To think weekly class awards should be a bit fair?

[Pandora1box]

At DD’s school they give out three class awards a week. Two of them are ‘star of the week’ and one is an academic award. My issue is that her teacher seems to just choose the same child(ren) week after week. So we’re now in the summer term with about half of the class having recieved no kind of reward for hard work this year. Am I unreasonable to think this isn’t really cricket? There are 36 teaching weeks in the year - more than enough to give each child an award this academic year (even enough to double up for her favourites!) but because she chooses the same children week after week a lot will go without recognition.

Normally this wouldn’t bother me at all but it’s got to the point where DD is taking the attitude of “I don’t know why I bother working hard etc.” And she is too young to be jaded like this (she’s 8).

I know she does work hard and is capable because she was chosen for an academic school award by a different teacher.

I’m so tempted to ask the teacher why she does this but I really don’t want to be ‘that parent’.

DD - now 17 got star of the week once at Primary school in Y5 - at school she was an invisible, middle of top set, well behaved type.

it didn't matter, she knew she was valued, she saw that star of the week was given to kids who "needed" it rather than deserved it. We told her she was great at her work, we told her we knew she was working hard, we rewarded her often for her positive attitude.

She got many As and A* at GCSE, is working at the same level effort wise and grade wise towards her A levels. She has all the advantages of parents who are both fully engaged in her education, supporting her successes, encouraging her to fly. She will go far and do well in whatever she chooses her future to be - and she has many choices available to her

She did not need a bit of paper to tell her so - she knew because we told her so. But she fully understood that some kids did not get the same encouragement she did, and did need that bit of paper.

Life is not fair. That bit of paper does not go far towards levelling any inequity.

Ds2 is always genuinely thrilled when his friends get student of the week and is incredibly excited when he gets it - he genuinely believes in it yet is one of those quiet well behaved children that often gets overlooked so ends up getting it much later in the year when the teacher is 'mopping up' all the people that they know will be easy to choose something they have done to award it to them for...

However the school also do a student of the term award for each class which is a much bigger deal. Last year it was given to a boy that had been bullying ds repeatedly over the term, I had to go in to talk to them about it several times, including the morning the child was given the award in the afternoon.

Ds had to listen to how wonderful , kind and friendly this boy was, and that was why he was getting the award. Must admit I did complain to school - that it was incredibly insensitive to do this. Ds was left really down - because not only had his faith in the system been busted as they gave the award to someone who in his experience was totally the opposite to the key words they used about him but he felt it gave the bully legitimacy to carry on as he had been (not least because the bully told him this afterwards, albeit in crueller words) and that the teachers didn't care about the fact he had been bullied , because if they did, why wouldn't they have chosen someone else?

To be fair they did apologise to ds - explained the awards had been chosen in advance so the fact that they had had to tell him off in the morning for bullying they hadn't really thought through the implications. Ds accepted that - I was still annoyed because they overlooked a full term's worth of bullying... and as it's the trembly award not everybody gets one so they could have held back on this one.

But it's taught ds an early lesson to be cynical about these sorts of things which is good I guess, even if it was painful at the time.

Bunbunny that is too bad for your son, who sounds lovely. I told my kids from the beginning that these sorts of things were not important, not in so many words, but just in that I always deemphasised the significance of awards, but took a lot of interest in their actual work. I think as long as you are genuinely interested in pictures they make, things they write, books they read, there is nothing wrong with coming close to ignoring awards, stickers, marks on tests, and marks in general.

Most of this stuff in bullshit, in my opinion, not particularly honest or helpful, a bit of a cheap tool to manipulate kids. I don't think it is cynical to recognise this; I think it is a bit cynical to use this sort of system on kids.

YANBU. İt's no bloody wonder parents get peeved and the Green eyed monster comes out.
Not all children are academic either, are they.
Yes the rewards have to be realistic.
I mean they can't say. This a reward for Johnny because he counted up to 100 independently. When in reality he cant count past 15.
However every child has their strengths.

YABU. Awards should be given to those who achieve the most, behave best (or whatever the criteria are). As long as the criteria are clear everyone can aim for them.

Giving the award out using a rota makes the awards meaningless! It works as a disincentive to work hard, knowing that every child will "win" at some point.

Thanks claraschu!

And of course on a separate but related issue - many schools are now using Class Dojo or something similar to hand out virtual points and keep tabs on kids... No thought at all as to the long term implications on the child's data profile or it's privacy... Suspect it might rear it's head in years to come, when it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle...

YABU. The most deserving children should get the awards, and that won't be everyone in your child's class. If your child isn't an academic high-flyer for example, then they shouldn't get an award for being top of the class.
HOWEVER - I think that awards should be given for a variety of reasons. For example, as a teacher in a secondary school, we give awards for academic achievement, but also for effort, school spirit, sport, music, drama and art. That way, even a non-academic child can still be considered for an award - but not all of the children will get something or the system would be devalued.

Bunbunny In my experience, at primary school there are some kids who are horrible to other children but who are able to put on a good show for teachers and appear charming. However i found that at secondary as they got older, they weren't able to keep this up and would show their true colours to the teachers too who would see them for what they were

Disconcerting that when a pp has already eloquently pointed out exactly how a significant number of children begin each day hugely disadvantaged in terms of what they can achieve, some posters continue to insist these awards should be given to the 'most deserving'.

Too many of these kids are fighting enough battles as it is before they even get in the classroom. For some of them, there is not going to be one week in the year where they 'deserve' to be star of the week in the eyes of anyone who doesn't know what else is going on for them, and yet they will benefit from that recognition far more than many of their more 'deserving' peers.

I would rather do away with most/all of these ridiculous rewards systems, but if they're going to exist I think it's really important that all children get their turn.

The ones saying YABU must be ones whose children go hone every week with an award

My kids school did this. Small village school so not many people in there, teachers always chose the same kids (ones they were friends with their parents with usually). X factor award was just another term for licking their friends anus award. It was so stupid.

Nell, any child could get an award for "best effort" or "school spirit" (e.g. being kind and helpful), no matter what disadvantages they had, and that's what I suggested in my post and what my school does. Our SEND children frequently get these awards.

I may be crucified for this, but I won't be reading any replies so, what the hey. I don't think every child should receive a reward. What's the point in giving them out at all? It's like a participation award. You get it if you're really good and perhaps those children really deserve it. It shouldn't just cycle through all of the children because what's the point?