Rights and Responsibilities Agreements (Oct 2008)

Rights and Responsibilities Agreements (Oct 2008)

Negotiated agreements are a key tool for introducing the concepts of rights and responsibilities, the human rights of children (if mapped to UNCRoC), and the processes whereby ‘human rights' have developed. The results of agreements successfully negotiated, and consistently promoted and enforced at classroom and school level are improved respect and behaviour amongst members of the school community (including teachers!).

They are often a good starting point for the roll-out of a Rights, Respect, Responsibility approach at the beginning of the school year. But the process needs to be informed by good teacher understanding of the rationale for the agreements based on human rights principles.

A recent review of progress in Hampshire, England, points to what can go wrong when this doesn't happen. Teachers and schools that do not enter into a genuine process of negotiation, and who make children's human rights somehow conditional on meeting arbitrary responsibilities do not get the hoped-for results in terms of student ownership and responsibility!

Experience suggests strongly that a whole-staff workshop on a human rights approach to education needs to precede the general development of rights and responsibilities agreements in schools.

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