was familiar with all of the 54 articles.

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the group along with governor, Mrs Kelly; teaching assistant, Mrs Maclean and the training delivered to other members of staff by the lead teacher, Mrs Ashton, the children are rapidly becoming global citizens.

They now have a voice in all matters affecting them and can see that rights are something they, and all children throughout the world, are entitled to. They can also recognise when these rights are being denied.

One of the articles of the month concerned refugee children and, as the school has a campaign group led by Year 3 teacher Mr Gowans, they focused on drawing attention to the plight of refugee children separated from their parents by collecting signatures to send a petition to local MP Maria Eagle.

She was very impressed and visited the school to collect the petition in person and to meet some of the children.

A UNICEF representative visited the school, evaluated all the written evidence and spoke to children, staff, parents and governors.

At the end of the assessment visit the school was informed that they had achieved their second milestone (the first milestone being recognition of commitment) of the UNICEF award and St Paschal Baylon is now proud to be a Level 1 Rights Respecting School.