The research reported in this paper examined the effect of an NGO school program aiming to strengthen schools’ work with children’s rights.

Children’s human rights is a complex area for schools to handle, and human rights is conceived as a difficult matter to teach. National direction in curricula is often lacking (Bron & Thijs, 2011; Leung et al. 2011). Research has shown that many teachers feel that they lack sufficient knowledge about children’s human rights and that teaching material is scarce (Rinaldi, 2017; Tibbitts & Kirschsläger, 2010). To get guidance, schools and teachers may turn to actors outside the school, such as NGOs, perceived as experts in human and child rights issues.

Previous evaluations of such school programs for children’s rights have shown promising effects, for example, improvements on school climate, relations, behaviour, and children's influence (Covell, 2010; Sebba & Robinson, 2010; Halås Torbjörnsen, 2020), but also raised some concerns, for example, a tendency to focus on responsibilities rather than rights and doubts about how durable the positive effects are (Sebba & Robinson, 2010; Howe & Covell, 2010; Dunhill, 2019). The evidence presented for a correlation between learning about rights and the claimed positive effects is relatively weak, according to Jerome and colleagues (Jerome et al., 2015). The authors argue that most studies have focused more on implementation processes than outcomes. They also highlight methodological weaknesses in some studies: low response rates in surveys and few interviews in interview studies, mainly drawing on teachers’ views and views of students selected by teachers to participate. The knowledge available about how school programs for children’s rights affect schools is accordingly disparate and insecure.

One of the children’s rights programs available for schools is offered by UNICEF. The program was developed by UNICEF UK, and named Rights Respecting Schools Award. The program was brought to Sweden and modified by UNICEF Sweden to align with Swedish national school culture. It was also renamed to Rights-based school. Since its start in 2010, the Swedish version of the program has spread and is now used in about 30 Swedish schools.

Commissioned by UNICEF Sweden, we have undertaken a large-scale evaluation research project to elucidate how well the program works to strengthen schools’ work with children’s rights. The evaluation was designed to identify how Rights-based school affects students' and teachers' knowledge, experiences and views, and whether differences can be found when compared with students and teachers in schools that do not use any program. The following questions guided the evaluation.

1. How does using Rights-based school affect:

• students’ knowledge about children’s rights,
• students’ experiences of student influence,  
• teachers’ work with children’s rights,
• teachers’ views on student influence?

2. Are there any differences in these aspects compared with schools that do not use a program?

The data was created in five schools that use Rights-based school (program schools), and in five schools that do not use the program (non-program schools). Three program schools and three non-program schools are primary schools, with students in years 1-6. Two program schools and two non-program schools are lower secondary schools with students in years 7-9. Four of the program schools had just started, while one school (a primary school) had used the program for eight years. Interviews with teachers and students in years 2, 5 and 8 were conducted in the program schools during three consecutive years (2021-2023) and in the non-program schools during 22-23. In total, 410 students and 58 teachers in program schools were interviewed, and 120 students and 23 teachers in non-program schools. The interviews were semi-structured. Teachers were individually interviewed while the students were mostly interviewed in pairs. Students were asked questions to indicate knowledge about rights and their experience of influence in school. Teachers in program schools were asked what effect they considered the program to have, and teachers in all schools were asked to describe their view on and work with children’s rights and student influence. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Qualitative content analysis (Bengtsson, 2016; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) was undertaken to understand the meanings expressed by the interviewees. The first analytic step was to inductively create a coding scheme that was thereafter used for all data. The second analytic step was to draw out and describe the meaning of the essential content. We believe that our research design has avoided a range of weaknesses pointed out earlier. First, by including a large number of interviews with teachers and students, and the latter not being selected by principals or teachers. The data's size strengthens the content analysis's rigour and the comparison of students’ and teachers’ perceptions. Second, by interviewing teachers and students in schools that do not use Rights-based school, our design includes a data set for comparison.

Concerning students’ knowledge about children’s rights our hypothesis that students in program schools would demonstrate increasingly better knowledge was counter-proved. Instead, we identified a pattern of “rise and fall” in the new program schools and a yearly knowledge level decline in the established program school. In the new schools, students’ knowledge accordingly increased significantly between years 1 and 2 but dropped year 3, although for most schools to a somewhat higher level than the starting point of year 1. In the established school, the knowledge level was very high in year 1 and then dropped both years 2 and 3. This finding echoes the concern raised in earlier research about the durability of the positive effects of introducing a school program. However, compared to the children’s rights knowledge displayed by students in non-program schools, all program schools showed a better picture. This was particularly evident for students in years 2 and 5, where the difference was significant, to the program schools’ benefit. The findings concerning students’ experiences of student influence showed less differences between program schools and non-program schools. However, indications were found that students in program schools experience a wider array of influence possibilities than students in non-program schools. The latter reported mostly that they could affect matters related to breaks, such as playing material and activities, and to a lesser extent, they described influence over things in the classroom. Students in program schools gave a wider description of matters in the classroom that they are able to affect, for example, the content of education, working methods, and evaluation methods. The teacher data analysis is underway as this abstract is submitted and will be finalised during the first half of 2024.

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