To be fed up of the same children winning all the awards at school?!

[Bluebell99]

My son's school states some such rubbish as valuing each child and encouraging them to reach their potential, and yet it is the same children that are chosen for sports day and awards. Recently the school was awarded a grant, for a specific purpose, and they have used it to organise extra curriculum activities. I was invited to an award ceremony to recognise their achievements. Aibu to be disappointed that the children that won prizes are the same confident children that always win everything, and that there had been some extra invitation only expensive activities that only these kids took part in?! Is it a self fulfilling prophecy, that confident children get these opportunities? I was shocked at how inarticulate one of the popular kids was, who had been sent on a expensive summer school and asked to give feedback. It made me realise how low the aspirations are at this school. And instead of feeling inspired, I am feeling that my children are never going to get opportunities to meet their potential at this school. :(

I haven't RTFT but agreed with Cory's great post early on. You just get with the parts/awards/no awards you're dealt and live with and learn from it.

I remember when I was in primary (32 years ago!) they used to have a Christmas stamp competition. It was anonymous, and the winner had their design printed up and put on all the in-school Xmas cards. I won it every year. In my final year they actually banned me from entering. Banned me! I think my mum was a bit miffed and I was a bit perplexed. However I moved on and started challenging myself to new things.

I've now been a professional illustrator for 21 years

My dd is picked for a lot of things. Why? I honestly don't know. She's confident, bright, interested in politics and the news, reads well, very creative, is really funny. Maybe that's it?
She's not great at sport and when she stuck with the struggling netball team through thick and thin was disgusted that the netball team never even got a mention in assembly. They weren't very good! She just had to get over it.

we had one child get star of the week because he HADN'T hit anyone that week it's really hard to explain to my son who never actually hits anyone why he should get rewarded for this its doubly hard because his mom pays for extra tuition and he still level pegged with my son academically (in year one) but apparently he needs more encouragement than my son so gets rewards more often my son is getting philosophical about it now he is seven years old and understands that it's okay for this boy to hit shout and get rewarded for it all the time the only criticism they could come up with about my son is well he is a bit quiet i didn't care that she saw me roll my eyes this parents evening and pointed out he used to not speak at all in public and he used to stutter loads he might want a bit of you know ENCOURAGEMENT/REWARD for engaging with the teacher verbally naaa just ignore me then i will try again next year while he educates himself in the corner of your classroom

At my DC school, it is completely the opposite. They don't prioritise anyone on sports day, everyone gets stickers for taking part. There is no head girl or boy. They try to give support to all children that try whether good or bad. It is a very mixed state school, with a variety of abilities.

I remember as a child, try and trying day in and day out, studying constantly for tests doing extra credit and everything to get an award and it was always the say kids, always the rich, popular kids who had important parents.
I gave up my last few years because I figured my parents would never be important enough for the school. Awards are mostly about politics in schools and "awarding the rich parent's".
And my child today has a learning disability and no matter how hard she tries she barely passes with cs and bs so shes out of the running for awards and I'm not rich enough to "win" her one anyway.
Very cynical but it's very few kids who actually work to win it, it's all school politics and making sure kids and their parents know thier "place" in that school.

it is very true that the school awards are just there for the PTA parents kids and anyone else that is pushy and in 'ya face at school.
Over the past 2 years my child has not had any awards yet there are the chosen few that are up to 5 or 6.
Teachers are not at all what they used to be. They are lazy and do whatever is easy. Photocopying out of twinkl is their job these days.

Every competition, every award one child keeps winning everything and she not that brilliant at most things she does. I find it frustrating has there are other kids who do so much better and never get picked.

Surely with things like sports awards, it makes absolute sense that children who perform best win the awards? Sport is competitive and those who are best do tend to win. Why shouldn’t those who are the best be recognised as such? I’d say the same for academic, art or music awards. Music or art competitions are won by those who are perform best or whose pieces are thought to be the most skilled and fit the competition criteria best. Nobody awards exam results on “it’s their turn to get an A”. That’s just how life is, it’s not about being fair or unfair, it’s a recognition of reality- some people are more talented or skilled than others. Sometimes, it is because one person has had better opportunities e.g. training or started earlier, so are more skilled but another person may have more natural talent than them- but again, that is part of life- sometimes you have to work harder than others to get what you want. It’s not possible to make life absolutely fair for everyone, all the time.

Obviously it is different for merit or effort awards, or if the award is for progress made or outstanding potential- where there is more leeway to award those who are making a lot of effort but are not naturally as talented, for instance. Or in areas such as school productions (although, surely it does make sense for those who are best at drama or singing to get parts which suit their talents). Obviously, if children who are not the most skilled or talented are winning these awards, and it’s because their parents are pushy/on the PTA etc, then that is unfair and shouldn’t be happening (I know it does).

There is actually growing research that people (including children) recognise quite accurately where they are on the scale in terms of ability in most areas (whether it be sport, academically, music etc) and when those who are obviously less skilled are given awards that are supposed to be based on skill (i.e. not on effort or some other designated factor) both the person awarded the prize and their peers value those awards less highly. There is also some evidence that when someone is awarded something in those circumstances it can actually lead to lower reported self-esteem. So, it is quite possible that “awards for all” is not actually helping children in the longer run.

My nephew is dyslexic and struggles with quite a lot of areas academically- he is bright enough but finds it hard going. He is also very good at sport- rugby, hockey, athletics, cricket. And he trains quite hard, works on his fitness consistently, is keen to learn about tactics and so on. He plays at county and national level in several sports. He does often get prizes and awards for sport- it’s where his skills and interests lie. If he is the most skilled bowler, or ran the fastest 100m or whatever, why should he not be recognised for that? Why would you awards it to the child who was in the middle of the field, who knows full well they are not the fastest sprinter? My nephew does not expect to be winning academic prizes- he is well aware that in terms of academic performance he is not up there.

My daughter performs well academically, is a talented musician, is a decent hockey player on the school team and also performs at national level in another sport. She is, however, very aware that she is not the best at all subjects and that there are only 2 or 3 where she might be the top performer in her year group. She also knows that whilst she is a decent hockey player, she is not the best (or indeed the top 3, say) and so does not expect to win player of the year. She also knows whilst she performs well at the national level in her sport, she is not the best and is again unlikely to win the championship. It hasn’t damaged her to realise this and to not win the awards. She knows we are proud of how hard she works and that she does her best, she enjoys her sport and training, she enjoys her music lessons/being in the school orchestra and choir etc. Surely, that is enough? She doesn’t have to win a prize to know she has done well.

I have got very mixed feelings about awards. I think most schools attempt to give awards based on partly achievement and partly effort and our school mixes it up in such a strange way that it doesn't really help anyone.

For some activities there is a clear winner and I think in those cases it's fine to reward the winner. A lot of sports activities will fall in this category but potentially also some competitions based on arithmetic or spelling bees. Basically anything where you can quantify the kids' achievements and compare them in an obvious way that can easily be explained to everyone. I don't think it's difficult to.explain to your child that A won the sports award because she won the most races and I don't think that's damaging to either child either.

It becomes more tricky with subjective awards like the ones that award effort and though I see why the school wants to award effort I wish they'd just do away with them because it's very hard to subjectively know which child is putting in more effort and Also because it opens them up to accusations of bias and favouritism. And when you know that your child has put a hell lot of effort into something but didn't get awarded then the only lesson that sometimes you can teach them is that life is unfair. This isn't a bad lesson to learn but it shouldn't be the dominant lesson of your childhood.

The trickiest are the ones that I can assume are neither for effort or achievement but to encourage kids and these while meant well are so vague that they can neither be explained nor used to teach a lesson to anyone. Except again maybe the life is random and unfair lesson.

My dd's school is quite competitive. They have lots of sports and music competitions and as expected these are always won by the same sporty and musical kids. That's fine though it must be more difficult to subjectively judge music. Then they have awards for behaviour which are based on behaviour points accrued throughout the year. Also fine. But also at the end of every year they give out a number of awards that apparently are based on the opinion of all teachers in their year group or something like that.They have vague names such as 'showing at learning' that neither make sense grammatically nor semantically. A fellow parent once asked but the teachers didn't or couldn't explain what they were for. For the first few years I assumed they were to encourage kids that might be struggling or lack confidence but over the years that seems unlikely as they always go to the same kids who are obviously confident and also get other awards.

I think the whole award thing has become so mixed up with trying to be everything thet they have become quite meaningless and are nothing but a stick that the kids (and some parents) use to beat each other up with.

I've witnessed from my own experiences of school and now my 4 kids face all the same issues I ever faced, why is it always the same kids or same type of kids and there ass licking parents together with ass licking teachers, always win awards, always chosen for sports, always chosen for trips always chosen for the plays main characters ect. Why??? I never understood as a child why I was never chosen, was I too thick, too ugly, not a hard worker??? But the same type of family's got everything handed to them, now my 4 kids are experiencing these same things, no teacher wants to invest time with MY children no teacher wants to reward MY children or choose MY children to do nice trips out ect. This really upsets me so much that this attitude is still around in the schools. It's unfair and yet they can still make me and my kids feel so fkn worthless and outsider feelings. My kids have autism and adhd same as me audhd, I don't try to belong and like me my kids quickly see through those lies and two faced acts and im guessing cuz my kids will call them teachers out is why. I'm legally forced to send my kids to school and then they are treated like 2nd rate citizens. It's barbaric and so unfair, then im told I can be put in jail if I don't send my kids in even though there was a pedophile working in my kids primary school, my gut knew and I told my kids to stay the hell away from that man, I was correct he was arrested. I'm so sick of this schools, but I know I cant homeschool as I would get bored and give up. I'm so sick of it all though. I feel constantly sick. I don't want to belong to any of it but I just want my kids to have a good memory of school not absolutely detest it.