So the 100% attendance prize this term was an ipod shuffle!!!

[RaisinBoys]

Aside from my thinking that a prize for 100% attendance is questionable, what is wrong with the humble book token?

Yes, I am really old!

And no, It's not just because my DC did not "win"

omg a prize for being healthy? what next?

I think it's weird to give prizes for this (it's basically rewarding immune systems!). But it is really silly after just one term. I'd give a certificate for a child who had 100% attendance for the whole year (notwithstanding the immune systems point), but not otherwise.

Way too much. My girls will never win, because they have too many appointments

so they gave an Ipod shuffle to every child with 100% attendance?

Fucking ridiculous.

Cool. I said this on another thread. There used to be a boy in our school who had terrible social and academic difficulties due to a rotten home life in the early years. Every day he would go in and have a hell of a time. He got picked on in playtimes and struggled through his academic work. It would have been so easy for him to skip school, beg to stay at home, feign illness. But he didn't. He was there every day. I couldn't think of a better person to receive a prize like that.

Yeah, they get certificates too (?) and then get put in a prize draw. Prizes - ipod, dartboard, lego helicopter, games compendium, soft toy!!!

DS is drip feeding info...every few mins he remembers another prize.

How horrible.
Further marginalizes the poor children with lifelong medical problems.

Bastards.

I always laughed at DD's 100% attendance certificate, and say "You can tell you've got a working mother who kicks you in even if you're dying."

This term she didn't even get a certificate.

I don't agree with it. My daughter has leukaemia. She is at school more often than she is off but obviously will not manage 100 percent attendance til she is off treatment. This means that not only will she never get a prize but her class will not get a group award for having full attendance.

And I think they should do "You ate all your lunch every day" certificates. That would make my DC actually eat something at lunchtime.

My dc did get at 100% attendance certificate one year and whilst he was perfectly happy to get it, I wasn't when the next time he was ill he got really stressed about not being able to get his certificate that year.

It's wrong to reward something no-one can control i.e. not getting ill and you've just reminded me to mention this to our headteacher again.

no snowmummy. Prize draw. Sorry should have made that clear in OP.

Still think it's rubbish though.

You can have 100% attendance yet have been in detention half the time you're there and still be put in the draw.

But if you have, say 96.2% attendance because you got sick, and had zero warnings and detentions, you're not in the draw.

Rubbish!

Not bitter at all!!

I think it should be acknowledged - certificates, pencil case type thing. It might be the only achievement that particular child gets. Yes, there will be some who are not well enough to ever win it, but then, there are children who are not sporty enough to ever make the sports teams or musical enough to ever get the music grades or arty enough to ever get their painting on display, etc.,etc., and I don't think there should be no acknowledgement of those that do because there are those that don't / can't, but, like you OP, the value of some of these gifts is ridiculous, and also seems a little unfair that 2 children can both have 100% attendance, and one gets an i-pod shuffle / newbike, but the other gets nothing. I'd rather all those who got 100% (for the year, not just a term) got a £5 Amazon voucher or something.

It completely marginalises those children who will never have 100% attendance despite their and their parents' best efforts.

I don't like it and never have.

And Panzee that young man is a star and presumably the achievement was his social/academic improvement. If schools are going to reward anything, then reward that with prizes if you must, don't reward the fact that a child is in 100%.

It also encourages some parents to send their DC in when they are ill, contagious and should be at home - not at school infecting other children and staff.

Don't tell the school, tell OFSTED to stop using attendance as one of the criteria that count towards a school's grading.
It often one of the few certificates that a child might get if they are not academic, sporty, musical, able to behave...

It doesn't stop at school.

DS2 started getting serious anxiety attacks about one term in at sixth form college. He was literally unable to step through the front door for a couple of weeks. They came from nowhere and he had always had 100% attendance at school and college before.

We were in full contact with the college tutors, was referred by the GP for CBT and even had an appointment with a counsellor at the college.

His anxiety was not helped by him worrying about missing college.

What do we then get but a standardised letter through the post going on about his attendance and what he needed to do to make his time up to achieve suitable attendance.

I hid the letter from him. It would have tipped him over the edge.

It cause me problems, DD won one year and was taken out for fish and chips with the head teacher

Next time she was too sick for school she got herself in a terrible state because she wouldn't get to go for fish and chips that term.

DD3 has hospital appointments to attend as well as having asthma so she is no hope in hell of achieving it.

I think it's rubbish.

Surely it could be altered to 100% attendance not including medical appointments/illness?

DD is likely to need regular hospital appointments for the whole of her childhood and teenage years and thus 100% attendance is an impossibility.

I don't have any issues with certificates (not everyone can win at everything etc) but when it turns into expensive prizes and a number of children have no possible chance of even competing each and every term then I think it is a little unreasonable unless they remove illness and medical appointments from the criteria.

I have always hated those. Even before my kids were at school. DS has asthma and most little cold cause big problems. DS2 has a speech disorder and has loads of appointments, speech therapy outside of school but during school time, hearing tests, etc and gets lots of ear infections. It's not fair on them, it's not fair on children who are ill, it's not their fault, I really wish schools with give that up!

I've always hated them too, and I have two DDs who regularly get them. I would much prefer rewards for achievement, effort and improvement in whatever area. I'm not an 'all must have prizes' sort of person, but at least let's give prizes for things that matter - and awarding prizes for effort and improvement as well as achievement gives everyone a shot.

It is bullshit.

My son no matter how hard he tries will not achieve this. [he has ASD]

My other son had just lost out as he had a hospital appt last week, so despite a previous 100% attendance record he is out of the runnning

It is bullshit.

Most of those who have 100% attendance are the children of working parents who send in vomiting children regardless,

If they disreguarded hospital appointments [which you have no say over] then id back it.