Rights and responsibilities

As in all schools, we have some pupils who are keen to tell us what their rights are, while at the same time behaving in ways that impinge on the rights of others. Some staff in the school felt that pupils' rights were receiving a lot of attention nationally without the reciprocity of their responsibilities being equally highlighted. We decided, therefore, to set up a committee to look at this issue when the Human Rights Act was about to come into force, and to try to produce a document which incorporated the basic rights of every person in the building. The committee involved pupils, teaching and non-teaching staff. After much discussion we felt that we had succeeded in our aim of producing a document covering all users of the school and clearly stating their rights.

Our declaration came to the attention of the Scottish Executive and as a result we found ourselves being the launch pad for the Human Rights Act in Scotland.

The school Charter is displayed in all classrooms and corridors. Staff and pupils can refer to this. As an example, we have agreed that everyone will be protected from verbal and physical abuse. This does not just refer to pupils being bullied, but also to staff in a classroom who have the right not to be subjected to any form of abuse from pupils. A Charter means nothing unless the school's actions are backed up by fairness and application of the stated rights. For example, the right to an education means that we will take action on anyone whose behaviour prevents a class from being taught. We will also pursue any equality issue directly, firmly and honestly. For example, many schools, including some in Alloa, suffered from increased tension after September 11th last year between Muslim and some other members of the local community. The media undoubtedly had some responsibility for this totally unacceptable state of affairs. These issues were dealt with firmly in assemblies and discussed between teachers and pupils both specifically and in relation to sectarian animosity in general and at football matches.

Putting rights and responsibilities into practice
It is very important to bear in mind that if pupils are to adopt a positive attitude and to accept responsibilities as well as claiming their rights, they must be involved in decision making in the school on some issues. Running a school cannot be a fully democratic process at the decision making stage on all matters, even for staff, but participation must still be optimised for staff and pupils in the planning and consultation processes and, where possible, in decisions. Most schools, including ours, have Pupil Councils. One major problem we experience, again in line with the experience of other schools, is that the Council is not representative of all pupils and consultation processes may not be undertaken as fully as they should. Suggestions made by the Council may be practically or financially unrealistic and time-consuming and other opportunities for real participation may be lost. Of course participation has to be practised and there will always be an element of learning through mistakes. However, we did wish to look at other ways of tapping into all pupils' opinions and to ensure they all exercised their rights and responsibilities.

We have, therefore, tried to introduce school-wide voting on issues that pupils could actually decide upon. The Pupil Councils put forward feasible ideas they would like to see developed. A referendum is then organised with all pupils voting at registration in the course of a week. Last year they were given a choice of spending money by putting music into their social areas or on doing up their canteen. They chose the former - and then voted on the choice of music to be played. The music is now piped into the social area, canteen and two corridors at intervals and lunch-time. This was a scrupulously fair vote with choices of station played on the number of days proportional to the size of the vote for each. Accordingly, Classic FM was played for just five days but for nearly three fifths of the time we have Beat 106. Pupils have also voted on whether they should spend the money won in the SSEN Ethos Award on improving football/basketball facilities during intervals by, for instance, the purchase of mobile goalposts, or on painting the social area. They chose the latter. The involvement of all pupils in matters like these has definitely produced a better ethos and a more responsible attitude among our pupils. They will have to live with both their music choices and the decor of the social area!

We also see positive examples of really good staff-pupil interactions: staff offering study support, club and other lunch-time activities, pupils helping staff in their duties (see Picture E) and pupils and staff joining together in community-focussed enterprises (see Picture F).

Looking ahead

We still have a long distance to travel but we will continue with our efforts, recognising that as we achieve some of our aims new ones will arise. Many of our pupils still find behaving acceptably within our school community very hard. Where this stems from troubles out of school we do our best to understand and support pupils. Where there is any way in which we can improve our own practices to include pupils better we will try to achieve this. We also very much want to increase our staying-on rates. Our top priority must be enabling all pupils to learn and all teachers to teach. We think that we have now demonstrated that managing behaviour in a positive way and safe-guarding the rights and responsibilities of all members of Alloa Academy's community are important contributions to being a more effective and humane school.