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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

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Original poster

AIBU to not reward results?

79 replies

MerryMarigold · 11/07/2022 16:19

DS2 today came home and said he'd got 100% in both Maths tests so we 'have to take him out for a posh meal'. DH thinks we should. I don't think he should be rewarded for being naturally talented. My Mum siesta said we should reward the hard work put in and not reward the result.

To complicate matters, DS1 has just finished GCSEs. He's stressed about getting a 7 in Maths to get into 6th form. I got him a few little celebratory bits and we bought him an Xbox game when he finished his exams but I think the reward for a good grade will be the good grade.

I'm not sure what to do here. What do others think?

OP posts:

Original poster

MerryMarigold · 11/07/2022 16:21

Oh, a postscript, DS2 can be lazy and not that motivated to do well. He is chuffed with himself, which is actually quite nice (that he's happy he's done well), so perhaps we should reward him. 🤷‍♀️

OP posts:

BlueKaftan · 11/07/2022 16:22

Are you saying he didn’t revise? Just breezed in and got 100%? Take him for a nice meal. This is an enormously stressful time in his life and he did incredibly well.

EduCated · 11/07/2022 16:22

I think I would be rolling my eyes at being told you have to take him. Rewards should be offered not demanded. Why a meal particularly? Is this a thing?

pepsirolla · 11/07/2022 16:26

I've always thought the buzz from achieving something was reward in itself. I always bigged up mine when they did well and let them choose their favourite meal or special pudding that evening that we'd cook.

noblegiraffe · 11/07/2022 16:37

What year is he in?

As a maths teacher, it's quite rare to get 100% as it requires making zero mistakes, so getting it twice is a big achievement. If he's proud, it would be nice to show that you are proud too.

Original poster

MerryMarigold · 11/07/2022 17:20

He is Y8. To be honest, he's gifted at Maths plus the school is pretty rough/ low attainment. I'm not sure anyone else got full marks twice, but there's a few very high grades flying around. @BlueKaftan I don't think he did a lot. I think DD (his twin) revised more and will not get 100% (she already knows this as she had to leave a question). @EduCated , I frequently have to roll my eyes and he's not backwards in coming forward! I don't know where the meal came from. He's a bit of a foodie so I think it came from him.

OP posts:

noblegiraffe · 11/07/2022 18:00

Reward them both for getting through the exams then. Not specifically him.

declutteringmymind · 11/07/2022 18:10

The 💯 mark is the reward for working hard.

Take him and his sibling out to celebrate all their hard effort.

alpenguin · 11/07/2022 18:16

Ordinarily no I wouldn’t reward good grades but you can’t do for one and not to be other.

my friends in the early 90s got £100 for every A £50 for every B etc.

my mum gave me £2.50 and told me to get a chippy for my dinner 😂

I felt hard done by but she was a different family entirely .

Original poster

MerryMarigold · 11/07/2022 18:24

@alpenguin Ordinarily no I wouldn’t reward good grades but you can’t do for one and not to be other

I haven't rewarded anyone for grades yet. I was torn on this issue with DS2 (13). I rewarded DS1 (16) for his hard work on GCSEs. No results yet!

DD also 13 is in the mix. They (the 13yos) basically revised a couple of evenings so I'm loathe to reward them for 'hard work'. I think it's going to have to be no reward for DS2 then.

OP posts:

Numbersarefun · 11/07/2022 18:30

We used to go out for dinner when exams were over and, for public exams, when the results came out. It didn’t depend on results.

TizerorFizz · 11/07/2022 18:35

Can’t you just take them all out at the end of term? So much easier!

Namenic · 11/07/2022 18:37

Hard one - on the one hand, you have to concentrate quite hard not to drop a mark. Does he have weaker subjects and did he do well in them - did he make improvements or try hard? You could always talk to them and set expectations for next year - eg you want to see hard work and improvement on weaker subjects in order to get a reward.

MrszClaus · 11/07/2022 18:47

So you rewarded DS1 for hard work (despite no results yet) but don't want to reward DS2 for getting 100% because you think it's natural talent? Regardless of natural talent, 100% is a great achievement.

Maybe not a "posh meal" but something nice for him? Or something for all three to recognise all three?

Maybe I'm just bitter, I was the high achieving child so my results were expected not celebrated, my less academic sister was showered with treats and praise for mediocre results just because my mum wanted to encourage her more as she "needed it" whereas I just got on with it. It didn't help our sisterly relationship at all!

Timeforabiscuit · 11/07/2022 18:54

Like @MrszClaus I got brought up as a high achiever with "lower"achiever brother (made bugger all difference in the long run, brother outwards me good and proper now!).

But, the deal is that we look at the effort they put into lessons, and if they got exemplary behaviour and attitudes to learning then we have fish and chip supper.

Can't always control the outcome, but if they went in willing and hard working that was the win.

pimlicoanna · 11/07/2022 18:57

My dad said the high mark is the reward in itself as progressively they are the key to a good life with lots of choices. I didn't agree with him at the time as lots of my friends got £ per good grade. But now I see he was correct.

Lovemusic33 · 11/07/2022 18:58

We celebrated end of exams with pizza (dd1 A levels, DD2 GCSE), we will do something when they get their results too but not for high grades, just for them trying their best. We have t don’t this for any end of year exams, just the big ones.

CatherinedeBourgh · 11/07/2022 18:58

It's a tough one.

I'm firmly in the camp of rewarding work rather than results, but when I was at school I found things fairly easy and was always told that my good results were the result of my intelligence, my bad results laziness.

So I never got rewarded for anything at all, which did have an impact on me.

If i sit any harder on the fence I'll get splinters in my arse...

MargaretThursday · 11/07/2022 19:36

It depends on what else you do for the others.

If your dd won a difficult tennis match, would you take her for a treat?
If your ds1 gets that 7, will you shed tears of joy and tell everyone how hard he worked?

I'm another who felt that because I was good (at maths) it was accepted that I would do well there so nothing to celebrate.
It took me until adulthood to realise that if my siblings were as clever as I was told, and worked as hard as was held up to me... then actually I was at least as bright as them.

But actually all that telling me that they worked so hard and got such amazing results meant was I gave up trying, feeling that I would never achieve what they did. I felt I was better not to try at all then at least I could think that if I had tried I might have done as well.
And actually I did as well, or slightly better than them typically. I didn't see that as a child, thinking I was the dunce of the family.
I now realise that I was as clever as them (and better at maths) and also they didn't work as hard as they appeared. They just made more fuss about it (good way of getting out of washing up etc!)

So do I think you should take him for a nice meal? Actually I don't think I do. But show him that you are proud and don't treat it as a "well all I expect" result.

Original poster

MerryMarigold · 11/07/2022 21:09

Thanks. That's really helpful, especially from the sibling perspective. I was brought up very much in celebrating the hard work not the result and because I cared about my results and was 'clever', the grade was the reward itself. My 3 are all so different. DD is like me and the grade will be her reward, she loves doing well. DS2 is very happy to have 'beaten' some others. DS1 is extremely insecure and feels he is not bright (he worked hard and is likely to get 6s) so I do try to compensate but not thought his that would come across to the others. It's so hard to be 'fair' but not necessarily equal. I'll need to mull on it a bit more but end of term treat sounds like a great idea and I can have a private chat with DS2 and tell him how proud I am.

OP posts:

Augend23 · 11/07/2022 21:19

I worked pretty hard though my GCSEs (though I am sure I could have worked harder, one can always work harder) and came out with As and As and felt as though I had let myself down massively because it wasn't all As.

I never let that happen again, but it did ruin results day as I was so ashamed I refused to see anyone and I still feel a weird negative fuzz around it now when logically I did well.

I don't really know what the point of what I'm saying is, but I think it's maybe that if doing well is the expectation then all you can do is disappoint others and yourself - especially if you don't even get a well done for doing well because you're good at it anyway.

I also think, depending on the child, they may not have done loads of revision for end of year exams but they may have (and likely did in order to do well) have worked consistently hard all year. I didn't do hours of revision for exams that didn't count. But I made an effort in every class, answered questions, worked hard on homework and generally put the hours in - but more at school than at home. If you sit there and get on with things while tutorial is going on in the mornings, while everyone is filing in and messing round and getting books out etc etc you can gain hours a week of work time. That may not be what your kids are doing, but the assumption that because they aren't doing loads at home they aren't working hard isn't necessarily true (not that you are necessarily assuming that either!).

Augend23 · 11/07/2022 21:20

A-stars and As...because it wasn't all A-stars

saraclara · 11/07/2022 21:25

If he's proud, it would be nice to show that you are proud too.

Yes. I wouldn't do the meal thing personally (partly to do with him demanding it!) but it's still a result to celebrate.

And yes, I think s man out for all of them at the end of term, to celebrate their different achievements, sounds good to me.

TizerorFizz · 11/07/2022 21:28

I would honestly treat them all the same. Meal (a bit above average!) as a family at the end of term.

We never separated our DC out into the clever and less clever in terms of rewards. We just took them out as they had succeeded at different things. Be it academic, music, drama or dance etc. We didn’t reward differentially.

Although DH and I went out to celebrate DD1s GCSE results! We never told her this but she did really well and we needed a reason to go out! Did the same for DD2s A level results. We privately enjoyed toasting our DC and have done it a few times since. But their “rewards” have been strictly equal.

Meredusoleil · 11/07/2022 21:31

I always reward the effort, rather than the attainment/level/grade. My girls are both bright but in different ways and their results show that. So to make it fairer all round, I always go based on the effort grades on their report cards.

It's currently £1 reward per subject where they have put in the maximum effort, according to their teachers. Regardless of their attainment level in that subject. As that means they are trying their best and that's all we can ask for really imho.

If and when they get good scores/marks on any tests/exams, the reward is knowing they have done well due to their own hard work and of course, lots of verbal praise from me too.

GCSEs will be different, as they are more important, but we're not there yet!

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