Petition: stop punishing children for getting ill

[Felissia2011]

Four year olds getting threatening letters after taking 2 days off with sickness and diarrhoea.

Whole classes punished because too many kids are off with chicken pox.

Chronically sick children heartbroken because no matter how much they try, they will never get the school attendance awards.

Unwell infectious children refusing to stay at home because they want an award.

Children with regular healthcare appointments missing out on prizes as they have no choice but to miss school for appointments.

Children with cancer reported to Social
Services for poor school attendance.

Children who have been lucky enough to be well for their whole school careers and have never taken a day off are given high profile regional awards for their “dedication” and “achievement”, while unwell children are left out.

These are just a few of the stories I’ve heard while running this petition against school attendance targets and awards that count illness days.

Penalising children for being ill is not ok. We need to take a stand, as parents, to ask the government to end this unfair practice of including illness days in attendance targets. It’s not fair on our children and is a terrible lesson to teach them in life.

If you agree, please sign and share, share, share....!

chng.it/Ngs2NGHP

chng.it/Ngs2NGHP

That link above will take you to the petition. Thank you x

If some people didn't claim their kids were sick when in fact they were on holiday / it's their birthday / gone to see Santa / parent couldn't be bothered to get out of bed / etc then this wouldn't be an issue.
They are the ones screwing it up for the ones with genuine illnesses.

They are the ones screwing it up for the ones with genuine illnesses.

And the way to deal with that is to discriminate against disabled children? I don’t think so.

I have disabled twins but only one of them has health issues that pretty much guarantee he will never have full attendance. When his twin brother is getting awards and treats and he isn’t because he’s had dangerous hypoglycaemia and had to stay home, how will I explain that to him? What will that teach my child about his value?

It’s absolutely disgraceful. Signed.

Signed

I think this must depend on your school.

I'm a link Governor for Attendance and Behaviour for a state comp.
Our school do not do Attendance award ceremonies.
We do not send threatening letters to parents after 2 days off.

Every month we have a 2 hour in-depth meeting with SLT and the LEA Educational Welfare Officer. Each child with over 10 missed sessions in a term with be discussed (confidentially) and actions will be decided. We have students on our roll with 25% attendance rate through serous illness, disabilities, anxiety.....they all have actions and plans and we would NOT send threatening letters.

Most of our attendance problems come from unauthorised term time holidays, mental health issues and chaotic parenting.

No, the way to deal with it is to get individual schools to have sensible levels of treats (eg a certificate) and reasonable adjustments to children with disabilities (eg exclude illness, or accept lower attendance). Not to make something like this illegal at a state level. Laws should be for bigger issues than whether someone qualifies for a 2hr film at the end of term.
Can we make it illegal that school sports teams get loads of praise and kudos and trophies and badges because my DD has dyspraxia so would never qualify?

Can we make it illegal that school sports teams get loads of praise and kudos and trophies and badges because my DD has dyspraxia so would never qualify? hear hear! My DS has dyspraxia too and would never make a sports team. I don’t begrudge the sporty kids their medals. His motor skills are poor and he’ll never win a drawing competition. He doesn’t have the coordination to play solos at the school concert. However he is very robust and hardly ever off ill. I teach him that everybody is different, some things he finds difficult, some things he manages easily.

Our headteacher stopped the attendance awards because of parental complaints but I remember her saying that it was a shame because for some children, the ones who don’t get the music / sports / art awards, the attendance award might be the one thing they are good at and it helps them to feel special too.

But SquidSister, it is like rewarding children for being tall, or having blond hair. It is totally out of their control being ill or not. So there should not be a reward for it.

What do the poor children who are not good at art, sport or music do if they are also occasionally ill?

It is really stupid and unfair to reward good health. Good health is its OWN reward ffs.

I never achieved 100% attendance as a child because of existing illness that I still have today and I don’t think it’s fair to embarrass children that are poorly by them being unable to get a certificate.
It’s embarrassing enough as a child to know you’re different from the others without having to sit through an award assembly where your peers win a prize for not being poorly when you know it’ll never ever be you.
Just another contributing factor to childhood depression in my case.
I've signed and shared.

But SquidSister, it is like rewarding children for being tall, or having blond hair. It is totally out of their control being ill or not. So there should not be a reward for it.

The early trauma my children suffered in their birth family means they will never, ever, get an award at school for attainment, or sport, or music, or reading, or being able to concentrate for a whole lesson, or anything on the academic spectrum.

They have to sit through award ceremony after award ceremony never being recognised.

The only award they stand a chance of getting is attendance (that isn’t a made up award). This ‘award’ is a piece of paper at the end of the year. There are no trips or other rewards. No child misses out by not getting a piece of paper. My son has been recognised in this respect twice. My daughter once.

Good schools ideally find a way to recognise each child.

Why on earth shouldn’t one of those ways.... out of many..... be for ‘turning up to the game’ even if kids don’t ‘win’, i.e. do well at achieving?

Sorry OP... you won’t get me signing.

WCTC I have absolutely no argument whatsoever against attendance awards - I completely agree that “turning up for the game” is hugely important and a real achievement for lots of kids. This should be celebrated. All I’m asking for is that we exclude illness days from the attendance target so that children are rewarded for attending on all the days that they COULD attend. If a child needs an operation and misses a week’s school, they have worked no less hard than a child who didn’t need an operation and attended every day. Let’s absolutely celebrate those children who could be bothered to get out of bed every single day they could, but all I’m asking is not to penalise them for missing days that were completely outside of their control x

Apologies @WTCT- I got your name wrong above

WTCT I have a child with severe special needs. He will never get an award for attainment in learning, art, music or sport. Yet I still don't think he should be rewarded for never getting ill over children who didn't get ill.

A good school should be able to celebrate children in a myriad of different ways without bringing attendance into it.

I completely agree with you @Felissia2011, thank you for making me aware of this, I have signed and shared.

@felissia2011 The problem isn't the genuinely ill children. It's the children whose parents say they are ill when they aren't. Genuine illness is not a problem and good schools know this. However little. Johnny having every Friday off with "sickness" is clearly not sickness.

Under your system parents will have to prove their child is ill and need GPs notes etc. All more work for over stretched services.

School attendance officer was at my door last week as ds (ME sufferer) didn't make registration.

He was at school for second lesson. Apparently he needs to try harder as it's year 11 don't I know...

Our headteacher stopped the attendance awards because of parental complaints but I remember her saying that it was a shame because for some children, the ones who don’t get the music / sports / art awards, the attendance award might be the one thing they are good at and it helps them to feel special too.

Yeah until they get a sickness bug and have to stay off for a few days and suddenly they no longer “feel special”. What is that teaching them, apart from encouraging parents to send contagious kids into school?

Most don’t work hard at turning up for school. They either go because they are well or don’t go because they’re ill. And for those whose parents are useless and can’t be arsed to take them in, how is taking a reward / award away from a child helping them?

It has limited use, for those who would get out of school if they could but for an incentive. That’s not most kids though, especially at primary age.

All I’m asking for is that we exclude illness days from the attendance target

So how do you distinguish between the "genuinely ill", and the "actually away on a long weekend but pretending to be ill"? Unless we start insisting on doctor's certificates for everything, which is unrealistic in terms of doctors' time, and even more unfair to the genuinely ill.

Signed.

@RedskyToNight I think I have resigned myself to the fact that it is a case of the lesser of two evils, because you will certainly have people claiming illness when they are in fact on holiday (as they do now!) Attendance should still be monitored, as a welfare issue for the school to address, but I have decided it’s a lesser evil to have a few kids off on holiday, rather than penalise and stigmatise sick children, and encourage infectious children to come to school as the system does now. It can’t be a perfect system, but my philosophy is first, so no harm. Thank you for your thoughts x

DH is a GP - he won’t give ‘sick’ notes for school aged children. He says it’s a waste of his time and no benefit to the children.

rather than penalise and stigmatise sick children

Genuine question.

I completely disagree with significant reward being given to pupils with 100% attendance.

But how is not getting a piece of paper ‘penalising’ and ‘stigmatising’ children?

Thank you for asking :) @wtct

The point of the reward is to single children out and praise them for their commitment and hard work in achieving 100% attendance. It doesn’t really matter what the reward is (a certificate/a treat etc), but it sends a message to everyone that this child has done something worthy of praise, and children that did not achieve the reward have, by definition, done something “wrong” or not worked hard enough.

The reality is though that not getting ill is pure chance and not anything to do with how hard the child has worked. Similarly getting ill is not the child’s fault (as young children actually are afraid it means) and however hard that unwell child works, they will never be able to achieve the award. Thus they are further punished for being ill, and feel even further excluded from normal school life.

The other point is that if we send the message to children that they should attend school when unwell, it is detrimental to their own health and the health of others at school, as germs will be passed on. We should be educating our children to take care of themselves, and others and attendance awards that include illness days send the opposite message.

I believe attendance should be monitored to track the welfare of children but when the government brands schools as “failing” if their attendance is below an arbitrary figure, the school and LA are forced to be draconian about genuine absence and parents are sometime hounded about absenteeism when their children have been in hospital etc. It makes bad situations infinitely more stressful.

I am not advocating scrapping attendance awards - that should be up to individual schools. But just asking that days off for illness/hospital appointments/bereavement are excluded from the Ofsted figures so we can actually recognise and reward genuine commitment rather than luck/chance.

Hope that helps explain things a little. Thank you for your interest x

@WTCT sorry I’m not sure I tagged you properly in the above post x