Aibu to offer my daughter money incentives for good gcse grades?

[Whatsmyname26]

My daughter is just starting to do some GCSEs with her first exam later this year. She is sitting them early and achieving well (looking at a level 5/6 atm) but I would like to encourage her to reach for the higher grades and remember children being given money incentives for different grades when I did my exams. Has anyone done this? Did it help encourage them to work harder to achieve higher marks? If so how much per top grade? She is only sitting one gcse this year and currently looking to sit another either November this year or next June.

Does a reward help incentivise them or should they just work because they should? I should point out she is autistic too.

Try reading Drive by Dan Pink about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. If she is intrinsically motivated to learn and do well for the sake of it, (and it sounds like she is?) do all you can to foster that. Don't start throwing money at the situation.

We didn’t offer incentives, but we did give them money afterwards.
I recall a girl in my daughter’s year , being offered a pony if she passed the 11+
Needless to say , she didn’t. She wasn’t best pleased ( understatement.)

Gosh I think she’s too young, esp with additional needs. It sounds pushy and unnecessary. We’re she proper GSCE age I’d say go for it. My parents offered their kids incentives to pass exams at the highest level because they knew we could. My sister was lazy and got hers after she got straight As at gsce and a level. Having given me the same incentive, my parents gave me the cash after the exams (before results) for my effort, regardless of results. I still got straight AS but worked my ass off. The financial incentive is no different to wages and bonus in later life. Cause and effect. You knuckle down, and life rewards you (sometimes/often) financially.

How depressing to hear of a Y8 child doing GCSEs early and for very average grades.

OP, don't underestimate the pressure of these exams and the danger of her burning out before she's mature enough to deal with the actual exams. There must be other ways of stretching or extending her without resorting to formal exams. Are you sure it's for her benefit or for yours?

I'm not keen on it. My dd tried to persuade me that I should give her money for her GCSEs, with an escalating rate depending on the grades. She was pretty pissed off with me when I gave her my usual speech about how better GCSEs grades woud give her more options for A levels and ultimately better chances at Uni and more choices in the world of work so it was in her own long term interest to work hard.

She ended up doing well in her exams and although she's quite mercenary and materialistic, I don't think a monetary reward would have affected how hard she worked.

I also think it's unfair that a bright but lazy child could get better grades and hence more money than a hardworking child who struggled at school.

I promised my daughter rewards for GCSE results last year, £100 for 9 and £50 for 8. She worked really hard and got 2 grades 9 and 4 grades 8, the rest 7 and 6. The grades were higher than predicted grades.
She said that financial rewards helped her motivation.

I did , it started 10 years ago when my ds just wasn't doing his best , he's clever but just wasn't trying hard enough I knew money would motivate him. Of course I then had to do it for my next son who was pretty similar . Then same for my dd who would have worked hard regardless of any financial motivation but I had to treat her the same as her brothers ! I didn't do it for a levels or uni.

If she is sitting the exam early and just doing it for interest then I would not offer money in your case. I think the joy of learning, in this case, is the reward. I didn't offer money for my own child as she was working hard and if she did not get the grades it was not down to lack of effort.

I can see offering money useful in some cases, for a child who is capable but not putting in any effort, and as long as target grades are realistic, offering £200 for a grade 8 that a child has no chance of achieving no matter how hard they work is cruel.

Well my grandson got a fiver for every mock pass and a tenner for every real pass
I was more than happy to hand over £150

Mumtomaxwell...I think it’s a pretty harsh way to live if no one gives you a treat for doing well.
My parents did it for me and I’m passing on the tradition

When my dd passed her a levels, she got a treat. My d’s was over the moon when he got a £100 for passing out as an electrician.
He said..are you sure mum..
I said of course..I’m very proud of what you’ve done..and don’t forget ..it’s no good calling for a brain surgeon if the lights go out.

I didn't offer my DD any financial incentives to do well at GCSE. I took the view that her results were reward enough. We went out for dinner as a family to celebrate.
I don't actually see the point in sitting any GCSE early, in fact I refused to sign a parents' petition asking for Year 10s to be able sit maths GCSE in Year 10 rather than Year 11. My understanding is that if your daughter intends to apply to university, she will have to put the first (not the best) grade she obtains on her application form so I would wait a couple of years in the hope of gaining a better grade.

I’m also autistic and was offered £50 an A* as a teenager, £25 an A for GCSEs.

This was by my Dad who insisted I wouldn’t do it. As I have a slight PDA element, this was like a red rag to a bull! I worked very hard and the total bill came to £600+ (in the days where taking 15 GCSEs wasn’t unheard of).

I was already an academic high achiever though and so were most of my friends and siblings so I can imagine it may be demoralising for those less able. Maybe tag it to targets? £25 for every grade over target, £50 for 2 grades above target?

She’s under no pressure to sit the exam at all and she knows this. She had the choice and chose to because she wants to. She has friends also doing the course who have opted not to sit the exam but she has actively asked to do so. If she decides the day before she isn’t doing it then she simply won’t sit it, no harm done. She will sit the bulk of the exams at the ‘correct’ age but it’s not uncommon to spread them out a little when home educating. Her tutor certainly thinks she holds her own in class and expects her to do well. It makes no difference to him if she sits it or not so I trust his judgement.

I do offer various incentives to my kids - I think we all work harder if there’s a reward afterwards.

Just wondering though - is your DD planning on going to university? I thought taking exams early damaged the chances of getting into a good uni.

Why would sitting an exam early damage chances of uni?

Core subjects like maths and English she won’t do until 16, mainly because having a gap before advancing to a level isn’t a good idea as knowledge can be lost but other subjects that are being learnt for fun it really shouldn’t matter. The aim is to sit just this one this year. It’s really being done for fun not qualification but as it’s there why wouldn’t she?

It worked for me. My parents paid by the grade, I spent it on a horse and had to work hard ever since to keep the horse!
@mumtomaxwell my employer gives a 35% raise for passing professional exams...

This GCSE might not go very well and if she's able enough to be taking GCSEs there will be more to come in subsequent years even if this one goes terribly, so I think it's risky to set this up with a financial incentive for a particular grade. It's better for it to be a really good "practice" where if it doesn't go well she could resit when she's older and if she does do well it's a bonus.

Look carefully at access arrangements - extra time/rest breaks/prompting/oral language modifier/typing rather than handwriting answers etc.

A friend of mine complained to her father because all her friends got money for passing exams, he told her it would bankrupt him if he gave her money for every A grade so he said she could get some money if she failed an exam .

I'm not big on financial rewards for achieving things that are themselves a reward.

I'm sorry I find this so funny. I'll tel you why 😂...

My mum offered me a given amount for each grade during my GCSEs: £20 for C, £50 for B and £100 for A, £150 for A*. She thought I wasn't studying enough. I'm a crammer. Always have been. I got: 4 A stars, 4 A, 2 B and 1 D (French 😂).
And that was the day my mother realised that despite having zero common sense, I was extremely booksmart.
I never saw a penny near it.
I never let her forget.
I'm 27.
Also no YNBU.

If I got 4 A's or B's or a mix my auntie said she would take me on holiday anywhere in the world I wanted to go. I got 4as and 3bs so went to New York!

Thanks independent friend. She will have a quiet room to sit the exam and it’s not in a school (exam centre have arranged this for us). She shouldn’t need extra time etc and doesn’t have an ehcp. When my son gets to this stage it will be a very different game though and he will need all you listed.

@Whatsmyname26 I wouldn't see doing one exam early as a big deal, but I have an acquaintance who is University Admissions Tutor who has told me that they look less favourably on applicants who have spread their GCSEs over several sittings rather than doing them in one go. It is because some schools try to boost results so start the GCSE syllabi early, focus on 3 or 4 in one year, then stop those subjects altogether and do another batch, meaning that the pupils are only ever having to retain the subject matter for a few subjects at one go. By contrast pupils in schools that do all the exams in one sitting have to retain the knowledge of typically 9 or 10 subjects simultaneously. The person I know does admissions for an academically very demanding subject and they say that they feel more confident that a potential student will be able to cope with the workload if they have demonstrated the ability to get good grades across a range of GCSEs in one sitting, especially now they don't have AS level results to take into consideration.
Obviously not every department in every institution will be bothered, and though my friend was a bit non committal when we were having this conversation I got the impression it would probably only be a deal breaker if a candidate was borderline in other ways, rather than that they absolutely wouldn't consider a candidate who had taken some exams early. But that's the rationale anyway.

I'm another one who likes to reward effort. A token representing £1 for the jar for every hour of revision. There was a particular game my son really would love to have. Day exams ended added them up and he had enough for what he wanted and some.

I learned the hard way. I was bribed only to pass and if I didn't I got nothing. I found academic work hard, and suffered with my nerves, it was so deflating. Especially having an older sibling who passed most things.

Well, I paid my 7 year old a £1 last weekend to to bed nicely so I could sit and drink my wine and eat my Chinese takeaway in peace.

Thanks mafil, I’ve heard this too which is why we would aim for the bulk to be taken together.

FWIW my son did one exam early - it was done through an after school club so not one of his core subjects and I think it did him good. He passed ok, but not with as high a grade as he had hoped and I think it gave him the little kick he needed to work a bit harder for the rest. It was exactly what I hoped for actually. I didn't want him to fail, as he had done a fair bit of work and I didn't want that to be wasted, but he hadn't exactly bust his backside either so I didn't want him getting an A* and thinking GCSEs were easy, especially as all his other exams were on the new, harder syllabi. So it worked well, and he really knuckled down and came out with a very good set of results in his main GCSEs. Obviously they do have mocks and do plenty of practice papers but there is something a bit different about sitting a real exam and I feel it did help my son. He has some, albeit fairly minor, additional needs and I think having a "dress rehearsal" was beneficial. So your plan sounds sensible to me.