To think this is fucked up (school 100% attendance)

[cricketmum84]

Recieved this letter from school before the start of term tomorrow.

I have a lovely, well behaved and studious year 8 girl who would love to attend 100%. However she had a bowel condition that causes extreme pain 2-3 days per month, enough so that she is unable to attend school.

Unfortunately she doesn't have the "resilience" needed to get these rewards.

Utter twats.

I'd forward that letter to the SEND dept at your local authority and parent/carer forum. It absolutely is discriminatory towards children with health and SEND who'll never achieve the hallowed 100% attendance.

I hate attendance awards. I had one day off every 6 weeks when I had to attend the orthodontist. We didn't have a car and were refused a closer one by the NHS which meant hours on the bus for a 5 minute tightening.
This doesn't even include the days off for severe period pain that inflicted a good proportion of the girls in the school.
We were always told we must try harder to stay I school. Yeah, I'll do that while being unable to stand and throwing up from pain

100% attendance awards = awards for luck, strong immune systems or spreading germs.

Sort of hoped Covid would have put paid to them.

Ironically, with the exception of the closure January to March, my DDs had full attendance for the first time ever. My younger DD dipped down to 87% one year...

At DD's comp "Attendance Champs" were 'rewarded' with breakfast with the Head. Absences soared.

This nonsense annoys me beyond reason. When I was in primary school sixth class, all girls were shoved into a basketball team and played against each other in a school competition, this went on months. At the end of the year the team I was on won and medals presented in front of the entire school. Headmaster gets up, makes a speech and then states that even though one player had not played all her games by missing school, the school was still magnanimous enough to give her and the player that replaced her a medal each, so "Dontbe come on up and collect the medal you didn't really earn".

The reason I had missed school, my mother had died and the whole of my world upended, my heart broken as I was alone with her when she died, I was eleven when that happened and to this day my anger at what that prick did to me had never left. Fuck this 100% attendance as if it was some great achievement, stop kicking kids that don't fit your version of "ideal".

Fucking awful OP. DD's primary tried something like this. A couple of parents and a (brave) member of staff spoke up for similar reasons to those you've given and I'm pleased to say it was binned PDQ.
In the first instance I'd be going for a strongly worded letter to the Head.
Do say something..
At best it's a stupid error of judgement and at worst plain nasty.

It's just nonsense

That’s appalling OP. As a former primary teacher that letter really shocks me; none of the schools I’ve worked in would dream of implementing something so obviously discriminatory. They also appear to have learnt nothing from Covid.

I’d be complaining very loudly and vocally to the governors about this.

I think you should send a strongly worded email mentioning 100% Attendance Club fifty million times like they have. Only you say it’s a pile of discriminatory poo.

Absolute crap, and not helping with deconstructing some of the more harmful stereotypes around mental health, physical health, and resilience. Too often they're seen as the same thing and I end up spending a fair bit of time unpicking them at work to explain that you can be a wheelchair user, or have CFS, or suffer an acute illness, or break a limb and still be resilient.

At best it's a clumsy broad-brush approach to a problem that fails to understand what the underlying issues are. At worst, indirect or even direct discrimination.

I hate this, is it primary or secondary school? The older kids become very cynical about it and mine called it “the award for showing up even if when you do you’re an annoying disruptive shit” and themselves recognised the unfairness against those with chronic illness and gave it a slow hand clap, It has no place in school and is an ofsted box ticking exercise at its worse!

This is awful OP. We are in a global pandemic but don’t worry come in so you can get an award and give everyone covid. Let alone pupils like your daughter. It’s discriminatory and risky, I’d make a lot of noise and ask to see where this flawed policy factors on their covid risk assessment. AWFUL!!!

These were always wrong, but in the middle of a pandemic they're positively perverse.

Twats manufacturing more Twats for the future!!

Absolutely awful. Attendance awards are so wrong! I once worked in a Primary school which had a 'Catch Up Club' during lunchtimes so that children who hadn't been in school could do the work they had missed in their absence. I refused to send my pupils to it.

Welcome to the Covid Kids Club.

Bring resilience. 👍

So it will be a walk of shame to hand back the pin badge when a pupil has been ill …
Unbelievable.
OP, I would use this as an opportunity to show DD how organisations can get things badly wrong when they are trying to do something good (encourage attendance).
I would tell her you will do your own reward scheme based on how well she has worked when well enough to work and that your and her own recognition of her efforts matter more than this ridiculous scheme.
I would also write to the governors and express how appalled you are by this. I scarcely ever had a day off school so I would have been almost permanently in this club - until I had appendicitis. So would that have defined me as lacking in resilience in being unable to attend while my insides were about to explode?

I tell my kids that these bullshit markers of success are dotted throughout all of life. Like all the others, don't fall for it, just ignore it.

DDs school did "own clothes" days for 100% attendance. She has a medical condition which meant she got sent home a lot (both she and I were generally happy for her to stay in school, but they panicked quite a bit and kept on calling me to come and collect her).

So, I wrote to the head, and pointed out exactly how discriminatory they were being, obviously singling out DC with medical conditions by their clothing, and got back a weaslly "oh, but we didn't mean actual medical conditions, those DC just need to speak to their tutor". My reply pointed out that perhaps they should have communicated that to both parents and DC, rather than causing a great deal of upset amongst DC who were going through rather a lot anyway. (DD wasn't actually fussed in any way about her, but due to the amount of time she'd spent in the medical room, she'd got to know younger students who weren't quite as "forceful" as she is , and was annoyed on their behalf).

The following term, the "own clothes reward" was quietly dropped.

Attendance awards annoy me. A few years back dd came home saying her friend hadnt felt well and hadnt eaten her dinner because she had been sick the night before...few days later low and behold my DD got a sickness bug so was kept off school until better plus 48hrs.
Come end of term DD didn't get a certificate but her friend did!!
(We mentioned to school but there wasn't much they could do other than send a letter out about the sickness rules)

Attendance awards contribute to kids been sent into school when poorly.

Ugh encouraging presenteeism, is discriminatory etc. Also has covid taught them nothing, that actually people don't want to needlessly be catching illness from others. In my work place we only care about output rather than exact hours etc worked, much healthier attitude. I would definitely complain, what message is it sending? Well done on never being ill? Well done for not listening to your body and spreading illness?! We had this on my school days, I never had full attendance and got some of the best exam results in my school... So go figure.

I'm sorry you've had this OP, more and more schools are moving away from this sort of nonsense for the reasons you state.

It's trickier to find ways to reward resilience than this simplistic way of looking at a cold hard figure and so on but it can be done (usually through form tutors I find) and can discretionary to reward those students that have been seen to be trying hard to just get on with things alongside whatever challenges they face.
I wouldn't bat an eyelid if your DD was in my form and you wanted to take that letter up with the governors, I'd quite agree with you.

I would be at my keyboard writing a firmly worded letter about ableism. This is disgraceful and quite simply destructive of kids' self esteem.

Yes, there is probably a degree of the coveted "resilience" involved once in awhile, with some children, but what the award really does is shame children who have had bad luck and been ill.

I experienced this in my own life, due to asthma and ulcerative colitis. Perfect attendance awards were not for me, they were for other kids. I felt a lot of shame.

Letting them go to the front of the lunch queue? Honestly?

That's ridiculous, what about if they have a hospital appointment? Or like your daughter they have a medical condition that prevents her from gaining 100% attendance. How many adults are sending their children in really poorly so they can achieve this? It's utter bullshit.

Christ, so the kids who catch covid will pretend nothings wrong so they don't lose their 100% club badge. Excellent idea. Fuck me.