CHILD FRIENDLY SCHOOL: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES

Abstract

Living in a democratic and always changing world, children have to learn the basic facts about their rights and to acquire the needed democratic life skills. Such democratic life skills can be reinforced through the surrounding environment itself, such schools. A Child Friendly School is a framework designed by UNICEF as the answer to the above needs. A Child Friendly School is a school that recognizes and nurtures the achievement of children's basic rights. A school is considered child friendly when it provides a safe, clean, healthy and protective environment for children. At Child Friendly Schools, child rights are respected, and all children. Based on this concept we can design classroom practices which are child-centered and learning-friendly. The classroom practices provide us ideas about how to deal with children with diverse backgrounds and abilities that attend the class, as well as how to make learning meaningful for all the students. This paper is specifically intended to discuss the underlying principles of Child Friend School and the implication in classroom practices.