Bloody Prize giving

[AllienOlliemum]

I have 3 DC in the same school, it's a grammar school and tends to achieve very good results. Every year they do prize giving. There are two award categories, Excellence and Effort.
Last year I queried what exactly excellence is in this case and was told "The excellence awards are decided by each department as a whole and considering attainment, attitude, progress and effort" the second award category is simply for effort.
In the upper school (Y10-13) 3 students are selected for each subject and ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd for excellence, and 3 students (if enough uptake of the subject) are given effort, not ranked). In Lower school (Y7-9) 5 students are selected for excellence, not ranked and 5 for effort not ranked.

Today the upper school prize giving awards list was sent out. The actual ceremony is at the end of June but I guess it's because some leavers will have to plan around it. My eldest DD is in Y11, sitting her GCSEs and for the 5th year running not a single award. She has fantastic predicted grades and we are frequently told how hardworking and diligent she is. As per usual though it's the same kids as always. In fact one girl has an award in every single subject she must have taken, 7 Excellence awards and 3 Effort! With 1st in 5 of those! She also seems to have won the award for an essay writing competition and the award given by the historical society!
My other two children (Y8 and Y9) have also never received an award to date but the lower school awards aren't announced until middle of June.
Last year I queried how it is possible one child wins all the awards and was told the departments select their own winners and can't know who the other departments have chosen.
There are also non academic awards such as Integrity, but typically it's always the same students who get these too.

AIBU to be massively pissed off with this bloody system which is centred around favouritism!
It's every good damn year!

My DC school gives a maximum of 1 subject prize per pupil which means many more DC have the chance to get an award (plus a £10 book token!) the only exception where they can win 2 is for a couple of awards like the overall year 7 prize etc . It’s a good system and makes it much more interesting for children and parents

in 5 years....in 3 years.....it won't matter

I love the way she’s described as a ‘Try hard’ then is derided for getting results which presumably come quite naturally to someone academically gifted who ‘tried hard’. Maybe if you’d own kids ‘tried hard’ too they might actually get awards, but seem to view ‘trying hard’ and earning results as a negative thing. Wonder where they got that idea from?

Primary school is the place for ‘star of the week’, let’s give the violent little boy a certificate if he hasn’t thrown chairs at anyone this week etc. secondary school ought to celebrate excellence, because that’s what it’s like in the real world. I can 100% believe a child shows excellence across a range of subjects.

Ultimately these awards mean very little in the great scheme of things. How they do in their exams does matter and that’s what I encourage my kids to concentrate on. I encourage them to go for scholarships and positions of responsibility only if they are driven to, but really I would rather they spent their energy on their exams and things that interest them outside of school. As it happens they have both one awards in school (one is very academic and the other excels in a sport), but it’s not something I’d lose any sleep over if they didn’t.

My grammar school had a points system for prizes which I could never work out but I knew I was always a couple of points off the cut off and that the girls who got the prizes were pretty run of the mill. I went on to achieve a PhD and a successful career in academia. I’m not against prizes per se but I was saddened when DS came home and said he was getting a prize, but it wasn’t a real prize. When I asked him what he meant, he said it’s not for English or science but it has the name of someone who worked at the school. It turned out this was the most prestigious prize the school awarded as it was for ‘overall contribution to the school’. I took a lot of convincing that this was a major achievement.

I’m trying to imagine what you would think/ say if it was your daughter winning all the prizes.

Would you complain / refuse some?

Please don’t be so invested in this. It seems so petty. There’s always winners and non winners, just not your daughter’s time. Approval
of others isn’t such a great goal. Take your daughter out for lunch and a spree in the bookshop or whatever she would enjoy and treat her yourself.

I am proof that it is possible. I was top set in everything. I was in the top 2% of the country for exam grades for several years. I was pretty rubbish at art, music and PE but everything else, I was hard to beat (although we didn't have much in the way of competition). I was in the "gifted" program and had to do extra things (mainly exams in things like Latin and Stats).

It is possible that there's a child who is just really good at everything. And if the teachers are choosing independently without discussion across subjects, it's likely true.

I'm sorry it's not your child, but don't hate on the other girl because she's higher achieving. It's not her, or your child's, fault. It just is.

So your snide and spiteful attitude towards this child is because she is clever, works hard and behaves well in class.

Fuck me. Stone the little bitch.

Par for the course for most schools.

Brace yourselves for university applications, OP. There are 1000s of students with top marks competing for the same limited spots on popular programmes in the top unis. I constantly see posts from parents outraged that their AAAA predicted children, who had all 9s at GCSEs, are being turned down for their top choices. Because there are lots of bright kids at their with the same marks.

Your daughter needs to learn to deal with disappointment and even failure, or she won't cope as an adult.

I know, I'm harking back to my time at school and don't remember anything like this going on at home - I was reasonably clever and hard-working and did quite well in Arts and Languages, but was not amongst the top all-rounders, it was just a fact of life. We certainly didn't sit around discussing how unfair it was that girls who were demonstrably better than I was got prizes for it! I think this is just weird.

To avoid this sort of thing a school I worked at asked one teacher, a friend and colleague, to oversee the various awards.

So subject teachers, heads of house, form teachers, sports staff sent in their nominations.

My friend looked at these and made sure it wasn’t the same few getting up again and again.

It worked well and spread the recognition far wider. The quiet and studious, the real tryers got the recognition they deserved. ,

This wasn’t a case of a prize for everyone, everyone a winner.

I just find it hard to believe that one child is dominating every subject, surely most agree that isn't realistic!
DD1 had a pupil in her school who did this, she was also insanely talented in music and sporty.
These attributes made her a shoe-in for Oxbridge and she received an early call to the bar. My DD1's cohort are now in their late 20's and let's just say that things have not gone well for the star pupil.
I hope your DD is resilient and well balanced, this counts more than prizes.

Little miss perfect.

Do you realise how juvenile it sounds to say that about a 16 year old, just because she has done better than your child?

I think you need to think long and hard about whether this is the kind of person you want to be. And whether it's the kind of person you want your daughter to be, because she'll be learning from you.

Meanwhile I’m delighted that there are schools out there with the balls to still give the awards to the most deserving and best pupils. So many schools give in to all this star of the week bullshit, we are all winners etc. It’s not the real world and by High School kids need to learn what life is really like after they leave school.

Will you be back making a post complaining when this girl gets better GCSEs than your child, it’s not fair she’s smarter and got higher grades than my child. Stamps foot. And then it’s an outrage that she got offered both Oxford and Cambridge, how dare they - surely they should have spoken to each other and offered one place to the girl and one to your child, even though she’s smarter And then when she gets better job offers than your child…….. it’s all just unfair!

I think the OP is getting a bit of a hard time. There could well be a bit of favouritism going on or the teacher could be friendly with a child’s parent which influence the prize giving. I’ve seen it before. OP try not to let it get to you. If there is a bit of favouritism influencing the prize giving then it’s all meaningless anyway 🤷‍♀️

Maybe she's just not interested in the bitchfests that the majority of teenage girls have.

Maybe she prefers quality over quantity. That's actually a very mature mindset. Not being bothered by whether everyone likes you, and putting the effort into the people worth it.

It’s totally realistic. Grammar schools are full of bright and diligent well-behaved kids like your daughter, who will all do very well compared to the national average; then there are few really intelligent ones in each class who jostle for top marks, and now and then there’s a student who is exceptionally clever at everything. From what I’ve seen the kids tend to respect those students rather than feeling jealous - if someone else won the prizes they’d all know it was a sham.

I think she's getting a hard time because of the way she's speaking about a 16 year old girl.

I think the hard time is more to do with the OP’s sneering, bitchy tone towards the child who keeps winning, rather than the unfairness itself.

I feel the same about our school…we have a sports achievement evening with similar awards…sports person of the year (m/f), team player of the year (m/f), etc etc. Only those who have taken part in sports throughout the year are invited and it’s described as an ‘honour’ to be invited, according to the school. I went to the ceremony in Y7–no awards for my child, but fair enough. I went again in Y8–again, the SAME EXACT children—they just rotate the awards, so the sportsperson of the year last year is the teammate of the year this year, etc. Went again in Y9 and surprise surprise, the EXACT SAME kids were announced. I stopped going after that year. I didn’t say anything. I’m not saying that MY child should have been winning the awards, but I do believe it shouldn’t be the same 4 kids getting a clean sweep of the awards every. single. year. Especially for ‘teammate of the year’—that has nothing to do with athletic ability. There must be some kid out there putting their all into it, who perhaps had a better attitude than anyone else, but doesn’t ‘shine’ because they’re not the fastest on the pitch.

Maybe you could acknowledge that they might actually deserve it? Rather than deciding that it must be favouritism because your DD isn't deemed as excellent or to have put in as much effort as other children.

We all think our kids are the best. And to us, they are. But there will always be someone better than you put there at something. That's just life.

I'm not sure weighted is the correct word, @AllienOlliemum, given that you say each department makes their own selection individually without reference to the other departments? Surely these choices must be a reflection of these children's actual abilities?