Rights Respecting Schools Award
24/11/23 - Today we received formal confirmation of our Gold Risks Respecting School Award
Rights Respecting Schools - GOLD AWARD
We have received confirmation that we have successfully achieved our Gold Level Award. Thank you to the pupils and staff for all their ongoing hard work to achieve this. More details will follow .......
Birthday Article Family Connections
We shared our own Birthday article numbers with our families and found out about the articles that matched their birth dates too. Good job on your homework everyone!
Birthday Article Connections
We have been learning about some more articles from the UNCRC...and we challenged everyone to become familiar with the Article that matched their birthday number so that they could make a special connection with it. Everyone made lovely posters to share the rights that matched their birthdays and some interesting connections were made, such as Mrs MacLeod's special birthday number is 28 and article 28 is about the right to education! That helps us all to remember that article. 😊
Have a look at some of our posters....
We have reflected on our recent enterprise project 'Balnain Flower Bombs' and how it has supported some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our pupils could make a number of connections!
We have been learning about the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. Many of them link with articles from the UNCRC. Watch this video clip to learn more about them....
Our Victorian School
As part of our Victorian School project, we found out that our school was built in 1876, and we enjoyed a drama afternoon where we pretended that we were school children in the Victorian Times. This was before Children's Rights were established. Children in those days didn't have rights. We had a great discussion about how children did have the right to an education (UNCRC Article 28) because of the Education Act in 1875. However, the goals of education were different then, children did not have a voice in school matters and they weren't protected from harm as their teachers could actually hurt them as a punishment!
Red Nose Day 2023
Our wonderful pupils in P6/7 organised a fun-filled day to raise money for Red Nose Day 2023. They presented an assembly to share information about how how we can support the rights of others. We can support the right for children to join groups (UNCRC 15) and we can support children with a disability (UNCRC 23). We were amazed to find out that they managed to raise £101.82 - this is a super amount from a small school with only 16 pupils - well done everyone!!
ABCDE of Rights
We have been learning about the underlying concepts of children's rights and we can remember them as the ABCDE of Children's Rights. Have a look at our posters to learn more!
20/12/22 - We would like to remind families that we have signed up to be a drop-off collection point for Terracycle. We can recycle plastic confectionary wrappers that would otherwise end up in landfill! Terracycle can reuse the plastic from confectionary wrappers and create new products such as garden furniture with them.
Please support our eco efforts and collect confectionary wrappers, especially over the Christmas holidays, and drop them off in our Terracycle bin located in our front porch at school. Please note that foil can now be recycled at home in blue recycle bins.
Anyone can use our drop-off bin at any time during school opening hours.
Please spread the word and encourage friends, relatives and community members to do the same. Collectively we can make a difference!
This supports our Rights Respecting endeavours outlined in UNCRC Article 24, which describes the right to a clean environment and UNCRC Article 29, which outlines the aims of education and for children to develop respect for the natural environment. This also supports the UN Sustainable Development Goal number 12, relating to responsible consumption and production.
Thank you for your support!
Emily, Dubhgal, Joseph, Connie & Gregor
And all of The Rights Respecting Team
at Balnain 😊
Old School Textbooks
Recently, the teachers have been clearing out some old textbooks that we no longer use. Unfortunately, our local charity shops are unable to accept them. So, we are looking into donating them to a charity that sends old school textbooks abroad to be used in setting up new schools. How great would it be if our old textbooks could be used to support others? This would support UNCRC Article 28, which is the right to an education for all children. Before we are ready to send them away, we need to sort them and weigh them and put them into boxes that weigh no more than 20kg.
We needed to use our weighing skills and adding skills to help us with this task! Well done team! We have a few more to sort and weigh before we can send them off.
Assembly
One of our senior pupils talked to everyone at assembly today to explain all about their class charter. It was useful to discuss with everyone so that we have a shared understanding of how we can support each others rights in school. We also reminded everyone that all pupils in our school are rights holders and all staff who work with them are duty bearers - it is our duty to ensure that they enjoy their rights.
Welcome to session 2022/2023!
We are very excited to continue to work with our pupils to raise awareness of Children's Rights! We intend to learn more about Children's Rights and recognise how our school community can support their rights. We will also continue to consider how we can support the rights of others.
Please watch this short animation which explains more about Children's Rights in Scotland:
(UNCRC Article 42: Knowledge of rights)
Update on Clothing Donations from The Highlands Support Refugees
(UNCRC Article 27:Adequate standard of living)
We were delighted to hear that the shipment of clothing donations which Balnain Primary pupils contributed to earlier this year has finally arrived at its destination! Our pupils collected donations of clothing which were taken to The Highlands Support Refugees, where Mr & Mrs MacLeod helped to sort into boxes of similar clothing for different ages. These boxes were stacked onto a lorry which travelled through Europe and arrived safely in Lebanon. Well done Team Balnain!!
Shipment Delivery!
We are very pleased to announce that one of our regular route shipments from The Highlands Support Refugees in Inverness has arrived in Lebanon with FreeShop , FabricAID , Beirut Celebrations , and فريق الأمل (Hope Team). The shipment consists of around 32,000 articles of clothing, which, according to Sphere Standards, will meet 2,700 needs.
In Lebanon, common commodities are often hard to come by because of the ongoing economic crisis. Currently, over 88% of the population in Lebanon live under minimal survival conditions and affordable clothing can be very difficult to find. All of the receiving groups for this shipment allow people access to the donated clothing with a focus on giving people a dignified shopping experience.
We would like to send a big thank you the Highlands Support Refugees for collecting and donating all the clothes. Their high level of sorting, packaging, and quality checking donations makes it easy for the end receivers to handle the donations. We also want to send a big thank you to The Free Shop, FabricAid, Beirut Celebrations, and the Hope Team for their work to help people in need in Lebanon. Finally, a big thanks to Sea Sky Services Sarl for assisting us as our freight forwarding company for this shipment.
Thank you so much for the generous donations in support of the Highland Food Bank Appeal. We are delighted to support others rights to access food and health care products.
31/1/22 Highland Food Bank Appeal
We hope to raise awareness of this local charity which supports children's rights to an adequate standard of living (UNCRC article 27) and to good health care (UNCRC arcticle 24). We hope that families and members of our local community can help to provide some much needed items for The Highland Food Bank. They are currently looking for donations of:
· Jars of cooking sauce
· Toothbrushes (individually wrapped)
· Toilet rolls
· Shaving Foam/razors
· Dog food
We would apprecaite any donations to be handed into school by Friday 18th February so that we can deliver them to The Highland Food Bank. Many thanks for supporting this appeal! Many thanks to our Rights Respecting Group Members for organising this.
Dignity
We spoke about the meaning of Dignity today with P5-7. We listened to the song 'Dignity' by the Scottish band Deacon Blue and we spoke about what the song lyrics might mean. Then we created these fantastic acrostic poems which summarise our ideas on the meaning of dignity. We believe everyone should be treated with dignity and we hope you enjoy them!
25/10/21 - We have officially received our Silver Award and can start using this on any correspondence
29.10.21 - Support Refugees campaign update
Our pupils wanted to raise awareness and help support refugees. Our Rights Respecting Schools Group delivered an assembly to raise awareness of Article 22 which is about the right to support for refugees. We enjoyed a bake sale with wonderful donations of baking and some were home made by our school Cooking Club. We raised £88 which we will donate to The Highlands Support Refugees.
We also collected bags of clothing donations which we will also pass on to the charity along with some welcome cards designed by our P2-4 class.
Well done to everyone for all your support! We look forward to passing these on to The Highlands Support Refugees as soon as we can!
28/09/21
We are so delighted to achieve our Silver Rights Respecting Schools Award today!
Our assessors were very impressed with all the work that we have been doing in school and with how knowledgeable our pupils were about their rights. A huge well done to everyone in Team Balnain!
Please have a look at the PowerPoint that we created for our virtual visit and see the evidence that we shared.
RRSA Silver Visit Evidence PP.pptx
We have achieved our Bronze Rights Respecting Schools Award! This means that we are committed to learning about children's rights.
We are now working towards our Silver Award.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) details a comprehensive set of children's rights which are universal, unconditional and protected for all children and young people aged 18 years and under. You can find out more about The UNCRC here:
www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/un-convention-child-rights/
We have been learning about children's rights. We have learned that there are 54 articles in the UNCRC but only 42 of them apply directly to children. You can find a summary of the UNCRC below.
Article 42 states that ALL children and adults should know and learn about these rights.
We understand that children are the 'rights holders' and adults are the 'duty bearers'.
In our school, we have had assemblies to raise awareness about different rights and we are beginning to understand how our school and community helps us to enjoy them.
UNCRC_summary-1_1.pdf
Our Rights Respecting Group are helping to raise awareness of different rights.
Aodhan, Finn, Maribel, Charlie and Emily are planning assemblies to share information with the rest of our school.
The Rights of the Child is very relevant to our school setting. We discussed this and then designed posters to illustrate some of the these Rights and then we displayed them in the relevant areas of the school. For example: Articles 24 & 39 Every Child has a Right to Healthcare. This poster is now attached to the First Aid cupboard.
