Thoughts on Attendance Certificates etc for kids...

[expansivegirth]

Our school has just started giving out attendance prizes for children. This is an infants school. The children are 4, 5, 6. and 7. The attendance prizes - certificates or a pencil... - are given both to individuals and to classes.

I'd like to hear your thoughts. This policy is seriously arsing me off.

I feel it's deeply unfair to hold children accountable for the fact that heir parents choose not to bring them to school or struggle to get them to school on time...

I feel it fosters feelings of failure and resentment among the class. Thus those kids who care about attendance end up feeling cross with the children who, for whatever reason, don't turn up at all and bring down the class average.

Also the school does not discriminate between absences. A sick child, a child with feckless parents, a child on authorised holiday - they all count equally towards absence figures. A child who is ill ends up not getting a certificate - or worse - getting told off for low attendance - even though she's been throwing up all night.

These are VERY YOUNG KIDS. Anyone able to defend this policy please?

(Other than a Govian attempt to train obedient workers who are able to adjust early to unfair employment laws).

No, I agree with many awards - when the children have to actually do something in order to achieve them.

Academic awards - fine, as children have to something to achieve it
Effort awards - fine, as children have to something to achieve it
Sport awards - fine, as children have to something to achieve it
Music awards - fine, as children have to something to achieve it
Drama awards - fine, as children have to something to achieve it
etc.

All fine as children have to something to achieve it

Attendance award - imo not fine, as the children are not responsible for whether they can go to school or not.

These threads come up again and again

100% attendance is a crap way to asess a child - getting ill is just bad luck and we should be encouraging children (and then working adults) to take time off when need be rather than bringing their (for example) sickness /diaorrhea or flu into school/a place of work.

The target is only there because its an ofsted target - teachers are victim of that.

something around 96% would be more realistic.

If a child has to miss school due to treatment or clinics then this should be authorised absence and not count - otherwise its discrimination - for example the ENT clinic out our local hospital is 11am-3pm - we have no other option, school do not penalise our children for this anymore if yours do you should address this with them as tiggytape said

The only thing I do respect the 100% attendance award for is its clear definition - you know exactly why a child gets them - every other reward and recognition scheme in our school is arbitary and lacks any kind of clarity. If I worked for an employer who changed the 'rule set' every year and, when I asked, couldn't explain what made someone get an award over another I would be seriously questioning it... it appears Schools think they are exempt from this, I don't actually believe that every child should get an award in something but they should be able to explore why, my ds (6 now) has asked why he doesn't get particular awards (I was there) he didn't get an answer I understood so how he is meant to make sense of it I don't know!

Oh - and ime, from working in schools, primary and secondary, for past 17 years attendance awards do not make lassiez faire parents bring their children to school on the whole. That comes from individual intervention between parent and school to discuss what is going wrong and how it can move forward, I have been involved in such a case this term, although pretty much from the outside this time. Things are improving but it has absolutely nothing to do with any piece of paper or reward system linked to attendance.

Katz - you said that around a half of the kids don't have 100% attendance. You then go on about it being a big deal being the one that lets the class down.

If 15 out of 30 kids don't have 100% attendance why is one particular child going to be singled out?

BTW I do not have a child with any medical condition or special needs. My DD has had the certificate some years and not others. Her school is one of the schools who play them down anyway and there is currently talk of scrapping them altogether as they have no benefit within their school. DD doesn't always get one because she has a normal child's constitution - sometimes she gets bugs that mean she cannot go to school, sometimes she has an injury which means she cannot go to school. That's normal life.

But just because me and my DD are not negatively affected by such reward schemes does not mean that I don't sympathise with those who are - and that is why I feel they are not a worthwhile reward scheme and why I do not agree with their place in schools.

TS - ime it is often the child himself who feels the weight of the blame anyway, so they feel bad regardless as they know they cannot always be there. But also children are not daft - they know if someone in their class is often missing school or who have never received the reward.

DD's school attendance rewards are not for 100% btw, they are for excellent attendance. I still don;t agree with them, but at least they are open to interpretation and can take into account special circumstances.

Jenny I don't think that rewarding attendance would actually change the attitude of the laissez-faire parents you mention who miss school for no good reason. I doubt very much those type of parents will suddenly improve their childs' attendance, driven by the desire to win an attendance award.

My nephew-in-law (yes I know that there is no such title) lacks coordination so no sports awards for him. He has learning difficulties so no academic awards for him. Because of the above, he is very shy and quiet so no drama awards for him. One thing he does have is 100% attendance. No pens, no trips. Just a certificate presented to him in morning assembly. That has pride of place on the wall near the front door.

In his case if it wasn't for his attendance certificates he would have nothing. So my SIL is a fan of the scheme.

No matter what the policy is, someone wins and someone losses. Posters here are just pissed off that they fall into the lose column. My SIL fall into the win column because otherwise her DS would win nothing

"Posters here are just pissed off that they fall into the lose column"

That's simply not true. DD 'wins' them. Yet, inexplicably, I still want to see these awards abolished. Can you think why that might be?

MTSgroupie it's a shame that there is nothing at the school that can recognise any of your nephew's personal skills, especially in the light of his learning disabilities and shyness. Great listener? The best at sharing? Kindest in class? Things that don't rely on academic ability or things like drama or sports skills, but are still valuable. I bet that would be even more meaningful to him (and your SIL) than attendance awards.

Sorry teacher only just read your question.
I did bring up the unfairness of counting essential consultant appointments as absences, with management. They shrugged it off, and unless I want to make formal complaints, it will continue.
It was DS himself who noticed that he had been bypassed for a certificate. He couldn't work out why he had been at school everyday, (but missed a registration, but was back during the first lesson,) and didn't get a certificate. To him, he had been there 100%. Of course I had to explain that the system wasn't fair, but that I would speak to the school about it, which I did.
This is just 1 of many systems within school that can put already disadvantaged children at more of a disadvantage. This is why parents of children with SN or SEN complain. I think that most of us think that if as parents we keep challenging systems that have not been thoroughly thought through ( unlike the system at teacher's school), that eventually we will make a difference. I live in hope!

As said before my dd doesn't 'lose' them. She's had them along with other certificates for actual worthwhile things.

It's not for my sake or my dd's sake I disagree with then. I disagree with them as they are inherently unfair and the children who receive them have not actually done anything themselves to warrant them.

Jelly - why would an award for 'great listening', for example, be more meaningful?

To him it is a great achievement. Only a handful of kids have 100% attendance while lots have certificates for being polite or helpful or sitting quietly on the carpet or ... or...

Many of the posters here think that attendance awards discriminate against those with health problems. As a poster said upthread, that's like saying that the letter from the Queen on your 100th birthday discriminates against those who aren't blessed with luck or good genes.

In my SILs case the only significant award her non sporty and non academic DS gets is the attendance one. I don't doubt that for every parent who thinks that this attendance award thing is unfair on their DC there is another like my SIL who thinks it's great idea

Hulababy - it's a piece of paper that the teacher knocks up on Word. Sometimes, if the teacher can be arsed, it's laminated. Sorry but I can't get too worked up over how children shouldn't be awarded them because they haven't done anything themselves to warrant them.

hate them, completey unfair to children with medical needs

also its a stupid as giving kids awards for having say brown eyes, its not something the children have any control over
and its unfair to treat them as if they do

MTSgroupie- how will your SIL feel about the awards when her DS gets chickenpox or the norovirus and doesn't get one?

radical - I hardly think it's "milking it" to make a once a year medical appt. during school hours in order to not have to take other children along with you to appointment. Seems a perfectly reasonable decision to me.
I've done the same with some dental appointments thinking is easier to take just one child to their appt. for example at the end of the afternoon before picking other up from school. Not all appts can be squeezed into holidays for everyone after all.

My workmate's DC has some kind of brittle bones condition which stops him from taking part in sports. Sports awards should be banned because it is unfair to kids with similar conditions or fat kids or kids with two left feet.

My nephew has learning difficulties so let's do away with academic awards.

A friends DD has an ear problem so he can't go swimming. So lets do away with the old bronze, silver, gold awards.

Do you people realise how silly you sound? No? I didn't think so.

Anyway, I can't believe that I spend all day going on about a piece of paper that the kids would leave at the bottom of their school bag until I cleaned out the bag at term end. I'm done with the thread

tether - final post on the subject. Like I said, I would only discover their certificates when I cleared out their bags at the end of the term. That is how much importance they attached to these 'awards'.

Did the hide button not work MTS?

I'm not sure what the problem is. I remember having them when I was at primary school in the 1980s! You got ones for the end of term and then ones of a different colour at the end of the year. A handful of people also got them before thy left for never having missed a day in the whole 7 years they were there. This was in the days when parents were allowed to take their children out for holidays and things so plenty of people didn't get them. It was a bit of fun and certainly didn't foster "feelings of failure and resentment among the class". There were plenty of other things like a weekly merit badge (you got to wear a badge for the week if you'd demonstrated a particular positive attribute like punctuality, neatness, kindness, etc.). I don't think it's that big a deal and you'd lose your job in the adult world if you started taking days off whenever you felt like it.

It appears it means more to the children not getting them than the ones that do ... surely an indication that there's something wrong here ? Indeed that is the teacher's intention isn't it ? - to send some sort of message to the children who've been absent and even more to their parents.
No other award is so complicated ... most are much more straight-forward praise for good work and/or effort and/or good behaviour.

Harnessing pester power in slightly disfunctional families could be a very good move.

However if a child has genuine long-term health problems (like my friend's daughter who has Crohn's and has weeks off school/in hospital at a time) then it's going to unerringly crap for them never to get a good attendance award. Would have to go with bravery awards or somesuch for children with genuine medical reasons for poor attendance.

I fail to see how this is any different to school sport (and in particular, sports day).

At school, I was always the short one (completely outside my control and it meant short legs, so less running ability) with no real athletic talent. So I perpetually came last, never won sports prizes and was the cause of my team losing a game on more than one occasion. It also made me hate competitive sport.

Is it really that different to having a health condition that is outside your control and results in a lack of ability to get 100% attendance, failure to win prizes and causing your class to lose the attendance prize?

No. But I don't remember (or for that matter, see now) anyone seriously claiming that school sports should be altered (or even cancelled) so that the likes of me are not upset.