100% Attendance Certificates

[fandjango]

My son has come home from school today with a pin badge (Gold style with 100 on it) and a certificate saying well done on 100% attendance all term.

He has only started reception this year. He is absolutely thrilled with the certificate and the fact it has been laminated! and is also so proud of his badge.

I am obviously pleased he is happy but I feel that rewarding children in this way is detrimental to the children who for whatever reason cannot help not having 100% attendance.

He is in a friendship group of three and one of the other boys also had a badge and certificate but the other boy in their group has been off so much recently and also hospitalised (we don’t know with what) and he hasn’t had one.

I am disabled myself and maybe that is skewing my feelings on this but I just feel sorry for his friend who has watched his other friends be rewarded for something he cannot help.

I do understand clamping down on unnecessary absences and the need to have incentives too.

It's bullshit. It's a reward for having good health which is a massive positive in itself.

Kids with long term conditions have no hope of attaining 100% and that's not their fault.

I hate it. Worse, when it’s a competition between classes. I had a form group where one of the boys had cancer, needless to say our class never had the best attendance in the year group. All the others could have had 100% attendance and they’d never have made up the average, what message does that even send?

It is pretty stupid honestly. My DD1 didn’t miss a day all term until she picked up Norovirus (from school!) and obviously had to be off a few days as per their own rules. If she hadn’t have caught it, she would have 100% attendance, but it was totally out of her control. Plus attendance in primary is often in the hands of parents anyway.

I work in a school and at the end of term we do give out attendance certificates but that is amongst a whole range of other ones, for house points, for showing great improvements in their work, showing the school values etc. Even if your child has got a longer term condition there are so many other chances to get rewarded so everyone will feel included and want to do their best.

Your post made me smile 😃

Ours does this with bells on. I consider it cruelty.
DD knows it's not the priority in our eyes, and as her parents we have the last word.

We're 100% education focused, we hope to be raising a life-long learner. A child's health and their attitude towards learning is far more important than some frankly silly spreadsheet nonsense dreamed up someone who doesn't accept that illness is a fact of life.

I’m with you - attendance awards are fundamentally wrong. My children’s school give out reward events for every 5 weeks of 100% attendance, which my children do not attend even though they often have 100% attendance. We have agreed that we don’t think it’s fair to reward good health (or germ spreading). They do attend the ‘good behaviour’ reward events.

Friend’s daughter went to her aunt’s funeral (friend’s SIL), it was her only day off that year. Not only was she distraught about her aunt but she was upset to miss out on her award too. Totally unfair.

It's silly to reward good health isn't it? It's not exactly something people have much control over - even less so children who have no control over their diet and lifestyle to maximise the chances of good health as an adult does.

How does this incentive attendance? If a kid's unwell, they're unwell. What about the kids who have serious health issues and yet come in as much as they are able - don't they deserve recognition? And as for the poor kids from dysfunctional families - do they think the child missing out on the opportunity of a certificate will make any difference at all to the parents?

It's one thing I really dislike (and I'm extremely fortunate in having a child who frequently gets these 'awards'). What do you say? Well done for not catching anything this term?

Our school doesn’t do this and as a parent of a kid who has amazing nearly never been sick, but is high-masking neurodiverse and has had to force herself in on several occasions, I’m pretty peeved she doesn’t get recognised for it tbh. Yes, it’s shit for the kids who are unwell, but there are also kids who are sometimes in tears who forced themselves in because ‘it’s the right thing to do’. They absolutely deserve to be recognised.

It's stupid. We used to call it 'the well done not being sick' certificate. Your 5 year old may be a little young for that level of cynicism and likes his shiny badge but you can start practicing the eye rolling for next year! 6 year olds get sarcasm.

My kids school just sends a notification telling me they had 100% attendance. Haven't received a certificate or badge ever and they've had 100% a couple of times. They get star of the week once per school year(each week 1 child from the class is nominated, different every week no one gets it twice) and certificates for class dojo milestones.

Yup my child had 1/2 day off to attend her granddad's funeral and she didn't get a 100% attendance.... Seems totally unfair ... Apparently it's 99% and she should do better (well maybe she will next term but seriously- she has had 1.5 days absence in 1 year and 1 term absence- once as the school fed her dairy and the other because of a death)....

I think this is detrimental to children’s well being if they have been off school ill through no fault of their own. Anyway it’s not the children who decide not to go to school at this age, it’s their parents decision.

My son had lots of time off school due to a health condition. We told him Attendance Certificates were given to less clever children so that they didn’t feel left out.

It’s such a load of shit. Last week, my DDs teacher was getting her all excited, telling her she was going to get a prize today for 100% attendance……

Guess what? Dd started with a high temperature last Friday night, came out in a rash, Saturday night thraot like razor blades. Antibiotics from OOH dr, she had Monday off school as she still felt grotty.

Her attendance fell to 98.55 % for that one day off, so no prize today. She came out of school sobbing.

She’s 5 and in year 1. She couldn’t help being ill. I couldn’t have sent her in on Monday, even the dr said to keep her at home for the day to give the antibiotics a chance to kick in.

Terrible, why dont they have 'exemplary attendance' and a badge with XA. They can then award kids with genuine health problems/disabilities too! The other thing is, it encourages kids to go in when they really should not.

Its poor.

Which proves the point that 100% attendance does not equate to higher achievement. It's all a load of rubbish.

Yes, but attendance is also outside their control too. There are children who also don't get any of those things but whose parents keep them off at the slightest sniffle, so they don't even get an attendance certificate either.

I am involved in attendance admin at the school I work in. I accidentally on purpose forget to do/am too busy to do the attendance certificates at the end of every half term. There were too many complaints from parents and I agreed with them, they're a nonsense. And frankly, the way things have been going this term, all it results in is kids being sent in when they are clearly sick, and they spread their germs round and even more kids (and staff) get ill then.

The DfE's target attendance figure is 97%. Well, that might be appropriate for secondary or upper juniors. But little infants kids, whose immune systems are still developing, are just naturally often ill. There should be a lower target for that age group, and there isn't, because the government thinks that if you give any leeway to attendance expectations it's going to carry through for the rest of their school lives. It's all just nuts.

I agree. My 3 kids have had 1 day off sick between them throughout primary school so far and I hate attendance awards. It’s not within a primary child’s control so it’s not a fair reward for a child and it is incredibly ableist. How schools have time and money for such nonsense when educational attainment in this country is so far behind others is ridiculous.

Tell your child well done for not getting poorly this year and he can keep the badge and certificate or trade them in for something he really wants “match attax stickers” or going to his favourite football team game, then take the certificate into school and tell them “No, we won’t be apart this, making poorly children feel less than for something out of their control. They need to do better!”

if everyone starts refusing the reward, then it will change.

Not only that but Oftsted have now put a special focus on kids with specific characteristics, such as SEND. Well, SEND covers a lot of things. There are children in my school who are on the SEND register who happen to have been born prematurely and who have resulting health issues, or who have autism which comes with very restricted eating and little sleep, both of which means that those children pick up every illness going. I've seen them, they are genuinely ill, and get sent home from school because of it. This means their attendance is lower than their peers.

But now, Ofsted wants to know WHY their attendance is low, why we are "failing" these children, and not putting the support in place for them to attend a higher number of sessions. I want to scream in the face of these inspectorate bods "Yes, that child was born at 25 weeks and is your typically "sickly" child who seems to have no immune system, of COURSE they are going to be absent more than their peers", "and that child eats only 3 types of food, plus has pica and eats soil and similar things - yes, he is often genuinely off sick as a result".

The pressure on those parents must be immense. It goes against all my natural parenting instincts to call these parents and ask if they expect their child to be in tomorrow.

My daughter got one today, and I’ll be throwing it in the recycling. She had a day off this week anyway so it’s not 100%.

I used to be a teacher and I always hated it especially in classes where there were children with health conditions. I often ‘accidentally’ didn’t give them out and didn’t make a fuss about it.

Not only are there children with chronic health conditions and disabilities who will never get 100% attendance but there are children who will miss school because of various circumstances that are totally out of their control. Of course children missing substantial amounts of school need support.

Everyone gets ill, it’s called life. Let’s not celebrate soldiering on and spreading germs.

It's rubbish.
I know of someone who puts it on their CV 🙄

This, for some this may be all they can achieve. Would people like all certificates and awards abolished?