Head Teacher Ann Eagle of Tavistock Infant School said “Having had the opportunity to attend sessions on Rights Respect and Responsibility offered by Hampshire, my deputy and I felt the need to find a successful way of involving the children in taking some real responsibility for their actions and for the way our community lived and learnt together.

Our school is not a denominational school and we were pleased to find a framework providing a philosophy for living which would extend beyond the school gate.

We began with some whole staff INSET and staff were excited about the materials available and much time was spent poring over the 'First Steps to Rights'. The children were introduced to the language of rights and responsibilities and they were energised by seeing themselves in the global context offered by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Having made a good start I found it difficult to see how to develop this work further and was delighted to be able to take part in the UNICEF accreditation scheme as this provided the opportunity to assess our progress against some benchmarks and extend our action plan to encompass the work of the adults and parents to a greater extent as well as getting involved in some real opportunities for the pupil voice to be heard and contribute to our action planning. The support we received from our UNICEF Education Officer was invaluable.”