Unfair Attendance Reward Scheme at School

[AttendanceRewardConcern]

My kids school has low attendance statistics and the school have decided to start a new scheme to try to improve attendance (or to demonstrate to Ofsted that they are taking action). Children with 100% attendance for the entire half term will get to have a non-uniform day on a day of their choosing. I have 2 children at the school. 1 child has no health issues and was given the reward. The other child has a medical condition that meant they missed 3 days of school due to an exacerbation. The school are aware of the condition and have been provided with evidence from the child's health professional to explain the absence. However, the school have said they can't make any allowances whatsoever when applying the reward (including for children with severe disabilities). I think the scheme needs to be drastically changed and have written to the school explaining my concerns. After initially dismissing my concerns, they have now decided to refer to the LA's legal team. AIBU to think they either need to make an allowance for absences related to medical conditions and disabilities or to entirely scrap the reward scheme? Not to mention how this is encouraging children to come to school sick and focusing entirely on presenteeism above all else.

One of the things I like about my DD3s current school is that the reward system there is something the HT puts a lot of thought and effort into and it rewards children for effort and thought.

My DD is sporty. Under the old head she won a lot of sport awards. Under this one she recently won an award for her effort in maths. It meant the absolute world to her because it recognised that it took a lot of effort for her to get an average mark.

A child with daily pain who has a 70% attendance should be getting an award for their attendance just as much as a kid who flukes only being ill in the holidays (that’s what happened the year my DS2 won an attendance award - chicken pox in the summer, d&v October and a virus over Christmas!), probably even more so!

This.

They are acting illegally and should be reported.

If your child only ever got an award for attendance then that suggests the school has failed him. Star of the week for example can be used to recognise any sort of effort a child puts in based on their own ability without it having to be compared to other kids. The school should have found other ways to show recognition than just an attendance award.

But a 4 year old attending school isn't a skill or a behaviour. It's a behaviour of their parents maybe. But not the child's. And it's certainly not a skill. It's luck. You may as well give a maths prize to the children lucky enough to roll a dice and get a 6.

Your argument is against all prizes/rewards, which is a reasonable position. I'm sure never getting awarded for academic performance is very disheartening for some children. I'm not sure it's a reason to give attendance awards though. Children who frequently miss school due to a chronic medical condition may be unlikely to get any awards of any kind, as their schoolwork may suffer along with their attendance. It's hard to learn if you aren't there.
If you don't like awards, then surely you'd be against all of them. If you son had had the misfortune to get a stomach bug, the attendance award would have been just another one he didn't get, and was upset by.

My child's secondary school has a tiered system which I think is good. Those who manage 100%, those who would manage 100% but have had time off for family wedding/funeral/bereavement or long term medical condition and have to attend appointments. And also a 97% club who also benefit from some of the rewards the others get to encourage children to come to school because they can still experience some of the rewards.

On a case by case basis they also do individual rewards for students who are struggling to attend. Honestly, I think it is a great school for recognising not everyone can make 100%. Ds had norovirus, could not have attended even if he wanted.

Thanks for this suggestion. I'll definitely be doing this.

No. We shouldn't accept that the world is unfair and we just need to come to terms with it. That's a terrible thing to teach children

We should call out discrimination and injustice when we see it. Can you even imagine an award that allowed discrimination against people of colour? Why is it ok then for disabled children to be discriminated against?

You may say the school failed my child for never giving him an award - except the attendance. But he's not stupid. He knows he's crap at maths but he also knows that however hard it was for him he showed up. And he was proud of that.
But this is not anything anyone will understand unless it's their child. All those complaining about the attendance award will be perfectly happy that their child was, (deservedly) recognised for something another child had no hope of ever being recognised for.
There'll always be people who'll want to belittle others and devalue what they do. It would be nice just to say "Well done X," That's all it takes.

And oddly enough there are always threads about flakey people, ("I cooked for eight and they all bailed at the last minute", or "My builder hasn't turned up again when he said he would - says he's feeling unwell." "My hairdresser/childminder/nanny/co-worker has been off for ten days out of the past month.. AIBU?"
Anyway I've made my point an I know people don't agree. But I hope I've led even one or two people to think about the child, (and young adult), who never gets recognized.

(And attendance at work is a positive for employers).

Workplaces have annual leave that you can take (broadly) whenever you choose for things you need to do. They may offer bereavement leave so if your mother died it wouldn't count against your attendance, like it might in some of the school policies PPs have mentioned. Workplaces may record disability related absences differently to regular sick leave, again something that wouldn't happen in some of the school attendance policies mentioned on this thread.

It's not really the same.

I don't think anyone is saying that.

What they are saying is you absolutely cannot discriminate against disabled children and so medical absences for disabilities should not count against them.

My DD got a 100% attendance award last term (her first term at school), so I'm not against it just because it's something my child won't get.

but he also knows that however hard it was for him he showed up. And he was proud of that.

That's absolutely something to be proud of. But if his grandparent died, and he had time off for a funeral, he wouldn't have got the award, but he should still have been just as proud of his work ethic. That's the issue with the award, they don't really reward what your son was actually doing well (always turning up and trying his best), because that would still be true even if he'd had the misfortune of needing his appendix out, or something. If that had happened, his work ethic wouldn't have been rewarded.

Even if he isn't good at maths or any other subject, he could have been recognised for something he's tried hard at or for something nice he's done. I find it hard to believe there was absolutely nothing the school could've recognised him for except showing up.

One of my children did get the attendance award, probably always will because they hardly ever get ill, so I'm not against it purely because of that. I just don't think that child did anything extra compared to my other child who has a medical condition except for being lucky. If anything the one with the medical condition has put more effort into their attendance despite adversity.

I don't think having a medical condition makes you flakey either. This is exactly the attitude my child will probably have to deal with as an adult despite not being able to do anything to be less "flakey". It's the exact reason why equality law exists, to try to prevent this unfairness.

It’s a very untargeted approach - most children will lose the odd day of school through illness etc, but don’t have problematic attendance - so they’re being ‘punished’ in order to target the minority who are missing school inappropriately.

I also have doubts how effective it is at improving attendance.

And it punishes people for doing the right thing - my DS missed enough days last half term to get a warning letter from school. He was well enough every day to attend but had had D&V and another infectious illness which meant keeping him off for 48 hours at a time. It was inconvenient for me to keep him off, he was well enough to be in school, no-one would have been any the wiser if I had sent him in. But I kept him at home as I was supposed to and got a stroppy letter home for my efforts.

I hate this too.

Dd's best friend has a chronic health condition. There are times when she's very unwell and cannot be in school. Last year dd got an opportunity to go on an excellent attendance trip but because her friend had had a bad couple of months, she didn't qualify. Dd refused to go. I was so proud of her (as were her teachers as it happens, who agreed it was all very unfair).

We also got attendance warning letters during the pandemic when we were legally required to self isolate - was I supposed to break the law to improve their attendance?

Write to your MP is a government issue, schools are put under so much pressure to have high attendance ratings. What is the school supposed to do? They are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

You need to be challenging Ofsted, the DfE and your local MP.
This is just another thing that Ofsted and the DfE have decided to ‘measure’ schools against. The DfE has made it mandatory that every school will have to report their weekly attendance figures directly to them. If your attendance figures are repeatedly below national average, expect a visit.
Unfortunately, this means for Headteachers that their jobs are on the line, which is why they have to come up with ridiculous schemes like this.

However, there is also plenty of evidence that there is a direct link between attendance and outcomes at school, so whilst there may be genuine reasons for absence, it can put children at significant disadvantage.
And it does impact other children. Teacher has to spend time helping the absent child to catch up; less time for everyone else.

Attendance is linked to attainment, but it doesn’t follow that attendance awards improve either attendance or attainment.

As in any system, the minute you start drawing a line someone is always just on the wrong side, who will categorise conditions? This site would be in uproar.

I always recall one Leavers' Assembly in a High School, one girl was getting a special award because she had never, ever missed a day in school since she started in the Infants. Sadly she had fallen on the stairs that morning and broken her arm so she was up at the hospital and missed her presentation!

@Willyoujustbequiet People need to learn to be okay with not winning everything because that is life, whether people like it or not. I’m not mentally scarred from not going to Alton Towers or getting a certificate. There were other awards I could win so I focussed on those. If a kid has chicken pox and has to be off school, why shouldn’t they also win the award? It’s not their fault they had to stay off school. If you make allowances for some kids then where do you draw the line? You can’t possibly make it 100% “fair” for everyone.

The award is for 100% attendance, if you don’t have that, for whatever reason you don’t win the award. I don’t think it’s a great award because some kids are more ill than others and it’s not their fault, but it’s there to motivate kids to attend school, if you allow kids with poor attendance to still win it defeats the purpose and opens the doors to other claims on the grounds of fairness and renders it pointless.

Should we just stop awarding kids for anything cause it’s not fair to those could never win? My kid is dyslexic so why should other kids get awards for spelling? My kid is in wheelchair so why should other kids get rewarded for winning a race? Where would it end?

Crap isn't it? My DS has a long term medical condition, diagnosed in year 1. Involves multiple hospital depts, so he's got fat chance of ever winning a "top attendee" award. Really crap that the school "reward week" weighs heavily on attendance points. So he misses out every effing year.

The ironic thing is that aside to his medical condition he has had ONE day off sick in the 3 years he's been at his current secondary school. One. An absolute joke really

This is a good idea. But if you had one child off sick for health issues it would skew the class and the child might be singled out by others.

the whole thing is ridiculous that they need a reward system for school attendance and jumping through ofsted hoops. I don’t know what the answer is but it’s surely not this!

Sadly rewarding 100% attendance is unlikely to make much difference to the overall attendance statistics. The regular attenders will continue to attend regularly and get the certificates. Those with poorer attendance for whatever reason are never likely to reach 100% and so will have little motivation to improve. A more refined scheme might also reward 'most improved attendance'.
I do think it is very difficult for a school to also consider health conditions and their impact, because so much absence is attributed to 'colds and coughs' etc. You are right to raise it even so, as it will encourage the school to consider a more nuanced approach.

Awards for attendance are awful.

This reminds me of the time my DS missed out on a reward school trip as he missed 1 morning of school attending fracture clinic after breaking a bone due to neglect in out of school childcare.

DS is now at secondary and seems to have a healthy view of the need for attendance to be balanced with health and wellbeing. i.e. People get ill and if you're ill, you're ill!

Obviously attendance has a direct correlation with achievement.
I think the awards are simply a means of encouraging attendance from an early age, so that when the teenage ‘truancy’ years arrive, those teenagers think twice about skiving.