To want schools to drop attendance incentives?

How does that help when the rest of the class re claiming him for the fact that they can't win the class award?

Plenty of schools manage without attendance awards, so provided that they can show that they are taking proactive steps to address, in particular, persistent absence Ofsted will be perfectly happy.

Also, the reason my kid does have his time off is because I as a parent do have my shit together and he does too. My child won’t ever tell me if he’s sick, he’s got significant SEN, so I have to be quite in tune to know. If I miss early signs, he ends up cascading into behavioural issues and getting quite ill.

And before I had a child with SEN I had no idea how unaccomodating medical services are, or SEN centers. Every single time I try and get appointments out of school, almost always it’s impossible.

The point is that, for primary kids at least, there is near-zero zero skill, or personal behaviour, that leads to these awards. It is almost entirely luck.

Give them awards for things over which they have agency. If they have a particular talent, they still need to apply themselves to demonstrate it. I'm a big fan of behaviour-style awards - citizenship awards, awards for effort in things they actually have agency over, working to overcome particular challenges RGS, helping others. Those are all decent awards that celebrate and recognise actual achievements of different kids.

'Congratulations for not getting ill, not having medical issues and having parents who have their shit together' is indeed a fucking weird message to send kids. They don't have control over any of those things. So why reward them for it? It's illogical.

It's starting them off on a lifetime of believing that luck is somehow meritorious.

@SammyScrounge your post doesn’t make sense. I have no problem with competitive sports, or academic prizes. Everyone has something that they are better at than others, I think that is healthy. Disabled kids have loads of strengths same as any other child.

However disabled kids (like mine) can have loads of medical appointments and mine is also ill more, nothing to do with competition and striving to be your best.

Some parents want school sports days cancelled because their own child cannot participate for whatever reason; some want
academic prizes scrapped because their child has learning disabilities and can never win.
The rest of the children must never ever do better than anyone else in anything in case someone is upset by it.
That's.what I call a weird message
.

This

I don't disagree that simply being present is an indicator of much, but you aren't going to win this battle. So why not box clever? Reasonable adjustments are not just about work. Ask the school what it will do to level the playing field for children with disabilities and long term health conditions, as this is discrimination on the basis that no such child could ever win. They'll have to respond.

Schools do what they are able, place the blame where it belongs 😌

Why would you choose to punish a child, especially those aged 4-11y, for having term time holidays and poor parenting?
Children don't decide when they will take a term time holiday.
Children don't choose to have parents who make poor decisions with their parenting.

How will doing that improve the child's attendance figure?

It's pretty much pointless in primary.

Primary children rarely have much input into whether they attend school or not, or arrive in time. That's down to their parents/guardians. The reward ought to be for the parent, if there had to be one.

Some children have disabilities and health conditions which means that high attendance is impossible due to their health and/or medical appointments. This is rarely acknowledged or allowances made.

My school (state primary) hasn't done attendance awards for over a decade. They just aren't a great way of improving attendance.

Schools have to show they are doing things like attendance awards to jump through ofsted hoops. Moan at the government not your child's school.

Schools don’t cater for neurodiverse kids. Simple thing to do would be to remove attendance obsessions. ADHD child needs a day off to recoup when burnt out. Low self-esteem part of adhd. So don’t remind her every 5 seconds she has low attendance or whatever on the classrooms. As for incentives, should be outlawed. Outrageous to encourage this presenteeism bullshit in post-digital world. Do workplaces do this? Nope!

Yanbu. It's discriminatory and nasty. It punishes children with disabilities and chronic illness. And rewards children who come into school even when contagious

Surely this sort of thing becomes counter-productive? Once, as a pupil, you know you're not going to get the 100% award, what incentive do you have to continue trying?

OP, you should contact the head and governors to point out that this is clear discrimination on the basis of disability, and ask for their urgent proposals for remedying that.

This.

It just feels so lacking in any sort of common sense or critical thinking. I'm so glad that my DC's school don't do this - I'm not sure I could respect the way the school was led if it did.

Why shouldn't the school make adjustments so that children like OP's son stand an equal chance of getting awards?

Government policies don't mandate this. More importantly, the it is unlawful as a direct breach of the Equality Act.

But, as an employer, if I penalised staff who missed work through genuine illness in the way that schools do I would (quite rightly) be hauled over the coals. It's appalling that our children's rights and dignity aren't as protected as adult employees.

If anything Covid has had the opposite effect attendance wise as it’s left a lot of parents feeling school is optional

Totally agree OP. Since covid you think presenteeism would have changed but no.

It's the letters that bug me. Arsey letter for ds because his attendance was poor. He's reception year and has caught everything imaginable. Worded as if I was choosing to keep him home.
Then letters full of praise for older ds and dd for their great attendance.
Waste of paper. I know their attendance % as it's in massive figures on the ridiculous app I have to have installed from the school.

My child has severe anxiety amongst other things,the school insists on the 48 hour rule being followed after every incident!
Then threaten with the welfare officer for bad attendance!
My child is never going to get a certificate 🤣

I think promoting good and rewarded attendance at school follows to help firm good attendance and accountability in employment so it has to remain but obviously your son is not to feel penalised, maybe think of ways to incorporate those in the home when he's had a really good term attendance wise?