Abstract:

The contribution pedagogically reflects on the role child-led policy plays in the construction of a rights-based school culture. It is grounded in the experience of collaboration between Children’s Parliament in Scotland and Manor Park Primary School in Aberdeen, Scotland (UK).

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (art.12) and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognize child participation as a core principle both for understanding the meanings of childhood and for creating an inclusive, equitable and just society. School is an ideal context for promoting child participation as it is the basic context of growing up and learning in our society. However, a school culture in which children’s right to participation is ensured is rarely observed across the world. This for many reasons: children may not be considered as capable to participate in decision-making [1]; teachers may not have an adequate knowledge of children’s rights [2] and/or may perceive them as a threat to their authority and control over the classroom [3].

In 2016, when Children’s Parliament began their partnership with Manor Park, the primary school was a place where children’s human rights were not being respected, which was reflected in their position as primary school with the highest level of exclusions across Scotland and as one of Aberdeen’s lowest attaining ones. A change in headteacher in 2017, and an attention from the senior leadership team for the learner's well-being, led to the collaboration with Children’s Parliament to create a child-led vision for the school, which was underpinned by what children need to be happy, healthy and safe and the idea of human dignity. The collaboration with Manor Park intensifies because of a shared understanding of the importance of integrating children’s human rights and democratic practices into the school. The expedient to do so is embodied by a specific form of pedagogical documentation: policies made by the children, entitled ‘What we need from the adults in our school: learning and teaching; and relationships.’ The policies, a real pedagogical innovation, hold adults accountable and can be directly invoked by the children, developing their agency. The contribution reflects on the participatory process that led adults–school management, teachers, pupil support assistants and the wider school community– and learners, through the facilitation of Children’s Parliament, to construct these policies, not only as a mere product, but as a process that, like an agora [4], creates the space and time for children and adults to share the experiences of education and childhood, contributing to the construction of a rights-based, democratic school culture.

References:
[1] G. Lansdown, “The realisation of children’s participation rights’,” in A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation: Perspectives from Theory and Practice, B. Percy-Smith and N. Thomas, Eds. London: Routledge, 2010, pp. 11–23.
[2] J. Rudduck and J. Flutter, “Pupil participation and pupil perspective:’carving a new order of experience’,” Cambridge J. Educ., vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 75–89, 2000.
[3] R. B. Howe and K. Covell, Empowering children: Children’s rights education as a pathway to citizenship. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.
[4] E. Biffi, “Pedagogical documentation as ‘agora’: Why it may be viewed as a form of citizenship for children, parents and communities,” in Rethinking Play as Pedagogy, Routledge, 2019, pp. 139–152.

Keywords:

Child participation, children's rights, school policy, pedagogical documentation, Children's Parliament Scotland, Manor Park Primary School.