About school attendance?

I'd put in an official complaint to the primary. I'm not one to complain to schools but this is just nasty. Yes fine have attendance awards but bloody icecream truck. I'd also raise disability discrimination

This! whether lucky or not My LO had covid over easter holidays and chicken pox over half term. So didnt miss any time of school for it but really what are you supposed to do when its out of your control. Madness! Actually backfires for me as if they cant be level headed then I wont give a shit either

YANBU. Blame the government. Whereas there are some dc who aren't in school because they (or sadly their parents) see no point, some cannot ever hope to achieve "good" attendance for reasons completely out of their control.

Dd2 has had the "required" attendance this year. She's 12. Her best friend, top of every class and winning umpteen academic awards, has a chronic, at times serious, illness. Sometimes her attendance is great. When her illness flares up, it isn't. It's life. Her parents are both doctors. They do everything they can to keep her at school but when she's unwell she's really unwell.

Anyway, dd got invited on an of term reward trip for attendance. Friend didn't because she'd had particularly rough term. Dd refused to go (and told her teachers why. They agreed with her, btw). I've never been so proud of her.

YADNBU my kids school put the attendance of each class in a letter and celebrated the highest attendance. My DDs class was lowest - never mind that scarlet fever ran through the class just before Christmas. School is where they are catching these illnesses and then having to be off. The irony!

I used to work in a school that did this, and trust me, the staff hate it too! I think absences for medical reasons shouldn’t be counted.

that being said, some kids have terrible attendance - I used to work with one kid who attended about 65% of the time - because his mum couldn’t be bothered to bring him and his siblings in, apparently it was all too much effort. He was so, so behind his peers, the poor kid. His mum basically didn’t care (Dad not in the picture) but punishing the kid by not giving treats did nothing to change mums actions, just made a nice kid feel even worst about himself.

My sons primary used to have an ice cream reward van, they were particularly bad at Sen and tried to get rid of kids that needed high levels of support as they preferred money to be spent on many children rather than just a few so I’m guessing the money came out of the Sen budget as it’s not ring fenced

Have you really never heard of this kind of thing before?

My kids school used to have a special party for 100% attendance. The ones who didn't get 100% had to stay in class.
There was a school in the papers this week who took all the kids with 100% to Mcdonalds!

Our primary did certificates for term and year attendance, the kids who had 100% for the year were put in a prize draw to win a Nintendo switch. There were 18 out of 300, it just shows how hard it is to never have a day off.

It’s not ableist at all, that would imply that the only kids with poor attendance are those with disabilities & that simply isn’t true. My DD has poor attendance (by schools standard) but she has no disabilities whatsoever. Tbh I don’t think she’d care about someone getting an ice cream for best attendance, it’s quite trivial really but not sure I know of any schools local to me that do it at end of year.

Wow, this is awful. I would be complaining to
the school. My DD has been so mentally ill this term that the school told me to keep her at home for several weeks out of the term because being there wasn’t fair and she wasn’t coping. She felt guilty missing school and if she was in this situation it would have made her feel terrible.

Whole british education system is a fail, from the dress code to the fail results. Other countries school ratings are made up from the exam results not attendance, what a great way to encourage disregard from early age to ones own health by having to keep eye on some meaningless attendance score and attend school and spread bugs even if the child is sick. Im surprised more parents dont home ed their kids.

There is a tonne of pressure on schools to incentives attendance, but thankfully we don't do rewards for those who have above an arbitrary amount. For starters it doesn't get to the root of the issue at all, if it is parents not bringing them to school for example it doesn't change anything. If it's due to illness then it's also not the child's fault. Whilst there are some illnesses it's good to push through with its not good to encourage parents to send children in who are poorly and contagious with something gross beyond a cold or whatever; we often have chicken pox before they've scabbed, children saying they were sick loads yesterday or that they had a temp and had calpol before school (this isn't just down to attendance awards I know).

In one of my placement schools a fair few years back now the class I was in had a child with CF. In the 6 weeks I was there they had to have a fair amount of that off for appointments and because they weren't well enough for school, the days they were in were a real challenge for them and it was a testament to their want to learn and to see their friends. They were so upset when it came to discussing the attendance awards, broke my heart and I always said I'd find other ways to acknowledge. It's one of those things especially at primary level that's so dependent on parents, luck, health that it's not neglecting to do nice things just as some miss out and life's not fair imo.

I disagree with the government and their monitoring of attendance though, if they actually invested in stuff that helps families then it would be fairer.

It’s wrong and discriminatory. Have you challenged the school head and the governors as to why they feel this system is appropriate and acceptable?
I was a school governor for 15 years - thankfully we didn’t have these stupid attendance awards.

My DC would be upset by this, they've never had the kind of super high attendance that gets rewarded but are only ever off when sick!

They all had chicken pox this year, and my eldest took 10 days for all the blisters to scab - he also took a week off for D&V last September, because any stomach bug that makes the rest of the family vom once has him vomming for a week.

Not DS1's fault, and not me being too lazy to get him to school!

Work on the last day? Sure they did!

Where did OP say it was on the last day?

YANBU, OP. Yes, blame the system, but aldo blame the school. They didn't have to choose such a blatant way of rewarding the students in front of all the others.

i have a very poorly DC who spends months at a time In hospital and that’s besides the point when no primary school aged child is responsible for their attendance.
whether it be health including mental
health, holidays , lazy parenting, none of them are the ever the child’s fault.

I've always hated the attendance thing.

So Billy gets rewarded with ice cream/certificate/etc.. for his parents sending him in ill to infect all the other kids. Meanwhile Chloe had to miss the school trip because Billy gave her a stomach bug.

The whole attendance system is mad. At primary school age kids have zero control over their attendance - it's dependant on illness and on parents decisions. Why reward a child for something they had no control over whatsoever?

YADNBU - I would 100% be complaining! Both my boys are on about 95/96% and only missed an odd day for ear infection, tummy trouble etc or mainly when the school send them home when they just moaned a bit and then the second they get home they are absolutely fine!

YANBU

I hate these sorts of awards, which essentially reward those with normal health who have not encountered anything infectious

One of my DC had a friend with a long term health conditions, and his parents absolutely moved mountains to have him in school as much as physically possible - but he was hospitalised frequently (and they moved more mountains to augment co-operation between the school and the hospital school). Mercifully, we didn't have awards/penalties based on health - but if we had, it was that boy who deserved to be celebrated

Disgusting and if I knew that was happening at my DD's school I would challenge it and failing that keep her home for the day. She has a chronic illness that causes most kids to struggle with 50% attendance but she is lucky and manages over 90% thanks to her new treatment regime.

I'm on a Facebook group for parents of kids with this condition and the number of teenagers who are refused access to their leavers prom or to reward days due to low attendance is disgusting.

That's fucking disgusting and discriminatory. And I would blame the school. They choose how to go about the diktat to improve attendance.

Did you know in advance? As PPs have said I'd have been tempted to hire my own fucking ice cream van and sit outside the school giving all the other kids an icecream!

I certainly would have been at the school gate with one for my DC.

This has all made me think about couple of jobs I've had in the past - I suffer from severe migraines, as does DD, and really can't be in work with one, although 2 workplaces have made me try. They're so bad I usually vomit, lose my vision, my speech gets slurred and pain is so bad I can barely sit up. I had one job where i worked for 2 departments and had to basically get permission from both line managers if I needed to go home. One was lovely and would notice the minute I was starting with a migraine and tell me to go home but of course I had to check with the other line manager and she would tell me to go and have a sleep on the floor under her desk if she wasn't using her office, and try to stick the day out! One of those times I ended up throwing up all over her office as I tried to make a run for the toilet which was 2 floors below 🙈 Another job they kept calling me in for meetings to ask how they could support me to get my attendance up - it wasn't like i was off loads, maybe once every 2 months but if i didn't get migraines i'd rarely be off. It wasn't done in a nice way either, it was very patronising - the kind of meetings where they're deadly serious and over-use your name! I'm on prescribed medication to try to prevent them, I've seen specialists, I've kept diaries, nobody could work out what my triggers are - they're just random. Few bosses have realised that if they force me to stay, I can easily end up with a much worse one that then keeps me off for 3 days because i absolutely can't manage out of bed but it could have been one day had they allowed me to go home! I've stopped trying to struggle in with them now and just stay off.

My DD had horrendous MH during her secondary school and had truly abismal attendance, we had EWO on many occasions. They would ask how can we help? I'd say "stop my beautiful talented daughter, from wanting to die please"
They usually left at that point, until the next visit.
She's 30 now, and a successful journalist who gets to interview famous people for a living and travels the globe attending film festivals. She's won awards for her work.
People say you must be so proud.
I am so proud that every day she gets up and goes to work, because I know that on many days despite appearances she still battles those same demons that she fought while at school. Attendance awards are unfair, divisive and blame children for being ill.

I hate these rewards. One year, they let everyone with 97% attendance have an own clothes day, and DD and one other girl were the only ones in their class in uniform. DD gets migraines and at that time was getting one every 4 weeks. She was upset because she felt she was being punished and felt she was made to stand out.

I've noticed over the last 5 weeks on the school app, DD's attendance has only gone from 94.2 to 94.3% and she has been in every single day. I thought perhaps it was a glitch but 94.3% is the figure on her report which came home yesterday. It's not a big deal, I'm just a but confused as to why it's never gone up more.