Article 29 and its translation into policy and practice in Scotland: an impossible right to education?

Abstract

First paragraph: This chapter is specifically concerned with the intersection of the right to education (UNCRC Article 29) (UN, 1989) with traditions of education and hence with thinking through some of the implications of translating this legal text into the specific educational contexts that impact upon the lives of children and young people at the present time. As such, the direction of travel accords with recent work in the field of children’s rights that calls for approaches that are both more critical (Quennerstedt, 2013; Reynaert, 2012) and more theoretically adventurous (I’Anson, 2016, I’Anson et al., 2017; Holzscheiter et al. (2019). This critical and theory-informed approach necessarily extends to thinking about the kinds of education that are both implied and enacted - in the name of the UNCRC - within particular settings. Here, a case study of the translation of children’s rights within the context of the Scottish education system will ground the discussion and help surface assumptions that might otherwise remain hidden. The chapter concludes with some observations concerning difficulties faced in constructing a universal appeal to education, and, in the light of this, the importance of attending to ways of negotiating difference.