AIBU to think 100% attendance awards are fundamentally unfair?

[Nijiko]

My child has severe asthma and is on immunosuppressants, so occasional school absences are just part of life for us unfortunately. Hospital appointments can only be taken in school hours, and when they catch a bug they don’t easily “bounce back” in a couple of days like many other kids do. Even a simple cold can wipe them out.

So yes, I have to keep them home a bit longer if something nasty is going round. Because they need to recover properly and risk ending up back in hospital.

But what’s upset me is the attendance awards at school.

My child has never had one and realistically never will. Not because they don’t try hard at school or because we don’t value education. But because their body is disadvantaged.

The awards were handed out last week and my child just sat there knowing, yet again, they’d never be one of the children called up. To be honest, they knew that they wouldn't before the school year even started.

And honestly? It is a slap in the face constantly for them due to something they can't control. I find that heartbreaking.

I know schools are under pressure about attendance, but I can’t help feeling these awards mostly reward children for being healthy/lucky enough not to get ill.

And I also think they encourage people to send poorly kids in. We all know families who dose them up with Calpol and hope for the best.

Our school makes us evidence every medical appointment. When I was young, if you were sick your parents were trusted advicate. Sometimes it feels like parents are treated as guilty until proven innocent if they keep an ill child off school - to protect them and other kids from getting sick.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. But I don’t really understand why children should be publicly rewarded for something other children, through absolutely no fault of their own, can literally never achieve. It feels like health discrimination. I would much rather see children rewarded for exceptional efforts in their learning.

AIBU?

Most children don't get them and don't value them very highly because they know they have nothing to do with ability or sporting prowess or anything else that they want to be good at. Most children would rather have a day off than an attendance award.

Unfair things that you should feel upset about are things that actually matter. Things like getting the crap maths teacher for GCSE, not having a qualified physics teacher, or not getting allocated the better local school.

lol. As it happens, his school became a nut-free school at the beginning of the 2024-5 school year. I wrote to the division head, head of catering and head school nurse to express my strong opposition (my other child has been there for over 10 years, no nut ban). My son - like all children with allergies but I can only speak for my children - needs to learn that the world isn’t nut free. He has to learn to ask each and every time “does this have nuts in it?” before he tries something new. I think it actively harms children with allergies to remove the allergens from their lives. How else will they learn?

School has ignored me.

Personally, I think the better question is “why are awards being given out at primary school for things the child isn’t in control of?”. Attendance is down to the parents, not the child in the primary years. The awards should be given to parents. What has the child done to deserve it? Set their alarm extra early, got their parents and siblings up and ready for school and work on time, checked out roadworks and detours the night prior? It’s a bullshit award for something that has nothing to do with the child other than going along with what their parents tell them to do. Does that really need an award from the school?!

I agree with most of what you say apart from ‘there’s too much pandering to kids today’ and that that causes some sort of mess. That’s not the point i was making. The point was that awards are manipulative and create too much competition. And that that isn’t how the world works.

The issues today with society are not the fault of children or their parents. It’s the fault of the system and structures we place them in today.

They're awful, especially when given in year groups so young that they have to rely entirely on parents to get them in.

I was about to post similar. My autistic son was always proud to get his 100% attendance certificate (genuine sick days weren't counted).

While I have some sympathy for your point of view I think it’s more useful to you and him to just reframe it to focus on the things he is good at and can do really well.

I always had to take this approach. Consequently adult son is incredibly generous about other people’s achievement last and accept we all have different strengths.

Or, to make it relevant to your and many other children: what did the children who get these awards do to deserve them? Ensure they weren’t born with or develop disabilities? What is the outlier of an award other than to reward. Why on earth would anyone want to reward someone for….not being disabled? Not getting sick? Not having disorganized parents? Living somewhere with reliable public transport? It’s ridiculous.

24% have. I have no idea why.

Just tell your child they have an illness so can’t have 100% attendance award. Instead, little Johnny let’s get that maths homework done so you have a chance of the maths award.

So he won’t win sports day events either?

What’s the big deal? We all have to learn resilience as none of us are perfect.

Yanbu, our school was even worse. The 100% attendance wasn’t just a paper certificate and clapping in end of year assembly, it was linked to all the events,

For the subject field trips- ie Paris with GCSE French, or Madrid with GCSE Spanish, or Iceland with GCSE geography, it wasn’t the first who applied got the spaces, it was those with the highest attendance got the places.

For the end of year field trips in secondary school, those with highest attendance got first dibs on the activities which ranged from awesome pony riding/farm zoo/aquarium to shitty arts and crafts in the dining hall or sew Christmas ornaments with the early years classes across the road.

For Yr 11 prom, you couldn’t even attend prom unless your attendance was 98%. And the leavers in Yr11, if you had 100% attendance you got an iPad.

So yes it is blatantly unfair and children are losing out.

I understand what you’re saying. Maybe I’ve just seen too many badly behaved children who don’t seem to be taught about respect for others, but I’m going off on a tangent. I suppose it’s a disappointment for the kids whose attendance doesn’t meet the criteria for an award but then it’s a disappointment to not get into the university of your choice or the job you had the interview for. We need to teach resilience. That seems to have got lost in all the back-slapping for basically doing what you were asked to do ie attend.

Does anybody really give a shit about an attendance award enough to send a sick child in ?? I doubt the paper certificate that can be printed off a computer is the reason . More like no back up child care or not deeming the child that sick in the morning . .

What maths award?! 🥴
My child won awards in maths and not once were they recognised in school.

Having criteria that don’t accommodate for illness or disability is discriminatory.

I hate them. Thankfully my son's school doesn't do it.

They are absolutely ableist.

GOD this pisses me off, my sons sen school tried to do it and everyone immediately complained and it was dropped.
My youngest son has type one diabetes so it’s a given he will never ever be in for a full term let alone a year with appointments, diabete tech issues, bad diabetes days etc. it’s heart breaking, half the issue he gets so sick is because other parents dose their kids up on calpol and spread it all round school so those kids get awarded and my kid gets sick off the selfish idiots.

It’s not just a certificate, the kids who get 100 percent attendance get to go on a day out at the end of each term at my youngests school.

I was a child who had 100% attendance at school most years, I either was lucky enough to be ill or because I wasn’t at deaths door was made to go in by my strict mother. I detested (and still do) getting these awards, hated being centre of attention having to go on stage and be singled out from my year group etc. Our school never gave out prizes or penalised the less than 100% attenders…it also has no relevance in post school life. I won’t be ensuring my son has 100% attendance for the sake of a certificate. If you are ill
you are ill.

Our parents WhatsApp group have collectively opted out of these “awards” they tried to do a non uniform week as a reward for kids with less than a day off and literally all of us emailed to
say we won’t take part, we won’t teach our kids that being sick is wrong.

what is the lesson - hey 5 year old you need to do a better job at being well next year to get that reward

I’ve just explained it doesn’t matter to her and her being well is more important. Il give her an award myself for staying home and getting well and not spreading her bugs

I don’t think striving to build resilience by watching other people get awards for something you could never win anyway is an excuse to award kids for every small thing.

And resilience isn’t grown by failing and watching others succeed. I know what you’re getting at though. I think there are a myriad ways to build resilience in kids other than this. I just think the regularity of awards today is where schools are going wrong. Occasional awards like sports day or an Easter bonnet competition is healthy. But they are so woven into daily practice at primary school today there’s no let up and i think that creates the opposite effect to building resilience.

It’s an example, of course.

So they got a maths award, there you go, well done!

Wow well done for saying no to this nonsense! We need more parents and teachers to stand up and say no to it all.

Yep.

My Tom has regular clinics at 9am, 30 miles away. Clinics are morning only and don't happen at all during afternoons. One is always on a Friday and there also has to be a certain gap between clinics for monitoring reasons.

Clinic times aren't going to change for one child who isn't local to the specialist hospital he has regular clinics at no matter how much his school works with them.

This needs changing way higher up than school though. The reality is that schools look bad if they don't teach all the children in each year EVERYTHING in an overfull curriculum for that year. The school is in danger of failing if it doesn't teach enough to the kids. All the time that this is how school targets are judged, they will need to try to get every child in for as many days as they can. If an attendance reward gets a few kids in more than they would otherwise have been, it's worth the school doing. We need huge flexibility from the top, to enable schools to have the freedom to support children in different ways.

I completely agree (as a teacher) and think it’s so wrong that children are being penalised like this.

Ifs not the schools’ fault though-blame the government/curriculum/Ofsted.