Does your school do this?

[Tantrumschmantrum]

Was chatting with a parent the other day who was expressing their concern about thier DCs behaviour at school. They were saying how the school had phoned them as lets call them 'Kim' had been naughty and had been mean to other children and had even hit another child. Then I saw some smiley face stickers on Kims top which Kim apparently got for being good. Kim also got star of the week very recently.

I've not had any calls about bad behaviour from my DC lets call them Pat. Pat rarely has smiley face stickers and hasn't had star of the week.

The private nursery Pat goes to are always telling me Pat is a very helpful kind child. Why then is Pat not getting stickers and certificates? I'm told by teacher friend that this sort of thing happens a lot and is just to give children such as Kim incentives to be good, but children like Pat who are already behaving don't get rewarded. AIBU or is this a bit crap?!

Yup, at DS’s school, they get certificates of kindness handed out in assembly. All the kids who are always good get to sit and clap the kids who are mean to them all week.

We have special smiley stickers for children that struggle, because in some cases they are acting out for attention so it's just a way of making sure they are getting attention for the right things. They are separate to star of the week though. We make sure all children get star of the week at least once per year, which I think is fairly standard in EYFS, or at least has been everywhere I've worked, so maybe its just not got round to Pat yet.

It happens all of the time.

Is it fair? No.

Do some of these kids have awful backgrounds that we can’t even imagine? Some yes, some no.

Bad behaviour gets reward trips, forest school, surfing trips.
Kids that just do what they are supposed to don’t.

It isn’t fair not one bit but then some of the kids that don’t toe the line have heck of a home life. Not saying all. But some.

Yep. Happened at my ds primary school.

Rewards til the cows come home for bullying little shits who swear, hit and are generally a royal pita.

All well behaved children get didly squat.

It also doesn't work because the little shits having moved into secondary are now just slightly bigger shits.

But the teachers felt like they were actively doing something so that must make it ok

Well, it doesn't seem to be this way in all schools. I am lucky that my 2 primary school (state) age child are well behaved, hard working etc etc and they do both get the positive reinforcement as well. The schools have house and class points/ stickers/ certificates etc. Elder child was selected last term for an off site treat (along with others from all classes).

I don't know what happens with the naughty children (there is 1 child who I think has a very difficult home life and acts out at school) but I hope they get rewards too.

Just wanted to give a bit of balance.

When this is a major issue is when you have quiet well behaved kids who also get no real praise or support at home. There seems to be an assumption that quiet well behaved kids are all well supported at home, but that is not always the case.

I found that my daughter gets the stickers and star of the week almost immediately after I've been in to complain about the latest bullying incident. It seems to happen every time.

'Hey, you're getting bullied, we're not going to sort it out - but here's a sticker!'

Yep. My kids are kind and polite and always get paired up with "difficult" children for learning and if there is a new teacher at the beginning of the year then, yep, my kids get the newbie.

So sick of it but if you complain you get shot down.

My sons school does this for naughty kids. One boy who always disrupts the class, the class have had to be evacuated on many occasions because he goes super crazy throwing things etc. They reward him with stickers, he gets to hand out awards at every assembly and is at the front of the queue for everything just so he doesn’t cause a drama. Luckily since they mixed the classes around he’s not in my sons class anymore. But my son has an area near his classroom for if he feels overwhelmed or anxious (he is autistic) the other boy one day just walked over and pulled all the posters and pictures the teacher had put on the wall and trashed my sons stuff. His mum clearly doesn’t care and on several occasions I’ve seen her laughing when the teacher has told her he has been naughty.

@aldilogue
When I was at school I always got stuck with the difficult kids. I never had a problem as I was a bit of a nerd so I just did the work and I got on really well with a lot of them, my son helps with some of them but with his own issues some people he finds it hard to connect with them,

Very common I suspect

He has now been expelled from 2ndry school and arrested multiple times.
So stickers really worked then ?

Maybe those stickers gave a child who had a really shit deal in life a few very rare moments of feeling appreciated.

Maybe those stickers have worked with some of the children but the one who was permanently excluded and arrested just had too many negative influences in their life. Maybe they had undiagnosed additional needs and found it impossible to be compliant, despite the huge incentive of a few stickers and the odd half-hearted round of applause in assembly.

It's a shame that teachers sometimes forget. I have been guilty of raising this issue with a teacher who managed not to single my compliant child out for a reward consistently for a whole year. However, I think it helps to remember that some of those children being given stickers week after week, have a pretty grim home life and others have significant additional needs that will make their lives that little but harder. Mine has those too but she didn't cause the teachers a problem so was still forgotten.

Give your DC some praise and rewards at home and help him to understand that different people have different challenges in life so he learns to accept that equality does not mean being treated the same.

I think the main concern I’d have is does the school manage that disruptive child’s behaviour pretty well?

If they do, then how they do is secondary.

I have one dc who needs a lot of encouragement at school, and one dc who just gets on with it, and is doing well.

Guess who gets the star of the week about 30 weeks earlier than their sibling

YANBU.

DD was a little under 5 when she had a little cry and told me that X had got star of the week for doing Y - “but Mummy I do that all the time!!” It was a really hard one to explain. DD did not get star of the week at all in reception (which still makes me bloody cross, years on). It is all too easy to ignore the compliant, reserved little girls, IMO.

Wintertime4 I agree. I have worked in ks1 and 2 in several schools. My first child was the one who helped to stabilise the most disruptive, she was verbally recognised by teachers all the time. She understood why some children were given extra rewards etc. and even commented that 'x might have behaved better today if miss hadn't lost her patience a bit'. She saw herself as a little leader and enjoyed her role!
My son, however, needs a huge amount of persuasion and help to get things right. His school (v much specially chosen inclusive mainstream towards sen) provides a lot of positive reinforcement through the TA but he was in the last week of the year to receive a certificate for behaviour at parents assembly. I think this is fair and accurate. If however he was a troubled child capable of so much more, I would hope the school would reward early to encourage his potential

It's hard for the kids who do as they are told - they know why the kid who gets the stickers is getting them and they are painfully aware of how much time they spend waiting for the kids who struggle to finally manage to sit down, be quiet or join the line.

Positive reinforcement is an excellent behaviour management strategy in isolation, but it does erode the patience of the 'good' kids a little, and even the ones who aren't necessarily good but are motivated to comply by the desire to complete an activity and move on find it frustrating.

Mine isn't naturally compliant, and is easily led enough to be distracted by (and join in with) the disruptive behaviour and disappointed by the lack of reward for when he does get things right, simply because his class has quite a few challenging pupils who dominate the rewards system. It's a tough one - at such a young age it's hard to convince them that these kids are getting the kind of attention that they don't really want, and the teachers are up against it in so many ways that I can completely understand how impossible it is to be fair to each individual in a way that works for them.

Yep very very common and irritating as hell if you have a middle of the road, fairly well behaved child because they're constantly passed over for rewards.
I suppose the teachers do have to put some sort of system in place for improving behaviour though.

Atthebottomofthegarden I agree that it is hard for children who don't get recognition. There was a thread a while back that suggested all children know it's nonsense, but I don't agree, and if parents tell their children that it is, it just undermines what teachers are trying to achieve for the greater good

No. My children are both very well behaved, never been in trouble. My primary age child is always coming home with Seren Yr Wythnos certificates and the high schooler has had pupil of the month in at least one topic every month since she started in September.

It’s a tough one. I get why the school works this way.

But - I was the compliant pupil. The good one who always got on with their work. I remember being seven or eight and I’d got full marks in the class spelling test every single week for the whole school year. Other kids got certificates and praise for getting them right just one week. Yes, spelling might have come easier to me but not even an acknowledgement for a whole year?? Where was my incentive to do better?

All the kids who are always good get to sit and clap the kids who are mean to them all week.

This ^

And not all children with SEN are badly behaved, most are fairly compliant.

The worst behaved kids had parents who didn't give a shit! Parents who don't rate 'eduction' and she it as a baby sitting service. They don't have bad home lives (More technology than NASA - more Tenerife holidays than you could shake a stick at)

Kids with rotten home lives - don't equal badly behaved kids in school

Give your kids rewards st home .... long term they'll be the Ines who are happy and do well in life

Hmmmm, I can remember when I was at primary school (reception or year one) complaining bitterly to my mum about the fact the naughty boy in the class (he was very naughty) got stars of he was good for a day, got to be pupil of the week in assembly for frankly average behavior. My mum didn't exactly brush me of, but I think she just distracted me onto something else. Many many years later we were discussing primary school and she mentioned said boy who apparently had a LOT of stuff going on that I at 6 would have been unaware of. I don't think the unfairness has done me any harm in my life, and he seems like to have done ok as well so on balance I think it was fine...

But the teachers felt like they were actively doing something so that must make it ok

What is you would rather teachers do? Bearing in mind budgets have been slashed, many schools have seen redundancies in the last 12 months, and Ofsted has something to say about exclusions?

Please, do give us a better answer to poor behaviour. We are on tenterhooks.

Yes and it can be really frustrating if you are the parent of a perpetually well behaved child. I've worked in numerous schools and this does seem to be the lay of the land in most, not all though.

I studied psychology at college and in all fairness it completely baffles me that the idea of positive reinforcement is overused, sometimes a child needs to understand that they have done something wrong and that's the end of it. I understand why they do it but being the hardworking, well behaved child on the outside of the rewards when those that have been disruptive or naughty finally behave as they are supposed to stinks and i say that as a teacher, a parent and the well behaved child.

The problem comes when the rules shift, when i first started my teacher training i saw children who had learning difficulties or genuine behavioural difficulties rewarded after they had 'misbehaved' but behaved better after, hence the reward- that's different, their learning is different. When a child who is just naughty has the same repercussions to their actions they realise that they can play the system and the cycle goes around and around. I've seen it so many times, a child will relentlessly pick on another child, they will be pulled up for their behaviour and rewarded on displaying the 'correct' behave, after reaping the spoils of being 'good' they revert back to the previous behaviour and the cycle continues. I'm not saying that's all the time but that's at least my experience of it. It certainly does take it's toll on the more behaved children.

I guess really what has to be considered is the stance and management by the school of a pupil who is not learning through positive reinforcement to behave well.