Children's Rights in Education *Soft Market Testing*

Children's Rights in Education *Soft Market Testing*

Description of the service - The Violence Reduction Unit will be running a Soft Market Testing exercise from 26 October 2023 to 1 November 2023 @ 16:00. This is an early engagement notice to gauge interest from the market and to gather information from interested suppliers. If you are interested in the opportunity, then please email [email protected] and you will be asked to fill in a short survey.

The Violence Reduction Unit is seeking to commission a provider who can help us promote and embed children's rights in all schools across London. The service will be a rights-based, whole school improvement programme, centred around an accreditation directly linked to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). This service will provide training, resources, tailored support and an accreditation to schools, providing a framework to embed children's rights strategically and practically into a school context.

It is important that the service delivered is sufficiently flexible to adapt to the context of the boroughs it is being delivered in, and is sustainable. The service needs to build the capacity of staff to embed children's rights within and across schools. To this end, the provider would also be expected to work with all London boroughs, to develop local Children's Rights Steering Groups that would build local support networks and communities of schools, who can share learnings and best practice with each other. Steering group members will be trained to become assessors of the accreditation, capacity building and futureproofing the sustainability of the service locally.

The successful provider will be expected to have a robust evidence base of the impact on systems change within schools as a result of their rights-based school accreditation programme. Other eligibility and core capabilities will include knowledge of and experience working within the London education landscape, including working with primary, and secondary schools; extensive experience and expertise delivering a rights-based school improvement accreditation directly linked to the UNCRC; capacity to deliver services across several boroughs and hundreds of schools simultaneously; substantial experience working effectively with local authorities and multi-academy trusts.

Additional information: Working in education is a priority for London's Violence Reduction Unit (VRU).  Building a rights respecting culture within and among schools has the potential for significant and positive long-term influence on developing a strong culture of inclusion for young people and their communities. Whilst also, contributing to the violence reduction agenda offering a unifying and cohesive thread of child rights through all other initiative relating to safety, wellbeing, voice, and participation.

When children know about their rights, they are empowered to claim them and to understand others have rights too. This is important because it leads to a myriad of other positive gains in equipping both young people and adults with a shared language for conflict resolution leading to improved capacity for resolving disputes and increased feelings of safety. Living and learning through rights inspires pupils to a deeper sense of engagement in their school and their community. Children have an improved respect for themselves and for others, leading to greater appreciation of diversity. Creating a shared language of rights and respect improves a child's sense of belonging to a school community, increasing wellbeing, and self-esteem. At a school level, this approach leads to better attendance, behaviour, relationships between students, and between students and staff, improvements to safeguarding, and ultimately a reduction in suspensions and exclusionary practice.

For all these reasons the Violence Reduction Unit's vision for safe and inclusive schools places children's rights at the centre, as one of the foundations, to achieving its aim to promote healthy relationships and inclusive practices to reduce exclusions and disengagement with education.

Budget - The maximum budget for this service is £1,400,000 over 4 years.