Rights Respecting Schools
in Scotland
On Friday 20 May 2022, the Scottish Government announced funding for UNICEF UK to offer our Rights Respecting Schools Award programme to all state primary and secondary schools in Scotland.
Currently, 75 per cent of Scottish schools are engaged with the programme and 743 have achieved the Silver or Gold stage of the Award where the impact of the RRSA is visibly recognised.
The grant from the Scottish Government will allow schools to register for the Award and access all training, accreditations and support for free until March 2025. This will remove financial barriers and give any school interested in becoming Rights Respecting the opportunity to do so, creating a lasting impact for children in Scotland. You can read more about the impact of the Award here.
While this funding will focus on embedding children’s rights in primary and secondary schools, the Scottish Government supports UNICEF UK research into understanding how early learning and childcare settings integrate children’s rights.
Since 2022, the participation of schools in Scotland has been funded by a Scottish Government grant, which has led to more schools than ever before engaging with the programme and achieving accreditation.
The funding is coming to an end in March 2025 and you may remember that we wrote to all Scottish schools in August to make you aware of the vastly increased demand for accreditations visits and encouraged early booking. Sadly, we’ve now reached the point where we can no longer accommodate any more Gold visits in the first three months of 2025. We also have only a handful of Silver visit slots remaining. We have already drafted in additional support from fellow Professional Advisers across the UK and our team of skilled assessors and there is now no more we can do to increase capacity.
Our conversations with local authorities have continued, offering them the opportunity to enter into agreements to avoid costs being passed directly to schools when the Scottish Government funding ends. We expect to know more about their intentions in the new year. From 1 April 2025, where local authorities choose not to have agreements with UNICEF UK, unfortunately, schools will need to fund their own membership in order to continue to access RRSA benefits, as is the case in much of the UK.
If you wish to book an accreditation visit from April onwards, please continue to request this in the usual way, but be aware that the process of allocating dates may be more complicated than normal.
From now on until March 2025, if you are a state primary or secondary school in Scotland, you can register for RRSA and access training and support for free. Teaching resources are not included, you can order these here if you’d like.
If you’re ready to begin your Rights Respecting journey, use our general registration form. Just make sure to tick the option that your school is in Scotland. Then you won’t be asked for your bank details as you don’t need to pay the annual fee.
From now on until March 2025, you can progress your Rights Respecting journey at no cost, with accreditations, e-learning, training courses and support workshops for free. You don’t have to register again or take any other action to access the support.
Teaching resources are not included, you can order these here if you’d like.
For any questions, please contact your Professional Adviser or [email protected].
Every six months we produce a report detailing the difference for children in Scotland this funding is making. Read the latest report below.
The Rights Respecting Schools team provides support and a framework for Scottish local authorities to manage the RRSA programme within their education network. Facilitating schools within a local authority to take part in the Award provides an established framework to comply with incorporation and offer a child rights-based approach to whole-school improvement.
Our downloadable pdf guide outlines a framework for managing RRSA within a local authority, with support from UNICEF UK. Every local authority will have their own approach, so included in this guide are case studies from authorities that are already running RRSA.
Our aim, both with the guide and approach to partnership, is to empower local authorities to see that delivering child rights education is possible with some adjustment to staff roles at various levels and the setting up of new processes and networks. And that now, while funding is available, is a fantastic moment to commit to this work.
