4 year old never gets award

[DesperateDad80]

I just wanted to get others' thoughts. My DD is in reception and every Friday her school's weekly newsletter includes 3 awards per year group: perseverance, kindness and work of the week. We are now week 17, so there have been 51 awards handed out since September for her class of 30. My DD is yet to get a single one whereas lots of other children have received 2 or 3 by now. To make things worse, I think I've discovered that every Friday, these awards might be celebrated in a whole school assembly which would mean my DD has now sat through 17 assemblies without a mention. I am completely gutted and fed up with the sinking feeling I get every Friday when I check the newsletter again to see her overlooked. Her only school report this year was absolutely fine. Am I overreacting? Surely, when in reception, children shouldn't be left behind like this unless she's completely awful.

I had the quiet child that was very gifted academically. Used to drive me mad, all a sports team had to do was rock up and lose for a big sing song in the weekly newsletter. My son got the best SATs results, attended Yr 11 maths at the secondary school in Yr4, but nowt was ever mentioned. Sad to see things haven't changed much.

I had this exact same thing but my daughter was in junior school. I sent and email detailing exactly what I had observed but explained I understand there are lots of children but surely the teacher/LAs/lunchtime supervisors if they’re going to do awards could keep track of who there giving things to and maybe encourage the ones that haven’t had them.

That's the whole purpose of the awards though, to incentivise the behaviour the teacher wants?

It'll be the kid who has gone 5 minutes without threatening to smear poo on the walls or something like it who gets all the awards, as it is in my DC school. I honestly would breathe a sigh of relief she hasn't had one OP!

Some dc don’t get awards at all throughout school, especially if they’re high achievers. I just told mine not to worry, when they got older the exam results are what counts. Even then though, they’d been so overlooked we had other dc and parents disbelieving dd in particular’s results. You can’t have got that, they said. She went on to get onto an incredibly competitive degree course. Again, disbelief and no congratulations from school at all.

Teachers really should ensure all primary dc are appreciated and rewarded. It’s made dd a really hard worker who is extremely self driven. She’s humble and just gets on with it. Her friend who won multiple prizes despite not achieving the best results, is now having all sorts of therapy at uni and needs constant praise and reassurance just to function. It’s a really odd system in the UK. There’s something really wrong with it.

You are not being unreasonable I’d be the same and asking the teachers if there’s an issue

It was a normal response, no sign of anger at all, just didn’t agree with your insistence that OP needed to let something go that was bothering her. You were trying to minimise her feelings which is poor advice. Stop with the faux concern, very transparent.

Are you okay? Seriously. Your responses are quite personal and confrontational.

Perhaps you should take your own advise and not tell someone what to do? Or accuse them of things because you don’t like what they said.

Another personal attack. You are a peach. Yawn.

How was it a personal attack? You’ve consistently minimised people’s opinions. This is an opinion board! Why don’t you take your own advice and “let it go”

And calling me a peach is personal, is it not?

Wow. Every class I know do it on rotation. So everyone gets a chance.

DS was in a class like this. Heard about the rewards and was extremely motivated in class, and was really upset and confused when the teacher didn't ever call on him and he never got an award. According to his teacher this was because his participation showed that he didn't need the encouragement...I moved him after that. Totally wrong message to instil in children.