100% Attendance Certificates

I think any children with chronic conditions and serious illness should be recognised for their resilience and attending when they can. It’s bloody hard and the vast majority of people, parents and teachers have no idea what an absolute privilege it is to have good health.

I hope your son is doing ok now x

Goodness me this is even shitter than I thought. I’m so sorry your son has had this experience and treatment from school. It’s literal stupidity to reward attendance and exclude those from that system who need it the most. I’m surprised nothing can be done about this - it’s discrimination black & white. Have you thought about writing to your MP or seeing if there are other parents in the same situation, maybe you could lobby the school or LA for a different approach that was actually supportive and inclusive. Hug for your son I hope he is ok now xox

It is all down to Ofsted and the DfE. Schools are under pressure to get a certain percentage for overall attendance but some schools push for it more than others.

I agree It’s shit and I’d be asking the school to not give on me to my child in future because you feel it’s discriminatory and unfair and not rewarding anything of real value and you’re conscious it upsets others who are unable to be rewarded for just ‘turning up’. What a low bar to reward aswell!!! Surely the effort and actually working achievements you make are what count, and you are spot on about it being unfair for children with medical absences. We are abroad but some of the things I read about on here from primary schools in the UK is complete insanity.

Apparently high attendance is closely correlated with academic achievement, so you can see why they push it. I always had 100% attendance at school and my offspring usually do too. But then , they’re not often ill. I suppose mainly it’s to deter people from taking holiday during term time.

I got a letter today about it and replied with a note back saying please confirm that you are advising and encouraging us to send our children to school feeling ill and with the high chance of them passing on germs to others.

Meh, it's a pointless 'award' but schools up and down the country are giving them. DON't make a big deal of them, whether or not your kid gets one.

I'm another whose DC has missed out due to a grandparent's funeral. I really would have liked the headteacher to personally explain why that was ok to my DD. On the plus side, once you've had one absence and the certificate is lost, you can chill out for the rest of the term/year.

I suspect a lot of teachers hate them, but they are part of "being seen to be doing something about attendance for Ofsted". Maybe Ofsted could be persuaded not to recognise them as part of a positive attendance strategy.

I detest attendance awards. Children can't help being ill and sending them in ill just impacts other families.
I volunteer with a uniformed organisation and the group I was previously with rewarded perfect attendance until I had enough say to drop it. 6 year olds don't have a say when they live in the back of beyond and mum doesn't feel safe going out after dark when dad has to work away. 8 year old carers don't have control over their parent's illness.

I hate these awards and am glad to my knowledge that our school dont do them. My daughter has a longer term medical condition and will never get 100% attendance as she has multiple appointments in a year and needs time off when unwell to recover.
Her health is more important than any award. Like previous posters though it does worry me in some settings kids going in unwell puts vulnerable peers at risk.

Im shocked the started it so young ! Its a terrible approach. When my DC was at primary it wasnt a thing thank goodness (pre-pandemic). But it is now a thing. As my DC has long covid he has had frequent time off school at secondary school. School did attendance competitions pitting form group against form group and announding stats in assembly with prizes for the winning form. It led to bullying of my DC by other kids who felt they were being let down by others in the class and damaging their scores. It also encourages kids coming into school when ill - spreading more illnesses around. It led to me doing a complaint to the head.It was effectively discrimination. Head says they are under pressure from Local Gov to improve attendance but they have since changed how they do it so that no one is singled out for peer pressure and bullying and so they are more transparent with the stats but they still run motivational attendance activities in a similar way I believe. I dont know for sure as my DC got pushed out of the school to a different provider against our wishes (again I believe due to attendance). The whole school system is terrible if you dont fit into their expectations - which are 100% conformity.

Oh this is an absolute bug bear of mine. Both of my children have lifelong conditions and have never achieved 100% attendance for a term.

DS2’s attendance was particularly frustrating, he had a serious illness when little and continues to require check ups with multiple hospital teams, so zero chance we can time everything to fit into school hols. The ironic thing is that he is NEVER off sick!

I have fought so hard to get school to change how they give out awards. They do a big awards week in July with loads of lovely school trips, allocated based on points - of which most is made up of attendance points. DS has missed out pretty much every year because of childhood cancer. No acknowledgment of actually how consistent he is at school, how hard he works, how great he is at role modelling. It really is a shit policy

I had a friend who had 100% attendance for the 5 years in secondary school. She was given a gold watch at the end.

I don't see anything wrong with it. Different children will achieve different things at school.

This same argument comes up at sports day and it's the parents of the kids who don't win that aren't happy about it. Some schools have awards for academic achievements and not all kids achieve in that category.

I don't get why people get so worked up about this? Some kids won't get one because they've been ill - so what? Maybe they'll get a prize for something else. For some kids it might be the only prize they might ever get if they're not great at anything else. It's not a big deal.

YANBU it is bullshit.
Believe it or not, we had the 100% attendance certificates when I did an Access course, so full of adults!

Back when I was in school, we had 'achievement awards' were were awarded for loads of different things.

Yabu. I'll never win a running race because I'm not built for it. Life's unfair, get over it.

This, for some this may be all they can achieve. Would people like all certificates and awards abolished?

It's rubbish.
I know of someone who puts it on their CV 🙄

My daughter got one today, and I’ll be throwing it in the recycling. She had a day off this week anyway so it’s not 100%.

I used to be a teacher and I always hated it especially in classes where there were children with health conditions. I often ‘accidentally’ didn’t give them out and didn’t make a fuss about it.

Not only are there children with chronic health conditions and disabilities who will never get 100% attendance but there are children who will miss school because of various circumstances that are totally out of their control. Of course children missing substantial amounts of school need support.

Everyone gets ill, it’s called life. Let’s not celebrate soldiering on and spreading germs.

Not only that but Oftsted have now put a special focus on kids with specific characteristics, such as SEND. Well, SEND covers a lot of things. There are children in my school who are on the SEND register who happen to have been born prematurely and who have resulting health issues, or who have autism which comes with very restricted eating and little sleep, both of which means that those children pick up every illness going. I've seen them, they are genuinely ill, and get sent home from school because of it. This means their attendance is lower than their peers.

But now, Ofsted wants to know WHY their attendance is low, why we are "failing" these children, and not putting the support in place for them to attend a higher number of sessions. I want to scream in the face of these inspectorate bods "Yes, that child was born at 25 weeks and is your typically "sickly" child who seems to have no immune system, of COURSE they are going to be absent more than their peers", "and that child eats only 3 types of food, plus has pica and eats soil and similar things - yes, he is often genuinely off sick as a result".

The pressure on those parents must be immense. It goes against all my natural parenting instincts to call these parents and ask if they expect their child to be in tomorrow.

Tell your child well done for not getting poorly this year and he can keep the badge and certificate or trade them in for something he really wants “match attax stickers” or going to his favourite football team game, then take the certificate into school and tell them “No, we won’t be apart this, making poorly children feel less than for something out of their control. They need to do better!”

if everyone starts refusing the reward, then it will change.

I agree. My 3 kids have had 1 day off sick between them throughout primary school so far and I hate attendance awards. It’s not within a primary child’s control so it’s not a fair reward for a child and it is incredibly ableist. How schools have time and money for such nonsense when educational attainment in this country is so far behind others is ridiculous.

Yes, but attendance is also outside their control too. There are children who also don't get any of those things but whose parents keep them off at the slightest sniffle, so they don't even get an attendance certificate either.

I am involved in attendance admin at the school I work in. I accidentally on purpose forget to do/am too busy to do the attendance certificates at the end of every half term. There were too many complaints from parents and I agreed with them, they're a nonsense. And frankly, the way things have been going this term, all it results in is kids being sent in when they are clearly sick, and they spread their germs round and even more kids (and staff) get ill then.

The DfE's target attendance figure is 97%. Well, that might be appropriate for secondary or upper juniors. But little infants kids, whose immune systems are still developing, are just naturally often ill. There should be a lower target for that age group, and there isn't, because the government thinks that if you give any leeway to attendance expectations it's going to carry through for the rest of their school lives. It's all just nuts.

Which proves the point that 100% attendance does not equate to higher achievement. It's all a load of rubbish.

Terrible, why dont they have 'exemplary attendance' and a badge with XA. They can then award kids with genuine health problems/disabilities too! The other thing is, it encourages kids to go in when they really should not.

Its poor.