Dr Diane Delaney, Connect’s Training Associate, shares some reflections and draws together evidence and ideas about rights, responsibilities, and partnership working with families. Diane's focus is strengthening understanding of children’s rights through partnership with parents and
families.
Children’s rights are sometimes easier to agree in theory than to apply consistently in practice. One area where this can emerge in schools and wider education discussions is in how children’s rights, as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) are positioned alongside the construction of school rules, policies and expectations, sometimes framed as ‘responsibilities’.
Children’s rights and idea of responsibilities often sit closely together. However, they are not the same, and maintaining clarity between them is an important part of rights-based practice.
What do we mean by children’s rights?
Children’s rights in Scotland are defined through the UNCRC, now incorporated into Scots law. This gives them a clear legal and ethical status. These rights are:
- Universal
- Unconditional
- Legally protected.
They apply to every child at all times, regardless of behaviour, context or circumstance. This distinction is important because in professional practice, rights can sometimes become entangled with expectations or rules centred on children’s behaviour. While this is often unintentional, it can shift how rights are understood, particularly when language implies that rights depend on or are associated with meeting certain conditions.
Rights, responsibilities, and where confusion can arise
Evidence from practice and wider professional reflection suggests that confusion can sometimes arise in how adults understand and connect children’s rights with responsibilities in everyday language, documentation, and discussion.
Children’s rights are defined through the UNCRC, and are fixed in Scottish law. In contrast, responsibilities and expectations are often determined locally, set out in school rules, policies, values, charters and frameworks. Typically, these are constructed through an adult centric lens, underpinned by education or policy jargon.
Confusion can emerge when narratives about the UNCRC and children’s rights are discussed alongside or blended with narratives about expectations of children’s behaviour or effort in school. This can lead to the idea that children must behave in a particular way for their rights to apply. A common example relates to access to play being linked to behaviour.
In these instances, expectations or rules designed to support positive learning environments can become unintentionally positioned as conditions for the exercise of rights. A rights based approach does not mean the absence of expectations, routines or approaches that support positive behaviour and relationships. Schools can and do develop supportive cultures where children’s actions and interactions are guided in ways that promote rights, safety and inclusion.
A helpful way of addressing this confusion is to re-centre adult responsibility as duty bearers. In a rights based approach, the focus is not on what children must do to access their rights, but on what adults will do to ensure those rights are respected, fulfilled and protected. This shift matters. It moves emphasis away from framing rights as being associated with children’s behaviour or effort (i.e. hard working and responsible), and towards recognising that adults are the duty bearers who hold responsibility for creating the conditions in which rights are upheld at all times.
Read the full blog here to understand why partnerships with families are so important.