Silver: Rights Aware
The Accreditation Visit
The Silver accreditation visit is a chance to show the progress your school has made so far in embedding children’s rights.
Silver accreditations take place virtually, usually via MS Teams. Feedback from schools is overwhelmingly positive about the experience.
Take a look at our article about virtual accreditations, then the guidance on this page and Send your completed Silver Virtual Accreditation Request Form to your Professional Adviser.
Before the visit
Complete the School Evaluation: Silver form to check you are ready for your accreditation visit. Identify:
- How has the outcome been achieved?
- What difference has been made?
- What evidence do you have?
The form is to be completed by senior leaders. You may include feedback from staff and pupil questionnaires, reports from your school inspection body, comments from parents, etc. Find the form on our website.
As the accreditation will be virtual, the School Evaluation form needs to contain enough detail for the assessor to see what you have achieved.
You might find it useful to carry out the pupil and staff questionnaires so that you have an overview of their current knowledge and understanding of children’s rights and the impact of your work on child rights, so far. We ask that all schools in Scotland complete this process. Please transfer the data to the RRSA Questionnaire Findings Form (on the Silver Forms and Guides page) and upload this with your Silver accreditation paperwork.
Send a completed silver visit request form to your Professional Adviser .
Your request will then be shared with an assessor who will contact you to confirm the date.
The purpose of the evidence pack is to give us a feel for your school and show us some of what we would usually see if we were physically visiting your school and viewing your physical evidence file.
We have produced the guidance below and a template evidence pack to help you bring your evidence together.
Download the template evidence pack.
- Please be selective – you do not need to send us everything as most of the accreditation process and subsequent report is based on what you, your colleagues and your pupils tell us during the virtual visit.
- Provide the evidence in a single PowerPoint deck (or similar presentation tool) with sections for Strand A, B, C.
- Have a contents page slide for each strand. In your PowerPoint deck (or similar presentation) please aim to include a maximum of 2 or 3 pieces of evidence for each outcome (there are 9 outcomes of the award) with a maximum of 30 slides in total.
- Feel free to include hyperlinks to useful information on your website.
Two weeks before the assessment date please send:
- School Evaluation: Silver
- Evidence Pack
The Silver Virtual Accreditation – Suggested Programme document will provide an outline of how you should structure the assessment.
The day before arrange to check the video platform: Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams etc. so you can be sure that everything works.
During the visit
Make sure you have identified a school member of staff to attend all sessions, ideally this will be your RRSA coordinator.
Be flexible. If at any point anyone needs a break the meeting can be adjourned and we appreciate that network connections are not always reliable.
The assessor should have a short break (10-15) minutes before feeding back to the headteacher and coordinator – this allows them to clarify the highlights of the ‘visit’ they particularly want to share and to properly prepare the recommendations they wish to give you.
The visit will probably last between one and a half and two and a half hours.
During the accreditation, the assessor(s) will have conversations with:
- The headteacher and RRSA coordinator and senior leaders to discuss their role in achieving the three RRSA Strands
- Staff, governors and parents (Optional at Silver)
- Groups of students
The assessor will tell you on the day of the accreditation visit if you have been successful in meeting the Silver: Rights Aware criteria.
After the visit
Assuming you are successful, you will receive a report from your assessor.
The Silver: Rights Respecting logo will be emailed to you and you will receive a banner and certificate in the post once schools reopen.
You can display these on your school website and documentation.
Reaching Silver is an amazing achievement so be sure to celebrate. Use our press release template for your media work, and share your photos and stories with us.
