July 1, 2012

Ernehale Juniors

Man with group of children and teachers.
A group of committed Year 3,4 and 5 pupils led Ernehale Junior School’s work on the right to education this year.

The school is applying for Level 1 of the ‘Rights Respecting School Award’ (RRSA), and a key focus this year was the Going for Gold ‘Send My Friend to School’ campaign.

Ernehale took part in‘Send My Sister to School’ last year, and the group were keen to be involved again. They presented a special assembly, distributing medal templates to every child in school. That week’s homework task for all pupils was to create a medal urging world leaders to send our friends to school!.

The group spent two weeks collecting in the medals and contacted our local MP Mr Vernon Coaker, inviting him to come into school to receive a very important package. We were thrilled when he agreed and on Friday 13 July, he came into school for an hour. He met the steering group and they told him all about their work with the RRSA project and Send My Friend to School. He then joined us for an assembly and finally we presented him with two giant envelopes full of medals – over 160 in all!

Mr Coaker promised he would hand-deliver our medals to Downing Street and shared this picture of him taking them there in person. He has asked the group to send him regular updates of their activities, which they’re very excited about! We just hope that our medals help make a difference to all the children around the world who want to go to school but can’t.

We’re already preparing to make next year’s campaign even bigger and better – as the children say “If we Go for Gold with our campaigning, then more children will go to school”!