Hello and welcome to our presentation. We are Emma Newland and Hanzel
Guelas from Fulham Primary School and we are going to be talking about
Children’s Rights.
We’re going to tell you about the work and research we have done
on our subject. Then, we’ll discuss the actions for change we have
achieved so far. Finally, we’ll share with you our plans for what
we intend to do next.
Firstly then, to the beginning of everything. Before this Children’s
Parliament work began, we had been studying the Rights of the Child in
our PSHE lessons. We learned a lot about the United nations Convention
of the Rights of the Child; about the rights and responsibilities of children
all around the world. The UN convention has been a very important part
of all our work, but we’ll talk loads more about that later.
Our whole class worked really hard on the subject of Rights: we thought
about the difference between what we want and what we really need to have
a happy life. We came to the conclusion that the things we really needed
– like a proper education and protection from harm – should
be rights: everyone should be able to benefit from them. For us, in school,
we concentrated especially on rights about education.
We did research on school issues (like corporal punishment), and used
books, other publications and the internet. We also interviewed a range
of people who all knew different things about the subject of Children’s
Rights. We interviewed people from the United Nations, from Hammersmith
and Fulham Council and people who worked for children’s organisations.
When we interviewed Bernie Baker, the Children’s Rights officer for
Hammersmith and Fulham, he told us that the Children’s Rights movement
in the UK started in Leicester in 1987. This was because of a scandal
where children were getting hurt. The first official rights came to Britain
in 1990.
We found out about the services children in our area can expect to have
available to them, and learned about how the rights of the child have
improved over time. We also considered how different things are for children
in different countries around the world.
Following all our research, we thought about what we could do to let more
people know all about the subject of children’s rights. Because we’d
done lots of work about the UN Convention, we thought we could use this
idea to build our own Fulham Primary Convention on the Rights of the Child
– so that’s what we did!
Do you know that the original convention has 54 sections? It covers all
kinds of issues, from family life to making sure children don’t fight
in wars …. LOTS!
We wanted to make a Convention that we could really use in school, so
we cut it down to 7 articles: all about education.
We took our Convention to our school council, where it was agreed that
a copy should be displayed in every classroom.
We feel pretty pleased with our work on this Convention – so pleased
that we want to share it with other people. And this leads us to the last
part of our presentation: what we’re planning to do next.
Now that we’ve brought our Convention into Fulham primary, we’ve
decided to send it out for every other school in our borough, to help
other children and adults learn all about the Rights of the Child in schools.
We are also going to send our Convention to Estelle Morris (the Secretary
of State for Education), to Ken Livingstone and to Tony Blair himself!
But why? Why – because we believe very strongly that the Rights of
the Child are so important that they can’t be ignored – by anyone.
We are humans too, and we have human rights – we want to make sure
that these rights are protected.
The Fulham Primary Convention on the Rights of the Child. (based on the
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child).
Article
1
Our convention applies to everyone: regardless of race, religion, abilities,
what we think or do, and whatever type of family we come from.
Article
2
We have rights to say what they think what should happen, when adults
make decisions that affects us, and to make our opinions count. This will
include having a School Council with children and adults working together.
Article
3
We have rights to education. Discipline in schools should and must respect
our human dignity. This means that a physical and other degrading punishments
are not allowed. We need to remember our own responsibilities towards
others, and make sure that our behaviour does not stand in the way of
other children’s education.
Article
4
Education should help develop our personalities and talents to the highest.
It should encourage us to respect our parents, and to respect all our
different cultures.
Article
5
We have the right to use our many different home languages, and to share
them as much as possible to encourage understanding.
Article
6
We have the right to take part in a wide range of activities, and this
can include afterschool clubs.
Article
7
We will do our best to make our Convention known to everyone.
Discussing the role of the Council in Children’s Rights with
Tony Louki, H&F Advisor to the Deputy for Environment
and
presenting our Children’s Rights Charter at the Council Chamber
