Rewards for completing SATs

[SATsSitsrewards]

Did your child get a reward for doing their SATs? Not for how well they did, but for doing them? The results will be out later this month at our school but I don’t know if other schools get them at the same time.
Dc came home yesterday and told me two people had been taken to Center Parcs as a reward, and one had been bought a laptop. Another child was told they’d get £100 if they did well on the tests even though they’d already passed the entrance exam to one of the local private schools.

Dc has just been diagnosed with autism and ADHD and we went out to our local pizza place at the end of the week in acknowledgment of it being a tough week and time recently.

Are holidays, laptops and cash the usual reward for sitting the tests or do people usually wait until they get the results? Or are rewards not really a thing?

I have told my DD I’ll get her a little gift. Not because she’s done them as such but because over the past couple of years she had terrible EBSA and at one point we questioned wether she’d ever be able to go back to her small mainstream setting.

it’s more for her overcoming that than sitting the SATs themselves.

Nope.

School did a "party on the park" opposite the school, their kitchen staff made sandwiches and they order ice creams for the kids. But that was more done as decompression after the stress of it.

My mother really poisoned this for me so mine got laptops for Christmas and Birthday but ever exam success. We expressed our pleasure at results in other ways

Dc has just done SAT'S and we have given a small gift of money for doing them for dc to spend on whatever.

Predicted results from mocks were 3 at expected and 1 at greater depth. For each area dc scores greater depth we will be giving dc £50. This money is to be used towards a pc and some other tech thay dc has been saving for since last year.

Any achievements should be rewarded imo. We don't go to work for free and most of us will have some sort of commission, bonus or target incentive as part of their every day jobs. Why shouldn't we reward our children in the same way?

I got my DS a bottle of Prime, back when Prime was a massive thing. So you’d probably be able to work out his age now 😂

He thought I was the best mum ever 😂

His school handed out their leaver hoodies after SATS which I thought was nice

DD had two friends over for a sleepover on the Friday night & PIL took us out for a meal on the Saturday but that was also to celebrate their wedding anniversary. So pretty low key here.

I bought mine a bubble tea and he got to choose the family take out and film. Feel mean now!

This used to happen when our children were at school. They are 43 now. They have done brilliantly academically to MPhil level and are both city lawyers. We have praised and supported them as they worked hard from first starting school. We are proud of their achievements and hard work.
it baffles me that parents reward children for completing necesssry steps in life. Resilience is underrated.

Couldn't agree more. Maybe a bar if chocolate or an ice cream on the day exams finish.

If you haven't got into your children how vital success is and motivated them to be self reliant in their studies and ambitious for themselves then I am sorry but you are not doing a great job.

There are threads elsewhere on here bemoaning the lack of job opportunities. Unfortunately there is no sign of that changing soon. Surely it's better for your children to do well because they want to do well rather than being bribed. What message does bribery send?!

In what way is celebrating something not bestowing resilience? I was raised to celebrate the big and small, it’s just enjoying life. I guarantee I’m more resilient than 95% of bloody MN from half the stuff I read on here! You don’t get to live the life I lead without being resilient, and my kids aren’t soft either, such a weird comparison to draw?

My DD’s school has said SAT’s results on 7th July. I thought we might go into town after school for coffee & a slice of cake or fancy milkshake/ ice cream sundae or similar. That would be regardless of result and about the limit of any reward. Can’t help but think that the families who rewarded with center Parcs/ Laptop etc were planning on doing/ getting those things anyway so it’s a bit disingenuous to frame them as a reward.

No. My grandchildren don’t and I wouldn’t have either.

I agree with your attitude and that of your parents. Making a big thing of SATS by linking it to a holiday at Centre Parcs is over the top, in my opinion. That was my point.

I rewarded my daughter after gcses as she worked so hard. Will do for A levels too. But for Sats I really wouldn't go over the top. As many have said its more for the schools benefit. My kids had to sit exams administered by the secondary schools to determine their sets.

That’s fine of course and if that’s what you had said I’d have ignored your post, but it’s absolutely nothing to do with resilience, I can guarantee my kids have had more thrown at them than a lot of adults, they’re not lacking resilience.

Honestly you do have to wise up a bit. They are resting your child, and the results will be used to flightpath their expected performance through KS3 & 4. If you underperformed at KS2 sats you will be held to a lower bar at GCSE as expectations on you will be lower.

Yes that’s what I think, I imagine a lot of kids get laptops this age ahead of high school. More of an acknowledgement of moving up from primary to high school I should think, SATs just probably felt a nice celebratory and symbolic time to do it.

This. SATs are pretty meaningless as far as the child's future goes and they shouldn't be expected to have to 'work hard' for them.

At GCSE reward the effort if you want not the results. The results are their own reward.

Not true. Secondary schools here do their own tests and set accordingly.

I did my 11 plus in 1966 which is a guide to my age. We weren't prepped or coached at my school and the whole thing was over in a couple of days - yes, I passed.

I am now a retired teacher and I think SATs should be scrapped, it puts unnecessary stress on children and teachers and is meaningless. My youngest grandchild was told he needed extra booster classes for SATs which he didn't do. I don't even know what his KS2 results were but he has absolutely flourished at secondary and is predicted good grades at GCSE next year. It's a good job he was told not to worry about SATs.

I don’t disagree with most of what you’ve written. But supporting your child when they’ve finished something does not equate to telling them they’re the most important thing in the world.

The SATs system is here whether you or I like it, it is my job as a parent to support my child and support the school. I think it’s entirely unhelpful to just tell a child something is unimportant, it’s quite dismissive actually, especially if it’s something they want to take pride in, I know I did, I was very proud of my SATs, I remember my grades to this day. Supporting and comforting a child doesn’t need to mean pressuring, MN is always so extreme.

what others do shouldn’t really affect your own decisions.
but yes we celebrated sats, with meals each night that he especially enjoys, and talking about how proud we are in respect of his attitude and efforts at school.

we’ll do similar when the results come out

we wouldn’t prioritise a holiday labelled as a reward for doing exams. and we wouldn’t buy a gift for him doing them .

but he definitely knows we are proud of his work ethic and we marked the occasion together as a family.

If someone is telling your child they aren't good enough and should be doing extra work after school instead of playing outside it's perfectly reasonable to tell them that's not true and SATs results won't affect their life. Once he started secondary school they did their own tests anyway and he just blossomed.

I'm 52. Never got any "reward" for any school or exam success. Shocks me when I see what parents dish out for their little darlings crossing the road these days.

That’s your interpretation, with a ND child I was always appreciative of any intervention that was provided, it may have been with the intention of supporting SATs predominantly but ultimately it supports improving their learning which I can’t really get cross about? I’m glad your grandchild is blossoming, but so are mine who were encouraged to do well in SATs, I don’t really see the correlation.