Creating and evaluating transition from primary to high school utilising children’s rights

ABSTRACT

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) sets out a series of rights for children. UNICEF has developed a Rights Respecting Schools Award (RRSA) through which schools can embed a whole-school approach to the UNCRC. This research used action research in an RRSA primary school to create and evaluate a rights-based transition process for a cohort of Year 6 pupils (10–11 years old). Data were collected from a questionnaire developed with pupils, a researcher diary, a staff focus group and a group interview with four pupils (11–12 years old) in their first term at high school following the rights-based transition. The utility of embedding rights in the transition process to support preparation and transfer of rights is identified, as is the importance of a visible rights framework to enable pupils to continue to promote and work towards rights realisation throughout transition and at their new setting.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s rights
• transition
• school
• children’s views
• action research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded through England’s Department for Education (DfE) National College for Teaching and Learning (NCTL) [ITEP award 2016–2017].