To want schools to drop attendance incentives?

[Sophie632]

So my son has a medical condition and has to attend hospitals appointments - sometimes not locally. Our school give out certificates for 100% attendance and he rarely gets these. There is now talk of starting a scheme where the whole class is rewarded each day everyone is in. I don’t think this is fair to children who have disabilities or medical conditions that may make them need to miss school, totally outside of their control. Also - should we really reward children purely because they don’t catch any nasty bugs? Hardly seems fair!

😂nothing like a bit of discrimination is there?

My Dd is ASD. Her attendance is 85% . Sometimes she’s too anxious or overwhelmed to go to school. She’s still predicted A* at A level.

As things stand ds2 won't get to go to prom next year, unless they get the disease totally under control. That seems really unfair, I might go into battle for that one.

I would absolutely battle that one. I battled that one even though my DD wasn’t even sure she wanted to go to their end of year disco.

Not a chance was I allowing my DD, already disadvantaged educationally and socially by her health, to be punished by the school for having said health.

Also the school revised their way of doing things after my battle and have stop discriminating at future events so it was a battle well worth fighting.

Even the title of this thread made my blood boil.
My DD has ASD, has had loads of medical appointments for various reasons, and sometimes just couldn't go to school because of anxiety. She never had attendance certificates nor the special treats that went with them at school.
Luckily, she couldn't have given a shit but I have no respect for attendance awards at all.

The Education Committee launched an inquiry into persistent absences and support for disadvantaged pupils. It closes in 2 days. Here is the link:

committees.parliament.uk/work/7179/

I'm drafting a response as I have 2 autistic children, both of whom have mental health challenges and medical needs which impact on attendance.

It is definitely worth adding your experiences so they can reform the attendance rules

Oh shit - didn’t realise my child’s genetic condition could be solved with diet and exercise. Excellent.
ODFOD

Clearly as your child is seriously ill needing hospital appointments you could ask that they are not included in the whole class attendance challenge. However good health is not as random as some people think (eat healthily and exercise and most illnesses will not affect you). Many children and parents take time off far too easily imagining they are much more ill and unfortunate than everyone else.

This is beyond insulting. Clearly those of us who have disabled/ genetically ill/ seriously ill/ mentally ill are crap parents who feed our kids shit all the time.

Appalling comment🤮

That doesn't work. What about the child who, with the best will in the world, is prevented by disability from ever achieving more than 80%? If they must have this sort of award, there really should be so many exceptions for genuine reasons that they would become pretty meaningless. It's not even really realistic to focus them on effort, because all the effort in the world is not going to make a relapse fail to happen, or a hospital clinic run conveniently out of school hours.

It is perfectly possible for a good teacher to run other awards so that everyone gets a fair shot. Academic awards can be adjusted to give awards for improvement and effort, sports awards similarly - and it's quite often possible in both areas to find one area the child excels at and focus on that. But if it's simply not possible for a child to attend or to improve attendance because of, say, the nature of their disability, then the best you can do is a fairly patronising award recognising that they turned up when they could, which everyone will realise is just a sop and largely meaningless.

It's like giving an award for eye colour or height or wealth.

The worse thing is they don't work. I work in a secondary school and we've just had a list of the kids who will be attending the 100% attendance fest. 153. Out of 1700 eligible kids. My DS isn't one of them - he's got congenital heart disease so chest colds hit him hard. I think he's only managed 100% attendance once. But he's not low - just one day's sickness since September. That's enough to lose him yet another attendance incentive though.

The problem was summed up by my DS friend when he was in year 8. He had a nasty ear infection - lost his balance, lots of pain. So he was off for a genuine day. Next day the anti biotics were kicking in but he was tired as he'd got little sleep for a couple of nights before. So, apparently so he told my DS, he pretended to be still in pain and dizzy. Because he knew he'd already lost the chance of getting the reward - seeing a film in school time - so why bother dragging himself in when he was tired? He just waited until the third day and went in then instead. If it had been linked to 95% or thereabouts, the incentive to go in for that second day would have been there.

Kids aren't daft - there's no incentive to go in with these awards if you're ill unless you genuinely can get yourself through the school gates every day. Have one day off and you've lost the prize - so why bother trying after that?

My DS is now in year 11 and they high five each other if they DON'T get the 100% achievement award - it's become a badge of honour not to have your name read out! DS says they do it to show solidarity with those who don't get them as they've all been there over the years. So they just ignore the award completely. Completely defeats the object.

"Clearly as your child is seriously ill needing hospital appointments you could ask that they are not included in the whole class attendance challenge. However good health is not as random as some people think (eat healthily and exercise and most illnesses will not affect you). Many children and parents take time off far too easily imagining they are much more ill and unfortunate than everyone else."

So what's the excuse when teachers are ill @Aishah231 - are they not eating enough salad? Maybe we should get them to run around the playground at play time with the kids? Because, if parents and children are somehow affected by illness because of their diet, it goes without saying that applies equally to staff surely? If that were the case we wouldn't need cover or supply teachers would we?

Utterly daft comment.

Do we get to give attendance awards to teachers who haven’t had a day off ill or striking?

No? Human rights violation?

same for kids. Attendance awards are vile and disableist.

Why are you blaming the teachers? Most of them don’t agree with it either.

Its government policy.

My head did. We were all appalled. Not least those who'd had 100% attendance. Someone on my team who got it threw it in the bin as soon as she walked into the classroom.
The head used to award it to themself too. Of course they were never off. They didn't have to deal with children, and could hide in their office when they were ill.
It was the most painful and awkward bit of the end of term assembly.

It's the head's choice to make it a class award that creates scapegoats. The govt doesn't dictate that.

But the letters that parents get about absence, the school and teachers don't get a choice in.

All of this. It's just basic common sense that doesn't seem to occur to the idiots who come up with these schemes.

Reminds me a bit of the time DS's school handed out awards to those who hadn't had a detention all year. They made the mistake of getting someone outside the school to dish out the awards, and he very sensibly congratulated the recipients on not getting found out.

Exactly.

Extremely late to this party but no YARNBU! I hope your school has stopped this since you posted but there is government guidance for schools to say that attendance awards should be made so that they do not disadvantage children with disabilities. I'm currently petitioning for the policy to be changed you can google it but I also posted it here in the activism and petitions section- Stop classifying SEN Pupils as "Persistently Absent" for medical absences- (but those with Disabilities and Health conditions are affected in the same way).Someone did post to say that their school didn't count the absences related to their son's disability so he still got a 100% attendance award and this is what all schools should be doing if they are rewarding attendance. Please anyone reading this if you agree sign and share the petition, there is also an instagram page which I've put the link for on the petition thread to try to help raise awareness and share updates. Signees are all welcome to submit video's to the page by DM to say why they think the policy should change and I will post on page. The more real life voices the better. Our local MP, Caroline Lucas is also onboard with this and has written to the Education Secretary to ask for the guidance to be change.It becomes statutory in August so this is important!