KTS Academy Achieves Gold: Rights Respecting Reaccreditation

We are delighted to share that KTS Academy continues to meet the standard for UNICEF UK's Rights Respecting Schools Award at Gold: Rights Respecting, following our reaccreditation visit in May 2022.

What This Means for Our School

It was evident that children's rights are embedded across the school and underpin every facet of school life.  This achievement reflects our ongoing commitment to ensuring that every child at KTS Academy understands their rights and feels valued, respected, and empowered.

What the Assessors Found

The UNICEF assessor highlighted several strengths that make us particularly proud:

Our Pupils

Happy, confident children who demonstrated good knowledge and understanding of rights. They knew a wide range of articles and were confident in the concept of rights. Our students understand that knowing their rights matters – as one pupil explained: "If I didn't know my rights I might feel out of place."

Our Ethos

An ethos that places positive relationships based on mutual respect and trust at the heart of school life. A common language of rights which is used across the school and supports children to explore and discuss a range of issues. A school with inclusion at its heart, where pupils feel safe and secure and where the values of dignity and respect are lived and valued by children and staff. 

Pupil Voice

The school's respect for and empowerment of the children is extremely clear and highly effective. Pupils are listened to and involved in decision making at all levels and are confident that their views are taken seriously. 

Rights in Action

Our commitment to children's rights isn't just about learning – it's about taking action. Recently, our students have:

• Collected donations for families affected by the situation in Ukraine, wanting to "help the families who were affected and needed to leave their things behind" 
• Worked with Groundwork on the Loftus Community Woodland project where they planted trees, built bug hotels and bird feeders, designed artwork for the entrance to the woodland and learnt about recycling
• Advocated for additional recycling bins and helped develop the anti-bullying policy 

Our Journey

We registered for RRSA in February 2015, achieved Silver in May 2017, and Gold in June 2019, and we're proud to have maintained this standard through our reaccreditation.

The Rights Respecting Schools Award recognises schools that put the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child at the heart of their ethos and curriculum. At KTS Academy, we believe that understanding rights helps our students see the bigger picture and prepares them to be active, compassionate citizens.

We're incredibly proud of our whole school community – pupils, staff, and families – for making KTS Academy a place where rights are respected, understood, and lived every day.