4 year old never gets award

As its reception they probably won’t have done it for the first couple of weeks while they settle in
then October half term and Christmas break
she has got until the end of July to get an award and everyone gets the chance to be rewarded or recognised for something
our school usually only has one person per class each week

Totally agree with this.
it was the same for my DC -although tbf at primary they did get ‘star of the week ‘ at some point during the year as they just rotated the names.
What pissede off more was at secondary - and annoyed them too - no prizes at prize days except for one of them finally got a prize post-leaving (was a sort of grad leaving ceremony) , but didn’t actually receive it in person cos it was covid!

Both DC v academic as well. Youngest never got a prize despite GCSEs at 7-9 across the board and straight A*s at A level.

Strap in hard, OP!!

I'm completely against these generic awards at that age. A once a year award for the top result in maths or something ok, but "nothingness" awards are just counterproductive .
I felt the same as you re: my sinilar-aged dc until out of nowhere thry got two "star of the week " in a row. Queue floods of tears now every week they don't get it as they just don't understand the concept. Once they got an incident form for a bump on the head which was handed out right after the awards and were just as proud as for star of the week as they got a piece of paper to feel.special about.
I'd rather not deal with the drama, it's not worth it.

Sounds like school where a pupil can get an award just for breathing.

This number of awards is truly staggering.

Yes exactly.
She’s just a 4 year old girl , it’s not an achievement thing , it’s supposed to be a nice thing they do for all the children.
Everyone gets a turn , everyone gets celebrated & gets to feel a little triumph.
I actually can’t believe the amount of posters here that think it’s a competition & don’t get what it’s about at all .

Any reasonable reception teacher fills in 30 names on the 30 certificates at the beginning of term. Fills in a childs( or two or three) achievements every Friday. Then starts again when all the certificates are gone. Nobody missed out. Everybody happy.

But there's a huge difference between a 14 year old and a 4 year old and a huge difference between just the end of year one person wins award and a weekly some kids have won 3 already award.

I have friends and family members who went to school during the 70s and 80s. As long as you kept quiet, didn't rock the boat you could easily make it through junior and senior school and leave illiterate. I suffer from being a very very poor speller, it's clearly something dyslexic but because I can read and write well it was never addressed.

What I am trying to say is that the school are failing this child by not once celebrating her achievements.... whilst celebrating everyone else's

I can assure you that parents PTA status is very far off my radar when choosing who gets an award. See also: who gets the lead in the school play, another rumour on here that regularly gets spread.

And as for voluntary donations 😂 I’ve never worked in a school where that happened, or if it did I certainly wasn’t party to it as a class teacher, and it wouldn’t has made me give their the maths certificate that week.

Have to agree on the other categories though - basically the kids that stand out either for being really good or really naughty. Which is why I always had a list to make sure I included everyone and no one was forgotten just because they’re a quieter character and behave well.

I totally get this. It maybe depends on the child but some kids do notice. Yes it is good for them to experience a bit of disappointment sometimes and to see others succeed but when they are little they also need encouragement. My DD was the same and she’s the kind that noticed so was starting to say things like “I must not be very good at reading because x person got the star”.

I checked subtly whether it was random or if they kept a record (answer was they kept a record of one type of award but not the other). And I pointed out my DD hadn’t had one at parents evening. I was embarrassed - I literally said “I’m sorry to be THAT parent but I’ve just noticed that DD hasn’t ever had any stars or awards”. This was Summer term so only a few weeks left. Teacher said she hadn’t realised and she got one 2 weeks later.

The weird thing was the teacher was often sending me messages saying how well she had done at tasks or how kind she’d been but yet she never won.

i think I’m probably a bit sensitive to it as I was always overlooked myself at school and I do think it affected my self image.

Anyway I would say don’t worry about being unreasonable - it doesn’t really matter - if you think this is something your DD needs then advocate (in a nice way) for it x

The best thing is for your child to ask the teacher ‘what do I need to do to get an award’. This will bring them to them to the attention of the teacher and hopefully they will acknowledge that they haven’t had an award. Better coming from them than you.

Have you specifically asked the teacher about the award?

It may be as simple as your daughter's name wasn't written on the award list, or has been ticked off accidentally.

This. The ones who behave all the time don’t need the reinforcement. The ones who manage to sit down & not turn a table over for the first time get the star of the week shit. It’s rubbish but the way if the world

My DC is in year 2. During the reception year, awards were given out equally across all children. In year 1 by Christmas every child had received an award except my son. Some had received 5 awards by this point. This continued for months and when I mentioned it to my DC’s teacher she turned nasty on me and bad mouthed me to the after school club staff. This continued until July when my dc finally got an award. By this point my DC was saying that they didn’t want to go into school on a Friday when it was assembly. When I asked why it was because they never got an award. Now in year 2, no awards as yet this year. My dc hasn’t said anything. I haven’t mentioned it as I don’t want to upset them. My child is very bright but struggles with changes in routine possibly due to suspected and undiagnosed as yet autism. My dc is getting on better this year rather than last year but I am very disappointed that they don’t receive any kind of award whether a sticker or even just praise. Yet at parents evening they only concern they had was what I have mentioned above. After last year, I am not going to say anything to the teacher however if by Easter my child still hasn’t received any form of reward I will be speaking to the headteacher.

I personally don’t think this is ok - it sounds to me as it’s likely that she’s the only one in the class who has never received an award and she is bound to be somewhat aware at 4, even if not fully understanding. This means you can’t broach it with her, but rather the teachers as you mention you have done. Did you put it in writing before Christmas? If not, I would be looking to put it in writing - since you mentioned before Christmas, I would maybe wait until February half term or so, then you can email saying you are following up on your earlier discussion before Christmas and another half term has since passed without her receiving an award and all of her other classmates have. This has led you to be concerned about how she is progressing and you want to know what support you can give as a parent to help her achieve these awards, as well as what support they can give as a school to develop her skills for these awards. (or however you worded it before Christmas)
Always put in writing to document.
Hopefully they either reply with some feedback or will give her an award. But honestly, at 4 years old, I’d be expecting every child to have won at some point.

I change tack from asking in a roundabout way if there’s anything she can work on at home, to straight up saying it’s been 17 weeks now, there are 3 awards per week and 30 children, so why have some children had more than one and my child has had zero? It can be upsetting for little ones to think they’re being left out, and if she is cheeky at school then you want to know, if she’s being overlooked then you want to know.

This happened to my daughter at age 10. It got to June so I knew for sure every single child had got star of the week except her. And at that age she had noticed and told me every Friday that she didn't get it again.
Also at that age she knew it was a rotation thing and so every one should get one which just made her feel worse cos she'd obviously been totally missed.
I ended up sending a note in and she finally got it 2 weeks before the end of the year.
For something that supposed to encourage them, they can really deflate a child as well.

Same here. Especially at this age, every child got an award before any children got a second.

oh yes so dull and long and DDs were gutted they didn’t win (they got use to it tho) youngest got one in year 7 for charity work and that was only one. Eldest nether got it. Neither were sporty or top academic, it was always the same ten or so kids getting multiple awards

Let it go.

My kids had all this and they are resilient amazing kids. Yeah the had the assemblies an had to sit through entire awards dos.

Let it go.

Oh I hate this and I know how you feel, I remember feeling the same with my son over a similar thing. I’m glad I didn’t raise it to be honest, I just taught him at home that sometimes things are unfair etc. there’s plenty of time through life when things will be great for them but they’ve also learned how to feel a bit disappointed. If she hasn’t got one by the end of the whole year I would quietly tell the school how unfair that is and you don’t believe that out of 39 weeks she hasn’t been kind or done something fab at least once and maybe an award may have given her a bit of a boost.

I think you need to get some perspective. Being gutted and having a sinking feeling over effectively a sticker to reward those who need a bit more encouragement isn’t reasonable.

You need to get used to your kid missing out sometimes - that’s life.

My kid plays category one football. Highest possible level for years and years. Premier League football. He didn’t win his senior school football award. Seriously. Did he get upset or cry? Were we gutted or devastated? No. We thought is was funny. When he was younger he didn’t get PE star of the week and asked what he could do to improve it and they said improve his football (see point above).

Let it go.

The awards themselves are meaningless but it's horrible for the kids who get left out as out often upsets them.

Having had 2 kids at the same primary, several years apart, I noticed the same pattern. The kids who got the awards were typically in the following categories.

1. Golden children who did well academically but were very vocal about wanting to win and very upset if they didn't .
2. Naughty or challenging children who needed motivation to behave. (I speak without malice, my son was one of these types)
3. Children whose parents were on the PTA or made generous voluntary donations to school.

Kids most likely to be missed off were those who did well academically but weren't as loudly competitive as type 1, fairly quiet and well behaved. It's like they were no trouble anyway so the school didn't need to bother helping them happy with awards.

My daughter was one of those. Close to top of the class, I would be told every parents evening she's so polite, no trouble, really capable but ... still no awards.
She then got into grammar school and has been amazed by the number of merit marks and amount of praise coming her way.

I get this for older kids, but we are talking about 4 year olds here! What on earth would constitute a “truly outstanding” achievement?! 🤣