To think that primary schools are sending a really shitty message to well behaved kids

[CathyBlowsBubbles]

DD (10) is not as academic as either her older sister or her older brother (14&11). She’s a lovely child who isn’t struggling but is bang average. She’s never in trouble and tries her best.

All year, she’s been telling me how she was going to work really hard to get a HT’s award given every other month as she’s never got one. (Older sibs both got lots over the course of their primary school) She’s come home tonight in tears which is so rare for her. Naughty kid in her class got it for ‘making an improved effort to listen in class. Now I know that it’s about equity and that he should be rewarded for improving BUT, where’s her reward for calmly and quietly working her socks off all year? Why is that NEVER, EVER rewarded??? How come her older sibs were forever being rewarded for being super high achievers when it all came so easily to them yet she is never recognised.

She is in a class with a high proportion of kids with behavioural issues and right from Infants, any tiny weekly improvement has been seized on and rewarded. Doesn’t change anything. Behaviour is still poor. Kids are still hurting other kids and disrupting lessons. All TA attention and support is given to those kids too to enable the teacher to teach. How is that fair? How is it fair that the TA supports that group and the teacher ‘stretches’ the high achievers twice a week but the cohort in the middle (apart from one who’s disruptive) are just left to get on with it.

Why don’t they ever even say to us, ‘look, the class is too big, the teacher is frazzled, the TA is struggling too, your kid is no trouble so they just need to suck it up!’ They never say that. They never say, ‘we know this child has received rewards frequently over the part 6yrs without impact but we still need to try despite how demotivating it is to kids who try all year and get nothing in return.’ The system is completely broken when kids like my youngest child gets to the end of Y5 effectively unnoticed. My eldest was on their G&T register and somehow she didn’t go unnoticed! 🤨 I feel so angry on DD’s behalf. She’s never going to get the academic accolades that the older two get. AIBU to ask why can’t she be recognised for just being a good kid?

Used to call them the invisible children when I worked in schools. Well behaved, polite, hard working kids who didn’t cause any trouble. I absolutely agree that they should be rewarded and praised.

Oh I hear you OP

My DD has additional learning needs and possible ASD but no behaviour issues at all.

She's so quite, she just knuckles down and does the work even though it's hard.

I always think the teachers give the awards to those who need that boost but our quiet, well behaved, plodders do to.

I run a youth club with the same kids from the school and am always looking for ways to reward our "unsung heros" and show them we see them for the wonderful little humans that they are

The purpose of those awards is to support dc who find it harder to manage their behaviour. I don't think there's anything wrong with explaining that to your dc, so they aren't expecting the award, I know I did this.

But, ultimately, your dc is at a massive advantage over the dc with neurodisabilities, trauma experiences, mental health problems, or just generally not great parents. I say, let them have the awards. They are likely to have many many fewer nice experiences than your dc.

Completely relate to this. My DDs are v well behaved. Dd1 is at a grammar now and doing extremely well. At primary she barely existed and I felt shit. She is v thick skinned though.
dd2 was acutely aware she wasn’t a favourite but in year 5 she got a fabulous fabulous nqt who was amazing at praising all the kids and making them feel special. Dd2 takes him a present at the end of the year and Xmas even though she’s left now. It doesn’t need to be like this but teachers need to break the mould.

This is happening all the time in every school. Fucks me right off.

@Stompythedinosaur, do why don’t the school tell the kids that? Tell kids like my DD that the real purpose is to motivate kids who find it difficult to manage their behaviour? At least tell kids like DD not to sit there in the assembly getting their hopes up. Wouldn’t that be kinder?

You say that my DD has a huge advantage. Well, my older two are surely then even more advantaged as they’re so able academically. Why then were they noticed so often; especially G&T DD1? They were regularly rewarded for outstanding pieces of writing and gaining hold in the maths Olympic thingy.

I do not agree with this at all.

the little shites get award after award for ‘sitting still’ and ‘trying hard’ whilst those that are ALWAYS good are ignored. There is nothing wrong with praising both types of children for good behaviour. Just because it’s expected of the well behaved ones doesn’t mean they don’t deserve praise for it.

and let’s be real, the positive reinforcement for the little shites doesn’t work. They still behave terribly whenever they feel like it.

I’m nearly 40 and this happened when I was at primary and secondary. It won’t change.

It is so frustrating and I can see it from both sides, both as a parent and (ex) teacher. It needs to be mentioned. I was a secondary school teacher and the school only ran as well as it did because of the children like your daughter. As teachers we need these children, but all too often they are unnoticed.

I did do my best to recognise it. I remember a primary school teacher in one of our feeder schools talking about how she worried that a child could go through a whole day of secondary teaching without a teacher using their name. It really stuck with me and even when I had 5 different KS3 classes in one day I tried my best welcome each child by name.

I also used to award house points (we did them electronically) to students who had not done nothing else but come in, behave and get on with their work.

I must have done something right, because one day I received a card in my school mail. It was from a parent of a Year 9 boy. He was quiet, didn't shine in any way and lacked the confidence of the more outgoing students. He did enjoy my subject and I used to do my best to recognise the improvements he made and always made a point of checking in with him. His mum wrote me such a beautiful message telling me just how much it had meant to him that it made me cry.

I really wish more teachers recognised ALL students. All too often they do seem to favour the ones who stand out.

Totally agree

This was one of my pet peeves when teaching. The ‘good’ but not brilliant kids are overlooked because they cause no fuss or problems, but equally aren’t high flying. You can see them wondering why they bother.

If asked to select a child for a subject award, I always tried to choose a ‘run of the mill’ child who was consistent but not outstanding. Though for every child I picked, there were many others left out.

If it evens it out a bit, my academically ok, wildly struggling with undiagnosed ADHD which gets her into trouble daughter is also going totally unrewarded at school for any achievements. Luckily I acknowledge them at home.

Too often ‘no child left behind’ actually means ‘all children left behind’.

High school isn’t hugely better. My daughter flies under the radar so much she’s been marked absent when she’s been sitting in the classroom.

Some children come to school to learn; some children come to school to be loved.

The best system i saw at Primary school (out of the five DDs attended) was when the teacher could give out any number of certificates each week, not limited to one star. The TAs, playground staff, visiting teachers, even the head could nominate as well. Everyone got several through out the year, even the quiet, well behaved average ones

It is frustrating. One of mine was an absolute twat at school, just getting him in would get him rewards and praise from the teachers.

The next one down was a grafter. Worked hard, planned well. Once forgot her English book, was given a detention.

I rang the school and asked how they thought this might look to the kid that tried hard and if it was the real message they wanted to send.

I used to be a primary teacher and I now have two children in secondary. I feel conflicted about awards and certificates because of the issues they cause. In one way it's good that children get tangible recognition for what they do, but it bothers me that children are taught to jump through hoops for a reward rather than just to value the work in itself. One poster said 'I can see the average children wondering why they bother,' which highlights the issue as far as I'm concerned - they bother because getting an education is worth it and external praise is nice but not the point at all. It really surprised me when I was a teacher and parents used to get worked up about certificates and such - in most schools I taught it in they were very much used as a sort of bribe for the bad kids and really were not about recognition at all, which of course devalues the whole thing entirely anyway.

OP you keep mentioning your other child who was on G and T register, did the Olympiad and such - do you have an issue with your child being average?

I will add that in my children's secondary they do points which the children can gather every day for various things - being nice, helping others etc. They also get points for extra curricular activities. The points add up and at the end of the year everyone gets a certificate - bronze, silver, gold, platinum, depending on the number of points. It is quite motivating my for my two, but it's not perfect as some kids don't make it to bronze and the award ceremony makes that very obvious.

I echo your sentiments OP. Sadly this is a common cultural problem in the UK. Rewarding really poor behavior and ignoring the middle of the road “invisible kids” who the country needs to look after or we are very much doomed for the future. Tbh I think we are screwed now anyhow and it’s too late.

In DD’s school the award was called “Achiever of the Week”, and they made a lot of it, with photos in the school newsletter and certificates and so on. So kids like my DD really felt upset when they had tried their best to do everything they were told, had done well, worked hard for tests, behaved perfectly, helped out in the school library or mentoring other kids or whatever, and then Johnny gets the award for managing to go five days without bopping one of his classmates on the head (that’s really not an exaggeration - that really did happen one week!)

You’d think the kids get that it’s a behavioural reward; but they aren’t adults, other kids’ home situations or challenges aren’t always obvious to them, and they really don’t always tacitly understand it’s all about encouraging Johnny’s self-esteem. It’s not that Johnny shouldn’t be encouraged and bolstered: but it might be that schools need to think a bit more carefully about how they present these awards to the children.

No, I absolutely do not have an issue with DD2 being average. I mention my other daughter because she also got lots of praise and certificates and the only discernible difference was that she was a high achiever.
DD1 being on the G&T register is no reflection on her worth any more than DD2’s ‘average ability’ reflects her worth. After all, DD1 hasn’t earned that ability, it’s simply the luck of the genetic draw.

It’s rubbish isn’t it op.
I find it always happens on both ends of the scale so the children who get all the awards always seem to fit into 2 categories - The badly behaved kids who behave for a while and end up getting awards and prizes to appease them, basically bribing them into behaving. And then on the opposite end of the scale are the children who seem to excel at absolutely everything all the time, seem to be almost ‘perfect’ at everything all the time and can do no wrong and get award after award every week and bring the trophies home at the end of year assembly or whatever while the rest of the children look on in disappointment.

The ones in between who just sit quietly, try their best and get on with their work never get a look in, even if they worked extremely hard and do really well in a subject they have been struggling with if they were struggling but really made an effort to improve. My DS was one of these children.
It is annoying that ‘average’ children seem to go unnoticed. I think it’s a shit system to have and that if schools are going to dish out ‘awards’ then they should include all children at some point and try to recognise strengths in every child rather than a select few.

I agree - although there has to be a bit of fiction around them that they are about achievement, otherwise children won't value them, which exposes them for the nonsense they are really. From day one I always told my children that star of the week and the like were there to help the children who struggled and that good kids like them didn't need rewards. It was nice if they got them, but they shouldn't expect them. They were happy if they did get awards but not bothered that they didn't get them often.

I don't mean to sound like a harsh old codger but anyone who grows up and thinks the world will reward them for being a grafter is usually mistaken. Typically you have to work hard as standard and then extraordinary effort (and sometimes luck) is rewarded.

I find your view quite odd tbh - being a high achiever is quite a big discernible difference in our world. For good or for bad, getting certain results does tend to be rewarded. It is a matter of genetic luck, but that doesn't lessen the impact in the real world.

I was a high achiever, teacher's pet, got every award going all the time. It didn't make a huge difference to my life and my very middle of the road sister has a similar life to me, on the whole. I'm not sure how good it is to send the message that accolades are super important. Matt Damon once talked about how he was really glad he got an Oscar in his 20s so that he could be disappointed early and not spend his whole life chasing an award that in the end didn't mean anything.