Rights Respecting Reads: Exploring the Children’s Rights Through Reading

Category: Blog, SLG Scotland

by Graham Fairweather – Senior School Librarian at The High School of Glasgow and SLG Scotland Chair

The CILIPS School Library Group are often asked questions along the lines of:

“How do I expand my reach beyond the library walls?”
“How do I involve the library with departments and activities across the school?”
“How do I show my value as a librarian to school management?”

These are difficult to answer and always depend on individual school and library settings. However, one piece of advice I regularly give is to look at your school’s improvement plan, work out what the main priorities are, and ask yourself: how can my library service be at the heart of delivering this? It was following my own advice that led me to develop this project that put my school library – and reading for enjoyment – at the heart of our school’s Rights Respecting Schools journey.

With the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) incorporated into Scottish Law in 2024, many schools moved to ensure that the rights of the child are at the forefront of education delivery and embedded into their school’s ethos and culture. This saw schools across the country striving to achieve Rights Respecting Schools accreditations and educate their school communities about the UNCRC. I saw my own school’s ambitions as a huge opportunity for my library… because what better way to explore human rights than to open a book and step into someone else’s shoes and experiences?

Reading for Rights

Knowing that I wanted to do a project based on children’s rights, I started looking for books that I felt would really resonate with students, while also educating and entertaining. However, Google searches for secondary school booklists tied to the UNCRC proved disappointing – so where to begin?

Access to high-quality books that focus on real social justice issues, and promote empathy and understanding, is just so important, and allows children to explore complex and sensitive issues through the safe lens of fictional characterisation. It’s vital that children gain an understanding of world issues and of human rights, because they cannot demand that these rights are upheld, for themselves or others, if they don’t first know what they are!

So, I set about reading widely to compile booklists that focussed on such issues, and knew that I needed a way to promote them and build real excitement in my school.

Rights Respecting Reads

I developed Rights Respecting Reads to encourage our whole school community – pupils, staff and parents/carers – to engage with a range of books that bring different rights into focus. Participants select and read books from my booklists (freely available online!) then reflect on the content and submit a short review of their thoughts on our school website. Each book was selected because it provides insight into issues that affect children around the world, and so after reaching a milestone of four book reviews, participants write a small entry about how the challenge, or a particular book, shaped their views regarding one of the UNCRC articles. Each time they reach this milestone; they earn a bespoke enamel “Rights Respecting Reads” badge that is handed out at whole-school assembly.

What’s great about this project is not just the high number of students taking part, but that staff – and parents/carers too(!) – also wear their badges with pride.

Impact on students

For students, the challenge provides motivation to read, gives a worthy goal to aim for, and inspires many to explore genres and topics far beyond what they would normally read.

The challenge rewards students for succeeding with their reading goals, and while established keen readers may complete this challenge easily, for others it provides a longer-term goal and possibly a much bigger personal success on completion.

The simple reward of a badge has proven hugely popular, with students feeling that their reading activity has been celebrated in the same way that sporting and music successes in the school are. Once they are worn on blazers or lanyards, they spark conversation on shared experiences between students and/or staff in my library or the classroom, about the different books and themes that they chose and their reflections on these.

Impact on wider community

By including staff and parents/carers in the challenge, we have promoted conversations about reading and children’s rights across our whole school community. By promoting children’s and young adult books to staff and families, we are showing the value that we place on reading as a school, while also providing a list of high-quality and diverse books that showcase a variety of formats and genres. It is a very simple way for staff to broaden their knowledge of children’s and young adult literature, and for parents/carers to develop confidence in discussing these in the home environment. As one class teacher told me:

Reading these books alongside pupils meant that we were making discoveries at the same time and thus we were able to discuss the themes and characters as equals, rather than one person being more knowledgeable than the other. It has led to a different type of conversation – more relaxed and enthusiastic, more reciprocal, and genuine. Not only have I discovered more interesting and insightful fiction, but a new way to share texts with young people.

Things that made it a success

• A curated collection – When given the autonomy to read whatever they want, many students quickly become overwhelmed by choice. These booklists provide a focussed collection that simplifies the options, while still offering enough variety to allow students the freedom to find something of interest.
• Multiple copies of each book – If possible, having the same book available for groups of friends to read at the same time is such a reliable way of engaging teen readers.
• Accessibility – The Barrington Stoke books on the challenge are some of the most popular, and we ensured audiobook access to as much of the collection as possible. The challenge really helped those students with barriers to reading be able to be seen and rewarded for their individual reading identities!
• Pupil voice – I involved students in creating the book lists and took their recommendations seriously. Their involvement makes these collections better and I know their suggestions being included is a source of pride for several students.
• A range of formats and genres – Booklists focussed on human rights, could easily lead to a dark and disheartening collection. However, the collection also has hope, humour and examples of children’s rights being met – not just stark examples of injustices.
• Embracing a win as a win – One of my favourite things about this project is receiving books reviews from parents… but I do not have high expectations on this. Opening it up to families was not about achieving a huge degree of participation, it was about reaching out in terms of family engagement and encouraging them to be involved and interested in what their children are reading (and providing good book suggestions to parents).
• The badges – Who knew what a motivation the reward of a collectible badge could be! I initially launched this as a one-time completion reward but quickly noticed that students were keen to continue after finishing four books. It was huge demand from students that opened the idea of a gold badge for reading eight books… and then to be able to keep earning them. Note that cheaper motivations (certificates, stickers, etc.) could still provide the desired effect.
• Curriculum Tie-in – With a huge number of students having read books from the collection, I’ve seen positive benefits in my library lessons on information literacy. As part of this course, I teach students research skills and set a task to research children’s rights. The student-led conversation now gravitates towards deeper discussion of issues in the context of fictional characters in books from our school reading challenge.
• Reading Schools Evidence – A big positive of this project was that it naturally aligned with criteria from our Reading Schools action plan. The challenge involves pupil voice, recognition of personal reading achievements, increased staff knowledge of and engagement with children’s literature, and family engagement. When completing my Reading Schools evidence I found myself referring to my Rights Respecting Reads project in some fashion in many different key areas.

Shared resources

I’ve had huge success with this project in my school and found it really worthwhile. I believe that the booklists we created could have similar impact in other schools. I also know that each school setting is different, so in case they are of use to other educators I have created freely available Canva template files for the posters and challenge logo, which can be easily adapted to change the style, branding and books used. Feel free to adapt or use these in your setting in whatever way suits!

You can read more about how the challenge works at Graham’s school and access the booklists at the Rights Respecting Reads webpage.

You can freely access and adapt Graham’s Canva templates here. 

You can find out more about Reading Schools accreditation and additional resources from Scottish Book Trust.

More details about Rights Respecting Schools are available through Unicef.