Our 13 yo was put on report last week for skipping a class. I first saw the report card on Monday evening, the teacher writes in a grade from 1-5 and initials it, for each lesson. I immediately thought, hey this is a good opportunity to encourage him to work at school. We looked at the scores he'd got and worked out a number of points which, if he achieved them, would earn him a small reward at the end of the week. I made it very small (prisoner's wages!) so as not to overly reward a punishment from the school. THe second day he got good scores and they got better still on Wednesday. THen on THursday I had a call from his English teacher reporting an incident in class (he swore). Yet, when I looked at his scores that evening (he was waving them in my face, saying how great they were, imagine my surprise when this teacher had given him a rather funny looking 5. More like a 1 with a squiggle under it really. He admitted it (when i told him I'd spoken to the teacher) but said it was the only one. I made him change it back and let him carry on for the rest of the week. He swore blind it was the only one but on Friday we all looked at it together and I can see about 3 certain changes and several other suspicious ones.
I think the school would better design the report card in a format with checks against a 1-5 scale, which wouldn't be open to doctoring.
This is designed for non-model students, AIBU to think an inner city London school would be a bit more prepared? Or was I silly to put a reward on it. In my defence, we've only had him with us for 6 months.