The School of Education’s Research Cluster on Children’s Rights and Children’s Participation (please click here for the website ) operates as a focus for research which is intended to better understand and improve school children’s lives.  It places an emphasis on three distinct but interconnected strands of research activity: Children’s Rights - using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and other relevant international standards to evaluate the laws, policies and practices which affect children in education; Children’s Participation - examining the mechanisms for and benefits of involving school-children in the decisions which affect them; Research with Children - evaluating the best methods of conducting research into school-children’s lives with a particular focus on approaches which involve children actively in the research process.