To dislike school's attendance competition

[PostmanPatAlwaysRingsTwice]

Our primary school's latest newsletter contains the usual lines about attendance at school being important, which it is. It then goes on to show the attendance statistics since the beginning of term, I think, for each year group. A year contains one or two classes. It's titled 'Attendance Race' and congratulates the class with the best attendance that week.

AIBU to think this is ineffective, unfair and discriminatory? In primary, it's down to the parents to get their DC to school - the children have little to no control over it. If a child is reluctant, it's up to their parent to deal with that and ask school for help if need be (I've been there). Most kids are off because they're ill. What are they expected to do about that? Others are off because their parent didn't get out of bed to take them. The child can't change that. Why make the children get in a race they can't compete in?

Also, it means that children with long term conditions who are more likely to be off may be blamed for their class not winning the race - 'we're not going to be the best because X is in our class and she's off a lot with her diabetes/asthma/Crohn's disease'. Or 'why is your class the worst, Jimmy?' 'because Y is off all the time. We'll never get it because of him.' It's none of the children's business to talk about why one of their class is off. I have skin in the game here - my DD was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes this year and was off sick for a while. Sorry for losing the race for the class 😒Some children will be worried that they're ill and losing their class's position.

Children are off because of health (temp or longer term) that they can do nothing about, or because of additional needs leading to difficulties at school (that the school have a responsibility to help with), or because of difficult family situations such as being refugees/EAL, domestic abuse, mental health or addiction. Those families need support, and are not going to suddenly change because of this attendance race.

School need to focus on children who are persistently absent and work effectively and sensitively with families to support them to get their children into school. Not do this.

AIBU?

Stop being so reasonable. The amount of times this same thing crops up on here is ridiculous. Wait until its sports day and posters think it's unfair for their child to participate because they aren't sporty. Or the nativity when poor Alison doesn't get to play Mary despite being the best actress in the class, or Alan has to sing a line of a song when he really wanted to be backstage or wanted to play the part of sheep #2. Its always the parents that get annoyed by these things or parents projecting their annoyance which then affects their darling offspring

Do you really think when they're 15/16 they're still thinking back to when they didn't win that 100% attendance award? I guarantee they don't really care if you don't make a fuss about it

Do you really think when they're 15/16 they're still thinking back to when they didn't win that 100% attendance award? I guarantee they don't really care if you don't make a fuss about it

I can guarantee you that mine still thinks about the time her sister's class won a trip to Alton Towers and her class didn't, with her getting most of the blame.

If schools give the same kind of prizes - certificates and chocolate - nobody cares. Too often now the prizes for attendance awards absolutely dwarf other prizes.

It's actually quite ironic how many of them reward attendance of 100% with a trip out of school during school time.

I don't think they have a choice?

YANBU OP!

I'm a supply teacher and this is very much the norm unfortunately. Trophies, and bears in assembly, parties, the lot.

One school I have been to gives out hoodies for 100% attendance for a year which they can wear instead of their school jumper. It's horrible.

Ableist and discriminatory.

Its completely unreasonable

I remember our school still had attendance awards during covid when if a kid you sat near had covid you had to stay home for 10 days whether you had it or not.
Like everyone else says it discriminates against those with disabilities and health conditions and also doesn't properly align with the 48 hour rule after D and V or protecting vulnerable children from bugs going round.

One year my DS had almost 3 weeks off (in one go) for a D and V bug that seemed very persistent. The next year he had 100% attendance but was sick at least twice during school holidays. Just a matter of luck over the timings, nothing to do with effort or achievement on my part or his.

As s teacher, I used not to be overly bothered about attendance awards, I just didn't really think about it much, I'm sorry to say. I'm normally fairly empathetic but I just didn't consider children's feelings about it.

Then I taught at a school where the 100% attendance kids got a trip at the end of the year, staffed by the staff who'd also got 100% attendance. As someone who'd had a month off for a miscarriage, I was aggrieved and then it totally clicked how it must be for the pupils. Bit ashamed now of my apathy for my pupils' feelings.

Cut and paste your OP and email it to the headteacher.

I hoped that covid would make us take stock of these silly things. Yes being educated is important but so is health.

my 13 year old is in school whenever he can be. But he also has a lot of medical conditions and appointments. One which means I do have to have a very low bar for keeping him home because even a minor temperature can be dangerous for him.

he hates being off school but there is no choice. Especially when other people are sent into school ill and knowingly sharing their germs!

Crossed my mind too

I guess it will encourage some to attend school more

Our school gives an award every week for the class with the highest attendance.

It's horrible. Kids get sick - what are we teaching them by making them go in when they get sick just to get a pat on the back? It's also unfair on the classes that do have a child with extra health needs who will miss more days of school.

Because in a whole class competition context, you'd be the one who 'ruined it' for everybody else by not just standing still like they did?

Hate these competitions. Hate them - because they are making a nine year old breaking an arm, having cancer, having their Daddy drop dead in front of them, etc, be something that the entire class is punished for.

Actually my children do care. I was only even aware of the attendance awards because my children brought it up. Because they were upset. Because they could see how unfair it was that they would never get it because they have regular hospital appointments.

(and believe me, we always try and ask for them to be in school holidays/outside school hours but we rarely get those, and we can't delay the appointments)

As a teacher I hate it, think it’s disgustingly ableist and downplay it as much as possible in my own classroom, but the MAT has decided this is one way to improve our school before OFSTED and are basically forcing us to push attendance. We all know that habitual absentee children either have struggles for whatever reason (often physical/mental health of the adult or child) or have parents that just don’t care. So either schools are adding pressure to parents already under pressure or they are appealing to people that couldn’t give a damn so what’s the bloody point!

I'm not convinced about that
Many children , if absent for reasons other than their own physical illness or health conditions, may not have a choice whether they attend or not.

There are many reasons for children not attending school and many - similar to illness - might be "on the day" decisions - SEN, child's MH, parents MH, DV, chaotic home lives etc, many of which would not be changed/influenced by the incentive of a trip to Alton Towers in several months time.

Our school just introduced that and us staff all hate it. We didn't want it introduced, we raised our concerns with the Head (ableist, discriminatory, causes division when kids blame the ill kids for making their class "lose", etc). Head has agreed that it's not a great idea but Ofsted and the LA are really pushing attendance and so are expecting to see schools taking proactive measures to encourage good attendance.

We've tried to mitigate it by doing it solely at class level rather than individual and making it so that every class gets at least some points (10 for highest attendance, 9 for second highest, etc). We've also kept the prizes very low key and every class will get something - the winners are getting an additional play time, second prize are getting extra library time, third prize extra golden time, then everyone else will get a mini bag of Haribo. All children will also get a certificate saying "I helped my school achieve xx% attendance" (or words to that effect).

If you don't like attendance scheme then please do make a written complaint and send a copy of it to the LA because they're the ones pushing it on schools. The more voices complaining, the more likely they are to listen.

It's the 100% that bothers me. It's fine to encourage good attendance, but surely something like 95% would fit much better. It's an achievable goal for most (not everyone obviously) and would discourage people spreading illness. My child is severely immunosuppressed so I do understand both sides.

I hate it too.

Its going to get worse. The government are really cracking down on attendance and threatening MATs with poor attendance will be taken over by mats with better atrendance.

They want 100% attendance.

Its ridiculous.

Attendance is often (by luck) easy for some kids because their parents get them to school in a timely manner and they have the good fortune to be healthy and not ill during term time. It's not really something they've "acheived" as such. In reality these will often be the same children who have advantages in other areas too...and then they get an extra reward or prize
But encouraging them is probably an easier "fix" than looking into /working with children who don't have regular attendance (aside from health conditions)

Looking at each case individually would be even better.

we wouldn’t say to every child we expect you to get 9s in every subject, they get targets based on what is realistic for them and hopefully they get support to help if there are barriers stopping that.

ds school uses “good attendance” as a rough criteria for some of the end of term events but even with attendance in the area of 87% Ds has never been excluded because they know he is in when he should be. B

the issue is a one size fits all approach which actually does nothing to help address underlying issues when they exist. You

Tbh it's just one of those things. Things aren't always "fair" and something kids will have to get used to, as it'll happen plenty in adulthood. As for sick primary aged children coming into school, surely that's parent problem and not a 'attendance race' problem.

I think schools need to focus more on unauthorised absence and not kids that are off sick/ attending appointments. It's the kids who's. Parents can't be bothered to take them to school past Wednesday that need working on. I hate attendance awards and cant understand how it's allowed

I remember once sitting and surfing Facebook and seeing the school’s post about the treat for the kids with 100% attendance. That was while I was waiting for my daughter to wake up from the biopsy that diagnosed her cancer - it really upset me. She went on to have an attendance of 7% over the next term and honestly it was a miracle she made it in for that much school -
but attendance contests continued to upset her. She’s doing much better now but is still unlikely to ever hit the magic 100% given all the follow up she needs - and is substantially worse than she used to be at a whole range of things ranging from sport to reading because of the side effects she has. So it isn’t as simple as her just finding something else to be good at.

Some things are not fair but part of life and unavoidable...prizes for attendance are avoidable and could be changed to improvement prizes which would be fairer