Do most of people promise their children cash payments in exchange for good GCSE grades?

[Theodoraalways]

My son has been coming home from school recently talking about his friends getting £100 payment for each grade 9 in their upcoming GCSE….not only that, he has been harassing me relentlessly about me paying him, too. The only response I get from him when asking why should anyone pay their child to do well in school at any time is that “everyone does it!” and so should I!
He has predicted 9’s in all his 10 GCSE subjects and has been found to be exceptionally talented in all his subjects by his teachers since he started secondary grammar school. That is what makes it even more shocking for me that someone so highly intelligent (he has chosen to test his IQ through school in Year 8 and the result was 162) could be putting monetary value to his efforts in school.
He is our only child and has been loved and looked after unlike many unfortunate children I read about. We do go on holiday every summer to Italy or Greece for 5-6 weeks, stay in luxury accommodation (villa or apartment), he has several hobbies outside school which we pay for, we always bought him masses of presents for his birthdays and Christmas, lots of books throughout the year, we try to install decent human values into him, we saved nicely for him into his Child Trust Fund account, he has never wanted for anything - we bought him most of the things he asked for over the years….
Am I wrong in thinking that no child should be promised money in order to succeed in school? I cry when I read some young people saying to their parents they do not wish any money for their grades, it is their achievement that motivates them…Am I wrong in thinking we should be celebrating his achievements by buying him a present and going out for a meal, rather than be putting a price for his grades in advance?

Yes. I was promised £50 per A*, £25 for every A (back in 2004 when money had some value). I made £400.

There's no way ny son would be relentlessly chasing me for money for passing or achieving high grades in GCSEs and he is preparing for mocks atm. We are drilling it into him, how important is. We will celebrate with a meal at his favourite restaurant for decent results and chocolates and sweets at home after with his younger siblings. Paying £100 for each 9s or 9*. Yeah, good one.

How strange. We've not done any "bribing" at all for my son's exams, nor did our parents bribe us when we did ours a few decades ago. I've just asked DS and he doesn't know of any of his friends who were bribed to do well in their exams either!

Surely getting good grades is for the benefit of the child! So they shouldn't need to be bribed to put the effort in. Who the hell do they think is going to benefit from their work other than themselves?

Absolutely not. Definitely not normal to do that.

He should be intelligent to know the grades are for his benefit and future not yours. But you lost me at your extravagant life style so maybe he hasn't the same appreciation of money as me.

We offered a financial incentive for DS1 when he did his GCSE's.

We offered £50 for a 6, £100 for a 7, £150 for an 8 and £250 for a 9. It was a pretty safe bet tbh as he is a lazy sod. Clever but unmotivated and would have happily paid if he had put the work in.

In the end he got three 4's and three 6's and only cost us £150!

No. Never.
What an excellent way to undermine any intrinsic motivation and devalue their own pride in their own hard work and effort.

Think whether you want your children to become adults who know their worth and have a growth mindset. Then think whether dangling carrots for the sake of arbritrary exam scores will help them develop these skills.

My motivation was getting into university and out of my abusive and neglectful house. For my own DC, I'll be happy to give an extrinsic reward if that helps them. I don't want them to have to have the same intrinsic drive I did.

my ten year old plays football and there are plenty of parents paying for goals

You must be joking? That completely undermines their own motivation and sense of pride!!!

*What an excellent way to undermine any intrinsic motivation and devalue their own pride in their own hard work and effort.

Think whether you want your children to become adults who know their worth and have a growth mindset. Then think whether dangling carrots for the sake of arbritrary exam scores will help them develop these skills.*

I agree 100%

So if he is clever but lazy, it sounds like it didn't really work in the end, anyway?

No, I think this is weird. We took DS out to celebrate at a place of his choice as he did really well in his GCSEs but no I wouldn't have paid him.

I paid for a tutor in science and maths plus everything else (like you op) as DS is an only and we can afford it. But plain money for grades is odd in my view.

I often wonder how much these incentives actually works, or if students by and large get the grades they would anyway.

The school told us, DS could easily go down the path of achieving nothing at school!

His DD, aged 4 is exactly the same - self driven. If she wants to do schoolwork, all well and good! If, she doesn’t feel like doing it (say reading), then she deliberately gets it all wrong. Her teacher doesn’t know what level her reading actually is at, because of this! If she’s bored, she distracts the other children. Imo, she’s extremely bright - very advanced in her vocabulary.

Personally I think the best time to reward them is just after their exams finish, so it's a clear celebration of the efforts they've put in as well as the long push being over.

(I just found myself remembering back to the very first time we had a "result" for something important. My plan was to pass over the first Harry Potter book to my then yr 3, to serve either as a congratulations or a commiserations - it turned out to work nicely as the latter.)

I got a pair of kittens for going well in my GCSEs. I wouldn’t say they were an incentive - my incentive was getting good grades. But they were definitely a very valued reward. They lived for nearly 20 years, still miss them now.

We reward our DS when he’s done well at school but we don’t offer him a reward beforehand.

We gave no financial incentive for DS who did GCSEs last year. We felt that if we said x amount for x grade and DS didn't achieve that then all he would learn that even if you try your hardest but don't reach the top then you are a failure. We wanted him to work hard for himself and learn that even if you don't hit the top you can always take another path to be where you want to be. He did ok, enough to get the A level courses he wanted. I overheard one parent say to their child (who got an 8 in English) that he didn't try hard enough because his friend got a 9. That is a shitty thing to do to someone.
At no point did we discuss bonuses or rewards to our son. However a week after results when he was at a festival we popped spending money in his account, which he didn't know about until he saw his balance. DS asked why. We explained we were proud and he should be proud of the effort and work he put in and we saw that effort. He still wants to hit top grades for his A levels but is doing it knowing it that doing his best for himself is the most important factor.

I haven't. I don't want to put pressure on DS. I'm already paying for a French tutor to help him scrape a pass. I might offer money for a 9, but it's only likely in one subject.

I paid for greater depth in SATS to give them a nudge at a tenner a subject. They were very borderline though and just needed to put a tiny effort in to get over that threshold.

Wow, nope I won’t be doing that. Luckily my dc realise that good grades will benefit them. I pay enough in enrichment activities. And the cost of the prom! (I have 3 dds)

No. Not the right message in my book.

After the exams, we went out for a family meal to celebrate getting through it and finishing. It was the effort that we wanted to recognise.

We did have another family meal after results too. We would have gone out for that regardless of the results. Our DS worked really hard and got fab results. If he had been a lazy sod, I don’t know if we would have gone for a meal or not….I guess it’s still a milestone. Neither meal was really a reward.

I honestly find it hard to believe that kids who are offered different amounts for different grades, therefore think ‘ooh more time needed so I can go from £25 to £50 reward in this subject’.

Once mock results were in we struck a bargain for eldest step daughter's improvements. So £25 for every grade she pulled up by one place, £50 if she could pull any up by two places. She's revising her socks off and teacher's reckon most of her grades will go up. I consider that money well spent.

Will do the same for younger DSD for her exams I imagine.

Will also buy a gift post-results day and go out for to reward all the effort irrespective of what happens.

Yes I did/do. Not ridiculous sums though.
£5 for a 5, £10 for 6, £15 for a 7, £20 for an 8 and £25 for a 9.
I think dd received around £120 and she spent it on her sixth form wardrobe. Ds1 will be lucky to get £50 at the rate he’s going. It’s just a bit of extra encouragement for revision.
dd then got a £100 ikea gift card for her a level results - that wasn’t grade dependent but a little something to help set her up for uni (cash would’ve been spent on booze). Ds will get the same.

He will be getting no bribes. I agree with PP that it's best to reward the effort put in with revision rather than end result. If they don't get result they wanted then they would feel like a failure. Even if they try their best, as if it wasn't good enough.

I have multiple children so it just wouldn't be a great idea to bribe all of them - I would be bankrupt 😂

Nope, didn't work at all! Turns out he's not bothered about money 🙄

Fair enough!

We didn't pay, we did get them each a present and they were the ones who set the parameters for what they needed to do to earn it. I had to bargain them both up because they were perfectionists - for DD1 it ended up being nothing below a B and no more than 2 Bs (she got 1). For DD2 is was a maximum of one 5 (that was a tough one, I disagreed with it because she struggled with maths and physics - she made it though).

They weren't big presents, but they were things that meant something to them.