Attendance awards

[Itsfridayatlast]

DD has come home pleased that their house has won the attendance award this week. “We were lucky no one was ill”. She wasn’t joking. 😀

Assuming genuine illnesses are broadly spread evenly it stands to reason that higher instances of absence are probably more genuine so no harm in rewarding those who attend on all days they can.

Far too many miss school because of holidays, poor parenting and other non essential reasons. It is good for children to learn that absence for genuine illness should be the only reason not to attend.

Attendance awards are bollocks.
We always refused any personal certificates, and just told the kids to ignore the messaging.

It is good for children to learn that absence for genuine illness should be the only reason not to attend.
Or bereavement.
Or important non-educational event.
Or other educational activity.
Or appointment.

Other than bereavements which by their very nature are going to be few are far between the other 3 are just excuses to take time off.

Important non-educational event is very subjective.

Other educational activity sounds like you want to use school part time. Either commit or don’t join in the first place.

Appointments should be made outside of school hours unless completely unavoidable and then in the vast majority of cases you only need an hour or so away from school not a whole day off.

The correlation between attendance caused by anything other than genuine illness and quality of parenting is stark.

I dislike them. They shouldn't be a thing. At all. It's young children.

They wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for poor parenting.

The school my DS attends has never had them but also doesn’t have an absence problem.

What?!
my DD has chronic illness so never had or has 100% attendance
I hate these awards as kids have very little
control over it

It's not really possible to make hospital appointments out of school hours.
My daughter has 4 hospital appointments coming up. 1 is at a hospital 40 miles away from school, the other 3 it's 60 miles. I can't pick and choose when they happen.
Attendance awards have upset her for years. You are forgetting about the substantial number of kids with long term health issues.

You still are marked as absent for health related absence
its just authorised by the school
so my DD’s hospital appts which take hours are absences

I saw a year 11 today who told me he had not had a single day off since he started secondary school. After he left I checked his record and yes he was correct. Now that is something that is flipping amazing.

Don’t misunderstand me, I think they’re a load of bollocks too. I understand why some schools do them, but it’s more to be seen to be doing something about attendance, than actually having any real merit. I think they can be harmful if anything as a lot of absence is outside some people’s control.

It was just interesting to hear her say it so matter of factly and struck home the message kids actually receive, which I can’t really argue with. She just sees attendance awards as luck, in the same way as a teacher might pick a name out of a hat. Her attendance is good, but she’s healthy but has had a fair few horrible viruses in the school holidays. I’d be happy if the awards were scrapped, even though they don’t affect us, as I don’t think penalising misfortune is a good thing.

The most engaged and thriving kids tend to have lives. In rural areas the farming families (not my family) are allowed to attend the county show, especially if taking part.

Those who play sport or act are permitted to do so.

Those at educational events e.g. Maths competitions.

Those attending cadet events.

These are the kids schools most want in their communities!

(And as for appointments - surgery happens when surgery happens.)

Attendance awards aren’t ideal, but I agree that they wouldn’t exist if parents didn’t take their children out of school for spurious reasons. Blame poor parenting, not schools.

I also agree that even if your child realises that her house was lucky that no one was ill, she is also receiving the message that attendance is important, which unfortunately, not all children get from their parents.

It's no solution for bad parenting.

Our children went to school abroad a few years. These awards weren't a thing. We didn't miss them. Absence
was of course dealt with by the school.

This is a 'two wrongs don't make a right' situation.

Taking kids out of school for no reason - wrong action.
Introducing attendance awards - wrong response.

Attendance awards do faff all when kids and parents don't care about attendance, but make kids with genuine health issues feel crap.

Who takes the appointments during school when people who work take them?

I take it you're lucky enough to not have a long term illness? I've had appointments that do take most of the day

Appointments should be made outside of school hours? Easier said than done, since you rarely get a choice of time, especially if you've been waiting months to see a specialist. They tell you the appointment time and that's that.

The trouble is that when a class misses out on the award week after week because a pupil in the class has a chronic illness or disability, it creates resentment among the other pupils that this child is causing them to lose the opportunity to get an award.

I think issues sometimes get conflated such as attendance and attendance awards.

It doesn’t matter if you’re only off for a hour if it’s over registration.

And your point about parenting - that’s why I dislike attendance awards. For primary school children, if they aren’t at school, it’s not their fault.
It’s either illness (either bog-standard short lived bug, or long term medical condition), appointments (again either one offs or frequent due to medical conditions), holidays/days off their parents have chosen to take, SEN the school cannot appropriately deal with, or shit parents not bothering to take their child to school because they can’t be arsed.
Not really sure why a child should be awarded for the luck of not having any of the above. My yr 3 child has had 100% attendance since reception and it’s really no achievement on her part - she doesn’t get sick much, her only vomiting bug was a Friday afternoon and back to school on Monday. If she’d come down with it a few hours earlier, she’d have been sent home Friday morning and been marked absent Friday afternoon.

Appointments should be made outside of school hours unless completely unavoidable and then in the vast majority of cases you only need an hour or so away from school not a whole day off.

Clearly said by someone who doesn’t have a DC with a medical condition that requires regular hospital appointments.

I used to try to make DD's appointments first thing (when I had any sort of say in the matter) so she got to school about 20-30 minutes late.
This counted as her missing half a day in attendance terms.

It would have been better in attendance terms to take her out of school 5 minutes after afternoon registration as that would count as her being in school all day, although in reality she would miss 2 hours of school.

Which is better for DD's school attendance? Not the one that gets her the attendance award.

Its just one award, no big deal

On our Maths department corridor is a notice board with every pupil who achieved an 8 or 9 in maths. They also list the attendance for those students. They mostly have attendance of 98 - 100%

Poor them if they get sick then. Their attendance % will plummet.

Being ill is not a child's fault.