AIBU to think rewarding children for high grades is unfair?

Who is it unfair to? I'm guessing you don't know all the ins and outs of how they reward and motivate their children and there is nothing stopping you rewarding your own children based on whatever factor you choose.

So why don't you reward them for getting the best grade they are capable of? Teachers will happily tell you what they think your child is capable of achieving. If you think they worked hard then reward it.

I don't know anyone who only rewards for high grades. Do you? Is this affecting your own children in some way?

I reward behaviour and effort rather than the grades.

my DD struggles to catch up - no fault of her own but she missed a lot of school.

her last report was mainly WTS and secured in maths but her her effort in all was excellent on report so I rewarded that.

No but that was OP’s whole entire question….

Are you talking about rewards. Or bribery?

Getting a child something they don't know about beforehand is a reward.

Saying to a child 'you will only get X if you get X grade/put in X number of hours of work' is bribery.

Rewards - absolutely agree with. When my daughter does something really well, I may reward her with a treat. She does not expect it, and it's not conditional on achieving a specific pre agreed outcome. The motivation and achievement remains intrinsic.

Bribery - it's a no from us (recognise everyone is different), they need to work hard/do well because they want it for themselves. That will be much better long term. Whatever the bribery is will be spent/used/gone as its extrinsic.

Totally disagree

you reward what your child can achieve

if my child is expected all As I’ll reward for that

if your child is only capable of ever getting Cs. That’s great and that’s what they can achieve. So you reward that

Pretty much this. Some kids are way more academically minded then others and can pretty much cruise through most subjects. My very good school friend was chronically dyslexic and her busting a gut in getting a (then) B in English was quite frankly an astonishing effort.

Is that a problem? It got them a load of decent grade 8s in 2 instruments each, and in ballet.

Since posting, I have remembered that DD2 was offered a “bribe” if she achieved a certain number of points by her chosen university. The bursary/bribe was £4K paid in the February of her 1st year and at the time it covered her 2nd year accommodation costs. That was an added incentive for her.

At the end of the day, I know my daughters and what motivates them. Both are now doing well in their chosen careers, understanding the importance of hard work. If that’s transactional, I don’t care. All through the parenting journey I’ve had bystanders criticise me. After 26 years, I couldn’t care less.

Life is unfair. That’s what my therapist once told me.

When you learn to accept that the world is fundamentally unfair (eg is it fair that your children were born here while others are born in slums?) then you stop getting angry or upset about how other people are living.

Agree.

We were chatting about this at work last week. My colleague went to a school
in a very poor socio-economic area. The school actually paid the students who did well in their GCSEs (and by ‘well’ he meant passing). I think he said he was given £200 and a voucher for something too. It can be a great motivator, but it’s not something we ever considered. My kids certainly had friends who were promised £100 for every grade 9, for example.

Surely it depends on the child.

Some may need the additional reward of cash per grade for motivation.

We didn’t offer that because they were already predicted good grades and were working but we did celebrate end of exams.

If they weren’t reaching their potential I’d bribe if needed!

It's definitely a better way than just rewarding high grades.
Many parents, like yourself, have kids with varying degrees of success at school, it would be unfair to just reward the high achiever if the other daughter was doing her best.

i would have thought each parent who knows their own child is best placed to choose whichever motivation system will work best for their child.
rather obviously, in your situation, rewarding grades won’t work.
so you don’t do it.
a bit silly to think that that would apply to other parents though.

Surely, you would reward them for achieving "high" grades each according to their own standards. Not all the same grades if they are at different levels...

Hope you did well with Maths to check their working out 🤣

This is going back a bit, but in the lead up to my GCSEs, my parents said they’d give me £15 for every A*, £10 for every A, £5 for every B, nothing for Cs and they’d take money off for any Ds.

Had I found exams really difficult, I’ve no doubt they’d have rewarded Cs and possibly Ds.

I scraped art A Level but aced my BTec - would I have got a death-trap rusty old banger? Maybe my clever sister would’ve given me a lift 🤣
Your choice of course but oh the pressure!

Gosh some of your kids were lucky! I got absolutely nothing for passing my exams and A levels. Obtaining them through hard work was the reward and the pride that I had good results.

Yes - it’s upto a child’s parent what they wish to do as is everything else eg what time they go to bed, what they eat etc, I appreciate if you have more than one child it can get tricky/complicated

I would reward effort rather than attainment, personally. Speaking as someone who was labelled as 'Gifted and Talented' at school and being the best/top of the class was considered my benchline and success was always expected, and speaking as that same someone who taken until 33 to learn that it's ok to not be perfect/the best as long as your tried your hardest. It was such a damaging thing to have learnt as a child and rewarding top grades just undermines the importance of doing the best you can at any given time 🤷🏼‍♀️

I have a child who got rewarded for high GCSE grades, and for the life of me I can't see why you think it's unfair or why you think it impacts you in any way.

He is extremely bright and knew he'd get decent marks with no effort at all, but incentivising him financially to push himself a bit meant he got great marks rather than just good ones. He got no money at all for anything below a 7, then more for an 8 and a really decent amount for a 9. How is that unfair? And for what it's worth, he's now at uni doing well and fully understands that he needs to work on his own accord to achieve his degree...

I would too.

I used to reward my eldest for passing reading quizzes. Now I reward them for just picking up a book every day. My youngest was picking up on it and giving her teacher hell for not not letting her quiz enough 🫠