Submission to the Strategic Planning Branch
DENI from The Children's Law Centre regarding
Learning for Tomorrow's World

Introduction

The Children's Law Centre is a voluntary organisation that was established in 1997. It aims to help young people, their parents and professionals work with and understand the laws which affect children. Although based in Belfast, the centre has a Northern Ireland wide remit.

Current priority areas of work include education and training, legal advice and research, all of which have a rights based approach as their starting point given the Equality Provisions of the Northern Ireland Act and the imminent incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition to working directly with young people, much work is also carried out with adults involved in children's lives through mechanisms such as training, involvement in conferences, inter-agency work and responses to draft government policy and legislation.

The Children's Law Centre is founded on the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and seeks to ensure that the equality provisions of the Northern Ireland Act, 1998 and the Human Rights Act, 1998 are upheld with specific respect to children and young people.

The Children's Law Centre welcomes the opportunity to make this submission to the Strategic Planning Branch of DENI. We would like to make the following points:

Throughout the document young people, parents and industry are referred to as 'customers'. The Children's Law Centre believes that this ethos is not helpful in the context of education.

While there is limited choice regarding the type of school attended, it is not the case that young people can easily change schools if they do not like the manner in which the service is delivered or if they are not satisfied with the quality of service. This is especially so for some groups of children, such as those with special educational needs.

Children and young people do not have any right of redress in education. It is parents who have such rights, e.g. right to appeal an expulsion.

The Children's Law Centre welcomes the comments made regarding the need for more structured arrangements for ongoing dialogue between all of the parties concerned (p3). It is important that such arrangements ensure that young people's voices are heard and are listened to in such a dialogue. The Children's Law Centre is willing to advise the Department on the facilitation of such a dialogue with young people.

In addition, recent research indicates that few parents feel that they have been really listened to by education professionals. There is a need to support parents to advocate on their child's behalf. Given that there is often "inequality of arms" there is a need for education professionals to be more open and supportive of parents' participation.

The establishment of a forum involving education partners at a strategic level would be valuable - but only if this is a genuine partnership between young people, parents, education providers and voluntary and statutory sector organisations.

It is probable that a separate young people's forum would need to be established and supported to participate in the overall forum in order to encourage the active participation of young people in such a group. This would go some way to ensuring that DENI is implementing Article 12 (The Child's Opinion) of the UNCRC.

The Children's Law Centre agrees that the curriculum needs to change (p15), not only in order to meet the needs of young people in a rapidly changing world but also in order to comply with the obligations of the UNCRC where education is regarded as holistic (Articles 28 and 29).

Also, changing the curriculum will not be enough. The system of education in Northern Ireland is discriminatory and has been shown to fail the large number of young people who leave school without the basic minimum qualifications required for employment and particularly vulnerable children like those in care, children with SEN and Traveller children.

The reference to human rights on p15 is to be welcomed.

If the youth service is to be utilised to its fullest potential within the formal education sector, there is a need for those in this sector to recognise and acknowledge the youth service as part of education, as opposed to seeing it as part of leisure.

      4.   Underlying Principles

The Children's Law Centre agrees with and welcomes the values expressed in section 4.1.3 - Education for .? (p16). However, the agency would like to see young people being made more central to the second paragraph under this heading. Also, our above comments regarding 'customers' are relevant here.

We acknowledge that teachers need to be supported in their work as stated on p15. The corollary however, is that they need to be made more accountable to those they teach and their parents.

While communities in general recognise the importance of the school in their community, we know from our own work that the school has very limited positive interaction with the wider community. It may be seen as a resource - but one which is not accessible in the evenings, at weekends or during holidays, when the needs of the community are at their greatest.

5.   Partnership

The Children's Law Centre, in its recent research has found that there has been a very limited impact on education by the Children (NI) Order, 1995. Practically all of the emphasis has been on child protection and/or parental responsibility. The obligation to listen and hear children and on the other guiding principles appears not to have been fully embraced.

The Children's Law Centre would welcome DENI requiring all education providers and schools to undertake training on all aspects of the Children Order and on the UNCRC which forms the basis of the Order.

The Children's Law Centre recommends that 'disabilities' replaces 'learning difficulties' in the box on Promoting Excellence on p17 and also that 'responsibility' is replaced by development on p18.

We would like the concept of Accountability to be included in this box - accountability to all involved, including young people and parents by both the formal and informal sectors.

A review of the Special Educational Needs Code of Practice is to be welcomed (p19), especially as the Code was designed with the school system in England and Wales in mind. It does not translate very effectively to Northern Ireland.

In relation to the mention of skills on the third last line of the first paragraph (p20) the Children's Law Centre suggest the following amendments:

· such as respect for oneself and others

·  forming and maintaining relationships

      9.  Selection at age 11

The Children's Law Centre believes that the selection tests at age 11 run contrary to the spirit of the UNCRC which sees education as holistic as it discriminates against a large number of children and may be in contravention of the ECHR. The Transfer Test should be abolished.

The proposal to expand the existing pre-school education is to be welcomed.

The Children's Law Centre believes that the existing provision for children and young people outside of school hours is inadequate and needs to be expanded. The possibility of using existing resources such as school buildings, youth centres and youth service for such work should be explored.

The Children's Law Centre welcomes and supports the comments made in this section (p21)

We consider the use of the word 'good' to be too subjective. A possible alternative could be active citizenship as this would also address some of the aspects of social exclusion.

Also, the Children's Law Centre believes that there is a need for citizenship education to take a rights-based perspective as its starting point, which was the origin of the concept. Before people can be expected to behave as active citizens in terms of assuming responsibilities, they need to be aware of the rights that they as citizens hold as well as how the rights of others need to be upheld. Citizenship is a two sided concept involving both rights and responsibilites, but often young people only hear about how they should be responsible. Rarely are they validated as citizens with acknowledged rights.

If access to further and higher education is to become a reality then greater emphasis must be placed at addressing the barriers which prohibit it including the abolition of grants for higher education; the lack of childcare, the centralised nature of such education provision and exclusory practice early in life which predetermine some children will not be able to access third level education

The potential of utilizing cross-border resources should be examined, especially for border rural areas and good practice shared.

The Children's Law Centre welcomes the comments made regarding applied research which will be of mutual benefit for both the universities, the local community and the wider society.

Given the implementation of the Belfast Agreement and the new opportunities that this presents it is suggested that the words 'the island of Ireland' are added in to the vision statement after "locally within the UK" (p28).

 Concluding Remarks

The Children's Law Centre would like to see the UNCRC being used to promote a holistic vision of education in Northern Ireland. We believe that the UNCRC has the potential to make valuable contributions to education and that it could be used within both the formal and informal education sectors as a tool.

The Children's Law Centre note the statutory obligations under the Northern Ireland Act, 1998 and the Human Rights Act, 1998 and hope DENI is mindful of these when developing the Strategic Plan.

The Children's Law Centre is keen to develop a dialogue with service providers in this area. I enclose a copy of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and also a summary copy of Getting it Right? for your information.

Should you require any further information or if you have any queries in relation to this please do not hesitate to contact Children's Law Centre, Philip House, 123-137 York St, Belfast, BT15 1AB. Telephone 028 90 245704. E-mail info@childrenslawcentre.org