Another interesting thing about this group is that they were already holding international seminars on children and the environment before the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. That group is called OMEP, which stands for “Organisation Mondiale pour l’Education Préscolaire.” For decades, its UK chapter has done something that international policy documents don’t usually do: it has taken lofty language about children’s rights and turned it into something that nursery workers can use on a Monday morning.
If you go back far enough, Article 29 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child from 1990 is where it all began. That article talked a lot about how important it is to teach kids to care for and respect nature. In December 1991, an OMEP seminar was held in Moscow. World President Madeline Goutard spoke strongly in favor of that emphasis. Since the seminar happened more than six months before the Earth Summit, OMEP was one of the first groups to see the link between children’s rights and environmental education, long before it was cool to do so.
Over the next thirty years, a slow, methodical body of work was done. OMEP Denmark, Australia, and France have all worked together on publications. studies funded by UNESCO. A long-term commitment to the UN’s plan for sustainable development. When UNESCO released its 2020 Education for Sustainable Development Roadmap, it asked member states to create national indicators to track ESD progress. In the early childhood space, OMEP was already a few steps ahead.
The ERS-SDEC, or Educational Rating Scale for Sustainable Development in Early Childhood, is the tool that OMEP UK uses most in its work. It was first made in 2016 by OMEP preschools and academics from ten different countries working together. Its main purpose was to check how well early childhood settings were teaching about sustainability. By 2019, an OMEP working party had made a second edition with new priorities and a clearer picture of what good facilities in a nursery really look like.
The self-audit tool that OMEP UK made from the rating scale for its Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Citizenship Award scheme is what makes this more than just a school project. Setting can use it to be honest with themselves, which is where the real work gets done. When the two versions of the rating scale were first compared, significant gaps were found. The first audit tool didn’t really talk about things like nutrition, plastics, natural cycles, or how to wash your hands. Those holes were filled in the second edition. It seems like the people working on this are really iterating and not just checking things off.
The recommendation that the ground rules in the Silver Audit, which is part of the award scheme’s progression structure, should be directly linked to UNICEF’s Rights Respecting School Charters is one that stands out. That link is important. There is more to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child than just a background. It’s meant to be a living document that guides how a nursery is run, how disagreements are resolved, and how children are talked to. One way to make sure that the convention is seen in everyday life and not just on framed posters in the hallways is to connect the audit directly to UNICEF’s charter.
In 2001, UNICEF made general comments on the convention that made the case very clear. They said that kids should learn to respect the environment at home, at school, and in the community. They also said that kids should be actively involved in local, regional, or global environmental projects, not just be told about them. The toolkit from OMEP UK is a useful answer to that call in many ways.
The award program is still not well known in all UK nurseries, and it’s not clear how well the second edition rating scale will do in an international evaluation process. But the work is solid; it is based on real research, and it is backed by an organization that has been a UN consultative body since its founding in 1948. That trustworthiness of the institution is not nothing.
Over time, OMEP UK has built a bridge between a treaty that most nursery workers have heard of but never read in depth and the everyday work of a setting that wants to do the right thing by the kids in its care. People don’t usually notice that kind of translation work. But without it, documents about children’s rights will only be that: documents.
