[MUSIC] Welcome back to course seven, Being a Professional. This is the final lecture in week three. Legal and Administrative Responsibilities of a Teacher. And in this lecture, we're going to consider the rights and responsibilities of students, parents and teachers. The rights of children are governed to some degree by statute law within the various jurisdictions, but there is a very, very important agreement called the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I've given you a link to this, and I would urge you to have a look at it, because these are considered universal rights of children in all countries, in all jurisdictions. And in most cases, the nations of the world have agreed to and signed on for these rights. Rights can be defined as things that every child should have or be able to do. Under the UN convention, all children have the same rights and as I've mentioned almost every country has agreed to these rights. All the rights are connected to each other, and all of them are equally important. I would suggest that you look at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and particularly those articles that are related to schooling. For example, article 28 says, of children, you have the right to a good quality education. You should be encouraged to go to school to the highest level you can. And Article 29, your education should help you use and develop your talents and abilities. It should also help you learn to live peacefully, protect the environment and respect other people. Rights are one side of the coin. The other side is to do with responsibilities. In other words, with rights come responsibilities. Many schools and teachers have developed lists or sets of responsibilities and rights for their students. And good schools and good teachers reinforce these and apply them fairly. Ideally, these rights and responsibilities should be communicated not just with the students concerned, but with their parents and community members. Ideally, once again, parents and community members should be involved in the formulation of these rights and responsibilities and agree to them and with them. I've provided an example for you from a school called Clayton, and it outlines rights and responsibilities of students in that particular school. My question for you at this point is, what are the rights and responsibilities of children or students in your school. Are these well known? Are they written down? Are they on the wall? Are they reinforced regularly? Are they applied fairly? And do they adhere to, or conform with the UN declaration on the rights of the child? We now turn to parents' rights and parents have certain rights which are considered reasonable rights by the courts, but there are certain things that parents may wish to do, which may be considered unreasonable. So, what are the sort of rights that parents have? They do have to some degree the right to choose the school their child attends, but there sometimes are restrictions on this. For example, in government schools. Some schools also have a very expensive fees that it may very well be the case that a parent can not afford for their child to go to that particular school. They have some rights to do with health requirements, although there is a lot of conjecture around things like compulsory inoculation of students to attend schools. They have the right, in some cases, to apply to special purpose schools, which might be for students of certain abilities, or certain disabilities. They have the right, as in any family to in some cases overrule the wishes of the child, and this might be in the case of things like selecting subjects which are optional, or selecting activities or sporting teams, or sports that the child wishes to play. However, in some cases, parents can not give their child permission to break school rules. If, for example, there is in effect a contract that students at a school will wear the school uniform, it would be unreasonable for parents to demand that their child not wear a uniform. Parents however, do not have the right to tell the teacher what to do in most circumstances. As we mentioned before, the teacher's authority does not come from the parent, it comes from statute law to deal with things like compulsory attendance at schools. While they can't tell teachers in schools what to do, they can make reasonable requests. And if a parent makes a reasonable request, then feels that they have not had a fair hearing and that they've not been listened to, in many cases they do have the right to appeal to a higher authority. They can also act through the political process to change certain things about schooling, if they wish, in most countries. Parents also have the right to join together in associations in most cases, and many schools have things like Parents and Friends Associations or Parents and Citizens Associations, where parents work together collaboratively, usually for the benefit of the school, the children, and the community. In non-government schools, there is often a contract between the parents, the children and the school. Children under the age of legal responsibility can't normally sign contracts in their own name, so usually the contract is between the parent and the school. And this will include certain assumptions about how the school is to be run. The school, for example, may be a religious or faith-based school in which case, students who attend that school, unless otherwise arranged, will attend religious ceremonies. There might be other aspects of the contract including additional fees for various activities. I've mentioned the wearing of school uniform. Part of the contract might be that every student learns a language or plays a musical instrument. These things are not uncommon. Parents also have a right to know how their child is going at the school through regular communication. This might be through reports, regular meetings, optional meetings or in some cases a parent may be called to the school to discuss with the school leadership and the school teacher,issues of concern. There are certain areas where parents might reasonably request exemption from a particular activity. Some of those cases include things such as patriotic, or religious ceremonies, and in some cases aspects of the curriculum to do with things like sex education. However, if something is part of the curriculum and part of the core curriculum that needs to be taught, parents cannot usually demand or request of the school that their child be excused from that particular part of the curriculum. As we've mentioned, parents can't tell teachers or schools what to do but they can make reasonable requests. A second point that's important is that parents have limited responsibility for the actions of their children. The concept of the the carer's liability, for example, does not apply between child and parent to the degree that it does between teacher and principal, for example. An exception would be if the parent actively encouraged or incited a child to do something. They could then be seen to have responsibility for that. For example, there have been cases where parents have incited their children to assault a teacher. In that particular case, the parent would be responsible as well as the child for any assault that took place. Sometimes there are occasions when a parent has a concern about the school. The best advice in this particular case is to make a time to discuss these concerns with the school staff, beginning with the classroom teacher. It doesn't do much for professional relations if, for example, parents take their concerns directly to regional or system leaders, or to the press before talking with the school first. Usually, most concerns can be alleviated through collaborative discussion at the school level. Although, there may be occasions where parents feel so strongly about an issue that they do need to conduct inquiries with relative authorities such as the police and education departments and so forth. I've provided some other resources for you on parental rights and responsibilities from different jurisdictions. Once you've had a look at these resources, you might also like to compare and contrast them with the rights and responsibilities in your particular school, or in your particular jurisdiction. I've also got some questions for you to stimulate some thinking about the material we've looked at today. For example, a child in your class says his parents have forbidden him from watching any videos at school. What would you do? You might like to discuss this one with colleagues or through the discussion board for this course. In a second case, the parent asks you to write a statement supporting his case for custody of the child. What would you do? Finally, a parent rings the school, and says that his child is not to take part in any religious based activities. What would you do? Again, you might like to discuss these cases with your colleagues, principal or with your fellow participants in this course. In our next session, we're going to look at the developing a personal philosophy of teaching. [MUSIC]
