The International Journal of Children’s Rights 6: 313–333, 1998. © 1998 Kluwer Law International. Printed in the Netherlands. 313 Children’s rights and citizenship: some implications for the management of schools AUDREY OSLER 1 and HUGH STARKEY 2 1 University of Birmingham; 2 Open University Introduction The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) sets agreed minimum standards to secure children’s rights in education, as in other areas of social policy. States Parties to the Convention ‘undertake to make the principles and provisions of the Convention widely known, by appropriate and active means, to adults and children alike’ (Article 42). Schools clearly have a key role to play in this process of dissemination. They can do this not only by educating children about their rights, as part of the formal school curriculum, but also by establishing themselves as model human rights communities, which reflect the principles of the Convention and of other key human rights instruments. Neither of these approaches is simple. We have been concerned over the years to help teachers develop pedagogical strategies to enable young people to learn about their rights and responsibilities (see for example, Osler and Starkey 1996). We have not space in this article to discuss this aspect of our work. Instead we have chosen to concentrate on ways in which those responsible for the management of schools, in any area of the world, might create learning communities which prepare their pupils for ‘responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin’ (Article 29.d). If they fail to do this, any messages on children’s human rights presented through the formal curriculum risk being immediately contradicted by the messages transmitted through the structures and organisational practices of the school, the so-called hidden curriculum. One of the key features of the CRC is that it recognises that children not only have rights of protection and provision (of services relating to health, education, leisure and so on) but that, like adults, they have participation and citizenship rights. In particular, the Convention focuses on the expression of