UNICEF Rights Respecting Schools Award
What is the RRSA?
The UNICEF Rights Respecting Schools Award aims to promote the rights of children within schools throughout the UK, to ensure all children feel safe, have opportunities to thrive and grow, and give children every possible chance to lead happy, healthy lives and become active citizens in the world.
A Rights Respecting School not only teaches about children’s rights, but embeds these rights into everything it does: the relationships between staff, students and the wider community, as well as the curriculum, the opportunities provided for students and the pastoral care that students receive.
At Harris Academy Sutton, we want our students to feel they have a voice, to respect and celebrate the differences that make each of us unique, and to gain the skills and knowledge they need to go out into the world and engage in all aspects of life, whether that be further education and careers, relationships and families, or even participating in politics.
RRSA at HASU 
We are very proud to announce that we have achieved our Silver Award, which means we are committed to promoting the rights of our students and have worked really hard to embed them into every aspect of life at HASU.
We have achieved this by :
· Reviewing the school curriculum to ensure that students are learning about the rights of children in each subject area
· Ensuring that staff and most students can express their understanding of rights
· Promoted the rights of children in assemblies, tutor times and lessons
· Worked tirelessly with staff to ensure rights are at the heart of all we do at HASU.
Working towards the Gold Award
We aim to have achieved our Gold Award by the end of 2024. In order to achieve this, we are in the process of creating our RRSA Student Action Group. This is a group of students who meet regularly to discuss what rights are, how they can be protected and how the Academy is teaching and learning about rights, through rights and for our rights. They do this by:
· Promoting the concepts of dignity, inclusion, equity and fairness through their roles as duty bearers.
· Surveying the students of the Academy to ascertain how they feel about relationships and safety within school.
· Providing and promoting information about support for physical, mental, social and emotional needs.
· Encouraging others to recognise their role in promoting the rights of children on a local and global level.
We hope to be celebrating our Gold Award very soon!
