Rethinking Children’s Rights and Education

Professor Phil Jones

Is it possible to rethink rights in the light of contemporary research and experiences?

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OCC Research: Teacher and Head Teacher views on children’s rights in educationhttps://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/

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Provide an overview and contextRights agendas Explore and discuss

Can awareness of tensions can help deepen our understanding of child rights as a living, developmental arena rather than as fixed principles set in stone?

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1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The 41 articles that identify children’s rights are often referred to in three main groups: the 3 Ps. These are

• provision to ensure children’s survival and development (welfare rights)

• protection from abuse and exploitation (welfare rights)

• participation in decision making (liberty rights)

THE CONSTRUCTION OF CHILD RIGHTS• The UK ratified the

Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) on 16 December 1991: the UK government has to make sure that every child has all the rights outlined in the treaty except in those areas where the government has entered a specific reservation.

See Jones and Welch (2010)

From 15 January 1992, when the treaty came into force, every child in the UK has been entitled to over 40 specific rights.

Rights?

• a right is the protected exercise of choice.

• to have a right is to have the power to enforce or waive the duty to which the right is connected

See Archard, D., 1993, Children: Rights and Childhood, London: Routledge.

Rights and Responsibilities?

• Q What is a Right?• A This is something

you should always be able to do, to have, to know, to say or be protected from

• Q What is a Responsibility?• A This is something you

should do for other people, for society or for the environment

Ministry of Justice (2009) Young People’s Guide

THE CONSTRUCTION OF CHILD RIGHTS UNCRC• Non discrimination

(article 2)• Best interests of the

child (article 3)• Right to life, survival

and development (article 6)

• Respect for the views of the child (article 12)

www.unicef.org

How might images such as this be read?

http://labspace.open.ac.uk ‘The Child Rights Ecology Model

How might images such as this be read?

http://www.childrensrightswales.org.uk/

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Report of the UK Children’s Commissioners August 15th 2015UN Committee on the Rights of the ChildExamination of the Fifth Periodic Report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

The Children’s Commissioners are concerned at the lack of political commitment by the UK Government to domestic guarantees for human rights. The current UK government was elected with a manifesto commitment to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, and replace it with a British Bill of Rights which, we believe, would be very likely substantially to dilute the protection that the HRA provides for children’s rights in the UK.

https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/publications/report-un-committee-on-the-rights-of-the-child

The emerging agendas (1)

• The rights dynamic• The rights agenda• Rights informed

approaches to relating to children

Jones and Welch (2010)

emerging – the rights dynamic• The way ‘child rights’ as a

concept has provided a language and framework to see children and childhood differently, and to draw attention to areas such as inequality and the need for radical changes.

• The dynamic energy created by child rights as a critical position to lobby for positive change in children’s lives and the communities they are a part of.

• The impetus that the idea of child rights has had on macro levels of international and national government.

• The impact of child rights in rethinking and changing the day-to-day lives of children in the spaces they inhabit and in relation to the people and institutions they connect with.

emerging – rights agendasThe pattern of issues which have emerged within the movements for change

• agendas that shift from a position where interest chiefly lay in adults’ perceptions, opinions or concerns regarding children’s lives and experiences, to one more concerned with acting from a position informed by children’s own perspectives

• agendas challenging stereotypes of incapability and championing children as capable: children as active and able decision makers – linked to information, decision making processes and actions in response to decisions

emerging – rights agendas6.16 Corporal punishment remains legal as a matter of

domestic law in the UK in the family environment, and in some part-time educational settings in England and Wales. The 2010−15 UK Government stated that it had no intention of repealing Section 58 of the Children Act 2004 which in England and Wales provides a ‘reasonable punishment’ defence to parents, grandparents, nannies, babysitters etc to a charge of common assault/battery. Similarly, while section 51 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 prohibits adults from delivering blows to the head, shaking and using an implement to ‘punish’ children, this Act provides the defence of ‘justifiable assault’ to a charge of assault of a child.

Report of the UK Children’s Commissioners August 15th 2015

emerging Rights-informed ways of relating to children

• Ways of involving children in decisions about areas such as their bodies, services spaces and futures.

• Ways of perceiving children’s lives and experiences from a child’s perspective rather than from the perspective of adult ideas and opinions about what children see, want or need.

• Specific services /spaces that are designed with children in mind rather that adult services with no, or little, adaptation for children.

CRAE 2013

• Young people’s evidence to the Youth Select Committee Education and Life Skills Inquiry highlights that young people have had insufficient involvement in shaping the National Curriculum, with no involvement in developing SRE, PSHE and citizenship curricula,or even whether or not these were delivered within their school.

• The view that children were insufficiently involved is shared by Janet Palmer, Ofsted’s national adviser for PSHE, who in evidence said that consultation of pupils in schools remains largely an issue for the school council – a venue that often does not include the engagement of the most vulnerable

The emerging agendas (2)

• Adult power• Separating children as

worthy or not worthy of rights

• Separating rights from other processes

• Entrenched refusal• A rights veneerJones and Welch (2010)

Key points: children's rights – debates and tensions Jones and Welch 2010 p22

• Adult power used to prioritise the needs of adults, rather than those of children, in thinking about and taking action in relation to, child rights.

• Countries separating children into those who are 'worthy' of rights, and those who are not

• Entrenched customs and practices that resist changes that would benefit children

• The creation of the appearance of responding to children's rights a 'rights veneer' but, in reality, making no real change or having little real impact on children's lives.

OCC A rights based approach to education

• Education is a right for all children. However, while at school, all children also have all of the other rights set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

• They have the right to be kept safe from harm; to be listened to; to have their opinions taken seriously; to have decisions made in their interests; and for disciplinary measures in schools to respect their dignity. They also have a right to expect that the adults responsible for them will help them understand their rights and how to exercise them.

https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/

Provide an overview and contextRights agendas Explore and discuss