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.

Yabu. I'll never win a running race because I'm not built for it. Life's unfair, get over it.

YANBU it is bullshit.
Believe it or not, we had the 100% attendance certificates when I did an Access course, so full of adults!

Back when I was in school, we had 'achievement awards' were were awarded for loads of different things.

I don't get why people get so worked up about this? Some kids won't get one because they've been ill - so what? Maybe they'll get a prize for something else. For some kids it might be the only prize they might ever get if they're not great at anything else. It's not a big deal.

I had a friend who had 100% attendance for the 5 years in secondary school. She was given a gold watch at the end.

I don't see anything wrong with it. Different children will achieve different things at school.

This same argument comes up at sports day and it's the parents of the kids who don't win that aren't happy about it. Some schools have awards for academic achievements and not all kids achieve in that category.

Oh this is an absolute bug bear of mine. Both of my children have lifelong conditions and have never achieved 100% attendance for a term.

DS2’s attendance was particularly frustrating, he had a serious illness when little and continues to require check ups with multiple hospital teams, so zero chance we can time everything to fit into school hols. The ironic thing is that he is NEVER off sick!

I have fought so hard to get school to change how they give out awards. They do a big awards week in July with loads of lovely school trips, allocated based on points - of which most is made up of attendance points. DS has missed out pretty much every year because of childhood cancer. No acknowledgment of actually how consistent he is at school, how hard he works, how great he is at role modelling. It really is a shit policy

Im shocked the started it so young ! Its a terrible approach. When my DC was at primary it wasnt a thing thank goodness (pre-pandemic). But it is now a thing. As my DC has long covid he has had frequent time off school at secondary school. School did attendance competitions pitting form group against form group and announding stats in assembly with prizes for the winning form. It led to bullying of my DC by other kids who felt they were being let down by others in the class and damaging their scores. It also encourages kids coming into school when ill - spreading more illnesses around. It led to me doing a complaint to the head.It was effectively discrimination. Head says they are under pressure from Local Gov to improve attendance but they have since changed how they do it so that no one is singled out for peer pressure and bullying and so they are more transparent with the stats but they still run motivational attendance activities in a similar way I believe. I dont know for sure as my DC got pushed out of the school to a different provider against our wishes (again I believe due to attendance). The whole school system is terrible if you dont fit into their expectations - which are 100% conformity.

I hate these awards and am glad to my knowledge that our school dont do them. My daughter has a longer term medical condition and will never get 100% attendance as she has multiple appointments in a year and needs time off when unwell to recover.
Her health is more important than any award. Like previous posters though it does worry me in some settings kids going in unwell puts vulnerable peers at risk.

I detest attendance awards. Children can't help being ill and sending them in ill just impacts other families.
I volunteer with a uniformed organisation and the group I was previously with rewarded perfect attendance until I had enough say to drop it. 6 year olds don't have a say when they live in the back of beyond and mum doesn't feel safe going out after dark when dad has to work away. 8 year old carers don't have control over their parent's illness.

I'm another whose DC has missed out due to a grandparent's funeral. I really would have liked the headteacher to personally explain why that was ok to my DD. On the plus side, once you've had one absence and the certificate is lost, you can chill out for the rest of the term/year.

I suspect a lot of teachers hate them, but they are part of "being seen to be doing something about attendance for Ofsted". Maybe Ofsted could be persuaded not to recognise them as part of a positive attendance strategy.

Meh, it's a pointless 'award' but schools up and down the country are giving them. DON't make a big deal of them, whether or not your kid gets one.

I got a letter today about it and replied with a note back saying please confirm that you are advising and encouraging us to send our children to school feeling ill and with the high chance of them passing on germs to others.

Apparently high attendance is closely correlated with academic achievement, so you can see why they push it. I always had 100% attendance at school and my offspring usually do too. But then , they’re not often ill. I suppose mainly it’s to deter people from taking holiday during term time.

I agree It’s shit and I’d be asking the school to not give on me to my child in future because you feel it’s discriminatory and unfair and not rewarding anything of real value and you’re conscious it upsets others who are unable to be rewarded for just ‘turning up’. What a low bar to reward aswell!!! Surely the effort and actually working achievements you make are what count, and you are spot on about it being unfair for children with medical absences. We are abroad but some of the things I read about on here from primary schools in the UK is complete insanity.

It is all down to Ofsted and the DfE. Schools are under pressure to get a certain percentage for overall attendance but some schools push for it more than others.

Goodness me this is even shitter than I thought. I’m so sorry your son has had this experience and treatment from school. It’s literal stupidity to reward attendance and exclude those from that system who need it the most. I’m surprised nothing can be done about this - it’s discrimination black & white. Have you thought about writing to your MP or seeing if there are other parents in the same situation, maybe you could lobby the school or LA for a different approach that was actually supportive and inclusive. Hug for your son I hope he is ok now xox

I think any children with chronic conditions and serious illness should be recognised for their resilience and attending when they can. It’s bloody hard and the vast majority of people, parents and teachers have no idea what an absolute privilege it is to have good health.

I hope your son is doing ok now x

Is there any evidence of causation, rather than just correlation? Particularly for the difference between 96% vs 100% attendance, not just really low attendance vs really high.

I can imagine various links between attendance and academic achievement that aren't necessarily attendance causing higher achievement. Things like low achievement creating a less pleasant educational experience, resulting in a lower desire to attend school. Or more academic families valuing attendance more.

I'd like to think there were some sort of studies that backed up the use of 100% attendance certificates, rather than a kinder, more nuanced approach.

It's usually on a weekly basis so I think it's good they are rewarding children for their attendance as most are there anyway and it may be the only accomplishment some can achieve.

It's not defamation for someone not to receive one if they've been ill.

I can only talk from my own experience but with our own DC they go to school every day unless poorly or have appointments. We have to go to work. DD is ND and in mainstream school she had to have scheduled parts of the day so when we managed to get her into a specialist school jer attendance was 100%, which she was so proud of, having previously being able to attend full time.

To pour salt into the wounds, SIL, living at home with her parents (who basically looked after them) had 2 young kids but didn't get out of bed to get them to school. Their attendance was below 32%.

Yes, attendance officers, court, even teachers coming to the door to offer to take them in. No, they're ill, they have anxiety etc. Mostly just a 'fuck off they're my kids'.

Sorry, I've transgressed...

Absolutely right that it's correlated. However schools around here state that attendance is the direct causation of academic achievement.

No, they don't - or not without having specific provision for pupils who are off due to illnesses and disability. To do anything else is a blatant breach of the Equality Act.

My DS had 100 percent attendance throughout the whole of secondary school. He was unwell once but during Easter holidays. He got a certificate given to him by the Mayor and given a football. He hates football but kindly donated it to school raffle. He has been working for years and has hardly had a day off then either. He's just very fortunate he is so healthy and not sickly. That is in itself his reward.

But do you want them to be proud of something that is just down to luck, especially when it means they'll feel bad if they miss out because of something that they can't control like catching an infection or having appendicitis?

I will never understand people getting upset about this. It's an award for 100% attendance. Kids who have a day off don't get one. There's clear parameters and it shouldn't be hard to explain to kids why they didn't win this time. Kids need to learn at a young age, that not everyone can win every award, because if they do, it makes the award meaningless.

I'm amazed that schools don't see that these can become counter=productive very easily. If you have an illness early in the term, you know you've lost your chance of getting a certificate so you have no incentive for trying for good attendance for the rest of the term.

The award is meaningless anyway given that it really isn't within the child's control. Why is one child inherently more worthy of a reward than the child who had a day off because he broke his leg, or the one who had chicken pox, or the one who has a long term condition requiring regular monitoring appointments during school hours?