Rewarding kids for attendance, yay or nay?

[DoubleBusy2026]

Hi I’m interested to hear (especially from teachers!) if I’m being over zealous on this?

DD has just started year 7 and had one day off 2 weeks ago after the usual ‘new term bug’ swept through school. She had been sick the night before but was fine that morning. It was me who insisted she stay at home as I have a highly comprised immune system so as you can imagine, I feel very strongly about how important it is to keep sick people away from others. The knock on effects for people like myself, can potentially be catastrophic. Life ending, to be blunt.

Anyway, the school have ‘Golden ticket’ draws a few times a year, whereby any student who doesn’t miss a single day for 3 weeks, wins a shopping voucher(!) and the first of these draws was for days 1-21 of the new term.
Seems a great idea, until kids start missing out through no fault of their own, then it becomes a punishment for being unwell; whether that was the intention or not.
What about children with chronic illnesses? Important medical appointments which can only take place during school hours?

Just to be crystal clear, I’m not angrily posting on Mumsnet because my child didn’t get a shopping voucher! DD has more pocket money than I do and is much more privileged than many children, she absolutely doesn’t need one. It’s 100% about the principle and about the knock on effects on others.. In my opinion, rewarding children for attendance, just encourages parents to send in their sick children which results in many more sick children; surely that’s counterproductive?!

As I said, my compromised immunity is why I find it difficult to understand the flawed logic behind rewarding children - some of whom will undoubtedly be sick and contagious in a large school - for attending.

Besides, DD was only ill because a student had vomited in the hallway right next to her on the first day! Then on the day she was off, it was me who had insisted that she stay at home, as she had vomited the night before. DD very much wanted to attend!

How do I explain to an Autistic child that she’s missing out on a reward because she was poorly and that if she had attended whilst still unwell, that she would’ve been rewarded? What message is that sending?

Anyway, I do understand the idea behind it. I just believe it to be incredibly flawed logic, that’s all. Like I said, I’m interested to hear others’ perspectives on it.
Please be kind! Obviously I’m not going to say anything to the school about it…

Edited for typo!

These systems make it harder for medically fragile children to attend school. All people should stay home when they are sick instead of spreading disease. Those with more robust immune systems may be able to keep powering through, but the medically fragile children miss more days because classmates show up sick and get them much sicker.

@MyLivelyTealHedgehog 90% is one day off every 2 weeks and that’s below the government target and pretty poor. They’ve only just gone back!

DS is in reception but he did mention that one of his class mates is on holiday in Spain so not sure if that is bringing the average down for everyone or what is going on. I did attend the school recently for a look around and not sure how many children are exactly in his class but was surprised with the daily attendance figure on the board as it was a lot less than the 30 I assumed is in his class.

agree

Totally agree with you. Personally I think it's because they want some bullet points on their attendance policy to mark off, to evidence that they are trying, and this one is fairly easy and quick to do. Sometimes it is not about what is fair but what is cheap, easy and sounds like a SMART objective.

My autistic child finds this a useful explanation. If yours doesn't, you could maybe say the whole thing is a lottery and unfortunately she lost the "first round" of it by getting ill. Better luck next year.

This is a really good way of putting it, thanks!

At my son’s school they do prize draws I don’t mind that too much because it rewards a couple kids. Much better idea than attendance certificates

I may or may not have emailed the Attendance department (who knew high schools had entire departments for attendance?!) and got back a hugely patronising copy & pasted reply saying:

“Thank you for getting in touch. We completely understand why this feels disappointing. Please be assured that the Golden Ticket draw is not intended as a punishment for students who are ill. The attendance criteria are applied consistently for all students, but we absolutely recognise that some absences are unavoidable.
While your daughter wasn't eligible for this particular draw, there will be plenty of other opportunities for her to be recognised and celebrated. In fact, this week is Kindness Week, with a number of rewards and recognition opportunities for students who demonstrate our values and there are Golden Tickets on offer for those collecting the most kindness positives. Equally as students achieve each hundred positives there are Golden Tickets for them to celebrate their achievements.
We are very proud of your daughter and hope she won't be too disheartened. Missing out on this occasion does not prevent her from being recognised in future, and we look forward to celebrating her successes throughout the year.

Kind Regards
<school name> Attendance”

To which I very politely but firmly, pointed out all the reasons in which this is wildly unfair and counterproductive. I incorporated much of what was said in the comments above and await a reply…. 👀

My dc's primary school had a pupil who was recovering after treatment for leukaemia, and had returned to school part time. The school wrote to all parents and told them not to send their child into school if they were unwell, due to the risk of passing it on. Very sensible.

Mind you, a couple of years later it didn't stop the school sending a shitty letter about attendance to my friend about her dc's absence. The child had been off for three weeks, and was still in hospital when the letter was delivered by hand.

You're absolutely right. If school staff would prefer a child to miss a full day of school rather than puke in the classroom and get sent home, then they should not tie rewards to attendance.

I wish everyone would keep their kids off 24 hours after vomiting (I know NHS guidance is 48 but even a consistent 24 would be a win). How can they ask parents to keep kids home on one hand and then reward those who attend when they're ill on the other hand? It's crazy.

Honestly can't they actually reward kids for not vomiting in class? That would be a win.

Half the time being sick is what they ate. It’s pretty much over and done with I’ve it’s out. A temperature and an obvious illness are different. I’ve had dc be sick in the afternoon and right as rain by the evening. Being sick isn’t always a sign of some dreaded lurgy.

Well if you follow good food hygiene practices and don't give them foods that they tend to react to if that's an issue, then you should be able to minimise that cause of vomiting. The NHS guidance and school rules about attending are there for good reasons.

If there was any evidence that these schemes improve attendance, then I would think better of them. But in the absence of strong evidence, my assumption is that they are implemented "so that we can show ofsted we are taking attendance seriously". Which is a shit reason to do something.

The thing is though OP, the person who wrote that email may not even believe in the policy themselves. They are just doing their job, and one of their roles is to respond to irate parents emailing in about this. It's the fate of middle managers everywhere, having to defend policies they didn't always choose or sign up to.

Honestly I do think it's a good life lesson for our autistic DC to step back a bit and learn to take it all with a pinch of salt. Cynicism is useful. We're the same with detentions - I always thought I'd be the sort of parent who would "back the school" and be cross when my child got one, but they hand them out for the stupidest things at one of my DC's schools so we ended up encouraging DC to care less about it and separate their self worth from their detention count. If your child is a natural hoop-jumper, as so many autistic people are, it's good to learn to see that the hoops are just hoops and you can choose whether to care about them.

Your DD is kind at times I'm sure, and that will be the case whether she gets given a golden ticket for it at school or not. Tell her stories of kind things she has done and how her kindnesses made you feel. This is just a random lottery, it's not a measure of anything real. Understanding this is a kind of armour for navigating the world outside school I think. My autistic daughter has been working PT in a customer facing role since 16. Tolerating complete nonsense from customers, with nothing more than an internal eye roll, is a very useful skill.

Which is not to say for a moment that I agree with these systems.

Another parent was saying this to me and besides the injustice of the illness I hadn’t really thought about it much.

But thinking about it again.. it is weird imo.

Mainly because it’s incentivising… incentivising what? Attendance? That’s making it sound like a choice imo. It’s not a choice. You go to school. Unless you’re ill. Or your parent keeps you off for any other reason.

Rigid school attendance reward schemes, such as "golden tickets" or perfect attendance prizes, can breach the Equality Act 2010. When a school applies these policies strictly without adjusting for a child’s disability, chronic illness, or neurodiversity, they run a severe risk of committing unlawful disability discrimination.

This occurs when a school applies a universal rule to all pupils, but that rule puts a protected group at a particular disadvantage. Because disabled children are statistically more likely to miss school for medical treatments, therapy, or flare-ups, a blanket 100% threshold targets them unfairly. Withholding a "golden ticket" or reward from a student due to their medical absences constitutes unfavourable treatment.

Schools can comply by excluding medical absences.

Parents can appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability) within 6 months of the incident. While the tribunal cannot grant financial compensation, it can force the school to formally rewrite its policy, issue an apology, and retrain its staff.

It's stupid. "You dodged the bad lurgy bullet or a more serious illness. Well done! Have a shopping voucher!". "Unfortunately, because your parents are in charge of you and paying, you are going on holiday two days before end of term. Bad luck, no shopping voucher for you!". Thank god, when I was at school, attendence was registered on a report card and that was it.

This is very good advice, thank you.

I also 100% agree with teaching autistic children about resilience and that life isn’t always fair. I do already teach her this…….I’m just a gigantic hypocrite as it’s me who gets all in a twist about principles and what’s blatantly wrong. I really do need to get off my soapbox at times. Perhaps I was a politician in a previous life

I completely agree op.

It not only discourages, but actually stigmatises, responsible behaviour around illness.

It is unfair - not just for the child who should be home being looked after, but also for everyone exposed to it because the parents can't be bothered to look after their own sick child.

The parents who boast about attendance records are normally the very same ones whose kids are always snorting and snotty and passing it on.

This is awesome information to know, thank you. I wish I’d known this in year 3 when I had to get SENDIASS involved over something, who later declared it disability discrimination.

Thank you again, I’ll be sure to pass this on to others where appropriate.

There are plenty of things schools could do to incentivise attendance. Attendance awards are so messed up for all the reasons in the OP and more. They are a shallow tickbox exercise. Anyone want to take a guess at how many children now have long covid?

Nope.

@Gradybell in terms of the whole school population? Very few. More school refusers due to Covid. That’s the worst outcome.

I strongly suspect that a LOT of what schools do is about appearances for OFSTED, the board and so on.