AIBU to off DD financial reward for GCSE grades?

[BlackBean2023]

DD is going into y11 and last year I made a deal with her- every 9 gets £200, every 8 £100 and every 7 £50 (she's at a selective school- straight 7-9s not unusual). I've doubled the amount as a motivator for Spanish and chemistry where she's not trying and currently predicted a 5.

She told my SIL yesterday who said it's out of order but would tell me why she thought so. AIBU? I can afford it and DD is motivated by money. The grades are reasonable and obtainable for her.

SIL doesn't have teenagers so it's not a cousin comparison thing..

Exactly.

If you work for a company, the work that you are doing is for the company's benefit and/or to achieve the company's aims.

Are kids working hard to achieve good grades doing it for their parents' benefit or to fulfil their parents' aspirations? I always taught my dd to do it for her own sake, not mine, so why would I pay her to do that?

But the "results" from hard work should be the grades themselves, surely?!

I worked hard and didn't get the grades buts as it is I'm financially better off than my siblings who were rewarded , maybe because I didn't expect anything from anyone else

My Dad did this £100 for an A. £50 for a B. £25 for a C. My predicted grades were awful because I was slowly going off the rails. Not sure he expected to turn it around as well as I did... 8As, 2Bs, 1C and 1E. Worked wonders for me and I'd do the same for my children if I thought it was going to work!

If your child is motivated by money then crack on. I’d be pissed off with myself if I’d ended up with a child at a selective school with all educational advantages who still needed thousands of pounds dangled in front of them to make a bit of effort though.

She told my SIL yesterday who said it's out of order but would tell me why she thought so

It's not SIL place to comment. You know DD best and if she is academic but lazy then this will probably encourage her to work harder. If worst case scenario is she gets a 7 instead of an 8 then she still gets some reward.

I think a less academic child would presumably have more realistic targets. But this is not your DD so that argument isn't relevant.

@TheBarbieEffect I don't believe you can actually teach intrinsic motivation. Some people are more naturally motivated than others.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves I doubt Oxford or Cambridge would have any interest in what a student was rewarded for their GCSE exams. They just want students with high grades & good critical thinking & prepared to work hard. OP hasn't indicated that this is the goal. Not everyone wants Oxbridge or Russel Group uni.

Do what suits your family OP. We can't afford that amount but you can so it's up to you.

Not sure that rewarding GCSE grades with cash means the child will always struggle to do anything they don’t want to! Or any of the other things you commented with! People are often motivated by money - it allows them to buy the things they want! With straight A’s she could well afford to buy a car she wouldn’t have had before - absolutely says nothing about parenting skills - that you’ve indicated here are poor from toddler age up!

Wow and you got all that from this thread?

Set up to fail, will find day to day life really hard, her life is going to be difficult.

It's a very bleak prediction taken from one post.

My dad made a similar deal with me and agreed to the same with my children. I consider it to be an incentive and reward for hard work and don't see the issue.

I believe the counterargument is that it teaches children to work when externally motivated.
So instead of her being internally motivated to do well in school, she needs external input/motivators to do it. Ie money.

Which is a problem longterm because you want her to do well in uni, work hard at her job, be healthy, do exercises, eat good food, anything in life without needing her parents waving a purse at her.

I believe research shows that the more kids need external motivators to do what they know is good for them, the less likely they are to ever use internal motivation. Ie they will rely on external motivation which isn't feasible in adult life

My DD is also going into year 11 next year. We are in wales, here some schools allow students to sit some papers in yr 10 and the rest in yr 11. DD did around 40% of her papers this year. She got her results on Thursday and did brilliantly (A*s and As), far better than she expected, and for her, the sheer joy of seeing her hard work pay off, was worth more than any financial reward would have been. I think the added pressure to achieve would have been less than helpful, on top of what is already an incredibly stressful time.
Friday she got up and started making revision notes for next years Geography exam (one of the subjects that shes not sat any papers in yet), with absolutely no prompting, or even mention of next year from me. The joy of success has made her hungry for more next year.

Never even crossed my mind to award money based on the grades my DD got! Would rather treat her to a celebratory meal or pay for theatre tickets. She's v academic & got 7-9s in GCSEs & 3 x A* at A Levels. Her younger brother prob won't do as well (& that's fine) so I don't like the competitive message it sends if you have more than 1 child personally. Each to their own.

I think that approach sets you up ultimately for unhappiness and weird expectations in life - many things that are hard work do not pay well financially.

Results that reflect their ability and effort are the best incentive, and the ability to progress to what they want to the best motivation.

I have 2 teens who have just sat GCASE/A-levels and there is no way on earth either we would have offered that kind of incentive; or that it would have motivated them more. Some of their friends were offered that - it doesn't need to have made any particular difference to their results, particularly.

We rewarded our two with enough money to go on short holidays with friends after the exams finished, weeks before the outcome, as much to mark the end of a phase of school life as anything else.

I wouldn’t do it.
Partly because I don’t have a thousands to hand them.
But mainly because three of mine are naturally very academically able. One isn’t. The one who isn’t is not the one who works the least. There is no way I could do it fairly.
None of them seem that bothered. Their results are their own achievements.

People saying that they get paid to work hard. I’ve just done a course. I did it because the results benefit me. I got no financial reward from it, in fact it cost me. But the reward is the knowledge and the potential having it gives me. GCSEs are more like that than a job.

Do you have other children? I have a 17 Yr old going into Y13, who's predicted to do well, if he studies. But I wouldn't do this. For one thing I also have a 13 Yr old with dyslexia. She's very bright but unlikely to achieve a load of As. But I try to make it very clear that her achievements are as valid as her brother's. I can't imagine how she'd feel if her brother pocketed £1000 after his exams, and she got £100. Her achievements might actually be so much more. I think paying him/ her for time spent studying is a better approach if money really is the only thing that motivates her. But do try to find something else! I've taken my son to load of uni open days and that has inspired him to do well.

I tried this as desperate with my son (not the amounts you are speaking of though). I got him the revision books. I printed reams of past papers. I sat with him and went over his work. It didn't work, even though he is very money driven. Motivation has to come within too.

For me, I have no issue with using financial incentives or rewards, but we reward effort over attainment in our family. So instead of it being dependent on certain grades it could look more like “if you spend x amount of time revising you will get y amount of money”

Totally ridiculous and encouraging an extrinsic motivation over an intrinsic one. Let her develop intrinsic motivation and you watch her flourish post GCSEs. Honestly, every kid I ever knew to get a financial reward for a GCSE has done really, really mediocre afterwards in their career.

My dad offered me 1k per good result, I wasn't remotely motivated by that, money can't buy everything. I would have thrived a lot more in a loving calm home. I didn't do bad but no where near what he wanted.

I didn't. Hard work is not always rewarded with good results. It can be devastating enough for students to not get the results they want or need if they have worked hard. You will effectively be adding to the upset if you then don't give them the money.

I think it's fine in principle, but wow, £200?

I don’t like the message it sends to them.
What? Work hard and you get rewarded.
Sounds like a good message to me and encourages a work ethics.

We did it for ds.
He was bright but the class joker. It worked for us. We knew that the teen years can be a bit bumpy but kids usually straighten themselves out by the time they are 18. An incentive kept his momentum going until he had the maturity to motivate himself.
No regrets.

Success is its own reward.
As a teacher, I witness this annually on results day. Sometimes success comes from hard work but we also see a lot of students let down by unfair marking and other circumstances beyond their control.
They don’t need the complication of financial reward/ penalty.

As someone who struggles to get good grades in exams but can ace coursework I would not do this with my kids.

They would get a reward for putting effort in regardless of grade achieved.

You know your daughter though and if it's what she needs to get her butt in gear then I don't see the issue 🤷‍♀️

I agree. I’m both a secondary school teacher and a mother of three. The motivation has to come from them. It really doesn’t sit well with me. The system is flawed anyway- subjective marking in some subjects and varying grade boundaries. Plus those are huge sums you’re suggesting- that would have cost me thousands!