Ensuring that young people understand their rights through the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is a key element of Personal Development and Mutual Understanding (PDMU) and Learning for Life and Work (LLW) in the Northern Ireland Curriculum. It includes helping young people to understand how their lives are governed and how they can participate to improve the quality of their own and others’ lives through democratic processes.

You can support pupils’ personal development and build their concept of citizenship by providing frequent opportunities, within and across the curriculum, for them to think about and experience what it means to act democratically, for example by:

• making democratic choices in class;
• playing a helpful part in the life of the school;
• acting considerately and democratically within their family; and
• participating in democratic activities, such as charitable, youth and other supportive endeavours in their community and the wider world.

Pupils should have opportunities to:

• consider issues of diversity and inclusion, equality and justice, human rights and social responsibility; and
• make reasoned value judgements about desirable action in particular situations, especially where democracy is under challenge or where values are in conflict and compromise may be required.

In June 2023, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child published a report known as Concluding Observations. The report looks at how the UK is doing at keeping the promises it made to children and young people through the UNCRC. It shows government the right way to make sure children’s rights become a reality.

One of the recommendations relating to education was that children’s rights education should become a mandatory part of the curriculum. Although the resources on this web area are not mandatory, they can provide a basis for children and young people to learn about rights, to learn through rights, and to learn about their potential impact to effect change in society and the wider world.