DD had 16 points, classmates double – AIBU to think this is unfair?

[Clippetyclopp]

My DD has just started Year 7 and after less than two weeks has already been made to feel bottom of the class. The teacher read out everyone’s achievement points and she had 16, while most of her classmates had double. She came home humiliated, confused because she is trying her best, and now worrying she’ll never catch up or might miss out on trips.

I don’t really see the benefit of reading the points out publicly – it just shames the ones at the bottom, especially when they’ve only just started at a brand new school and are still finding their feet.

What worries me most is that the gap is already so big she feels she can’t close it. Do these systems reset each term, or will she be stuck at the bottom throughout secondary? If it’s permanent, how on earth is that motivating?

I’m particularly sensitive about this because at the end of Year 6 she was the only child not praised in her leavers’ assembly, which really dented her confidence. At least then she could leave and have a fresh start, but now, only days into Year 7, she’s already been ranked bottom publicly.

She is capable – she’s in the top set for maths – but she needs encouragement and recognition, not shaming. I’ve emailed the teacher in case there’s been a mistake and asked if they can reassure her, but I’m so disappointed this has happened so early on.

AIBU to think this points system is damaging rather than motivating? Has anyone else’s DC had this at secondary – do the scores reset, and what did you do about it?

Is this like reward points?
if so the teacher definitely should not be putting loads of emphasis on them. Ime some teachers forget about it and others put them on for the slightest things. So basically it depends on if the teachers she has care or not.

Are you in the UK?

We were instructed to read them out in form time.

Teachers often don’t have a choice.

At school, we had form orders. Marks added up and ranked. Notice with rankings put up in our classroom base. This was in the 60s. By now such public humiliation should have stopped. It helps no one. Those at the bottom are always humiliated. I was determined my DDs didn’t suffer this. I would complain. It’s just wrong.

The way the points work will vary between schools.

But at my DCs secondary school, IME some teachers are a lot more generous with the points than others. So it’s not necessarily even points among the tutor group if the pupils in the tutor group are in different sets, even if effort etc was the same for every pupil.

Also at my DC’s secondary school, they recognise the pupils who’ve had the most achievement points in that week, but that resets every week. So a child who’d had 16 points in week one and a child who’d had 100 points in week one would both start off at the same place for celebrating points in week two. (The total points across the year are taken into account for other things like earning rewards but they’re not generally flagged up in the same way)

As for trips, when it comes to pupils being allowed on them or not, it tends to be the number of negative points that make the difference. If all her achievement points are positive and there’s no negative ones for misbehaviour etc, then I’d be surprised if it affects her going on trips, even if lots of other children have higher totals.

Your child is massively overthinking this.

so are you.

each school runs their own system so we can’t tell you if it will reset or not.

most schools have some kind of house system and the points count towards a house competition with cups and stuff at the end of the year.

the students generally stop caring around Christmas of year 7.

the teacher will have been told to read them out almost certainly.

DS's school gives house points as reward/encouragement for 'positive' behaviours like asking questions, answering (or trying to answer!) questions, creative thinking, and kindness. Arents get a text or email when points are awarded. They're accrued through the year and the highest scoring house gets a prize of some kind. His tutor sometimes tells them who's in the lead or scoring particularly high but he's never singled anyone out as being at the bottom of the points table.

Have a look on the school website and see if there's a behaviour guide or parents guide.

YANBU that they can be upsetting especially for the quiet ones who get overlooked. I guess they are used a lot especially with Y7s to get them to do what they are asked.

How many they get is very much dependent on which teachers they have. DD had one who doled them out all the time and when they did an end of year tally across the whole year, the kids who were in this teacher's maths class dominated the rankings. A couple won a bag of sweets. Each teacher needs their own class management strategies and this was hers. I wouldn't have a clue how to keep 30 teens focussed and behaving for hours day in, day out.

I would try to stop looking at the rankings. Every point your daughter gets is recognition of something she has done or achieved (to a greater or lesser extent). She should be proud of each one she gets irrespective of the running total and whether Maisie and Ella got more or fewer than she did. And buy herself some sweets if she wants.

So just coming back to the some teachers being more generous with the points than others thing - DC1 got 55 achievement points this week, which sounds great until looking at the details on ClassCharts, which show that about two thirds of those points were awarded by one teacher who he had two lessons with last week.

That sort of thing can really skew achievement point totals in favour of the pupils in that particular teacher’s class.

Speaking as a secondary teacher,as a previous posters said, you are instructed to read out the weekly totals in some schools during form period, which can be humiliating for those students with low totals and unfair as it is totally dependant on the combination of teachers your child has as to how many points you get.
The students soon pick up on this and it builds resentment.
In over 30 years teaching I have never been in a school where consistancy in awarding these points has been achieved.
Some teachers award points to everyone every lesson( often a vague " good effort" comment on the system) because these electronic systems monitor the teachers too and any teacher who has less than a 90% positive rating risks being told they have classroom management issues if they give out a lot of negative points.
Other teachers are very specific as to what the pupils need to do to earn points ( e.g completed the starter activity on Romeo and Juliet to a high standard,-which most pupils find the most fair), but this can make the tally lower than with other teachers.
Finally, there are some staff that go way over the top awarding points for what most would think are "non events" ( "Well done Jonny you had a pen with you today")
Overall no consistancy and really frustrating for the pupils.
Talk to your daughter about the points she was most pleased with rather than the whole tally and go big on the praise for these. Emphasise that you are really pleased there are no negative comments too

Speaking as a secondary teacher,as a previous posters said, you are instructed to read out the weekly totals in some schools during form period, which can be humiliating for those students with low totals

Does anyone have any insight as to why Senior Management would give that instruction other than them knowing nothing about teaching, and child development ?

Does your DD know how points are awarded? At my kids school, there's standard points available every lesson, (on time, participating, behaviour etc) then extra points for going further... so extra good work, going to clubs, being helpful etc. The "top" performers get around 1000 in a year, but most are still getting several hundred.

Take no notice of it. They're utterly meaningless in our school. On the first day, one of my children was awarded 10 points for having correct uniform and equipment. The other child, none. Despite having the same uniform and equipment, his tutor just didn't give them out.

Unless she's racking up negatives, ignore them.

My DH and I are both teachers and think this is appalling practice. Reading out points in class? Some of the children who receive the fewest points are the quiet, reserved ones who don't put a toe out of line but therefore aren't always noticed by the teachers. Several of autistic DD's teachers didn't even seem to know who she was by the end of year parents' meeting. I would not hesitate to put in a complaint about this. Also, as a teacher I would point out to the leadership team my views on the matter, including the SENCO who should be considering the impact on SEND pupils.

It was the teacher who read out the ranking and because my child was bottom, she came home in tears… we were all jumping for joy
before then. it’s very shaming.

It’s a good thing you’ve told the teacher- yes form tutors do usually get told to share the results, but you never do the whole class (or I don’t!), usually just the top 3. As others have said, the system is massively skewed- I realised last year that I was accidentally giving way more points to my most badly behaved class just as a motivation to get them to do something, while my top class were so good it just became the norm and I often didn’t give any points. I try not to do that now!

I’m also guilty of the “award all” function if they’ve had a good lesson rather than singling people out- because it saves so much time. If she’s got different teachers to her friends then it will definitely skew the results.

Hopefully the form teacher will realise now that you have emailed and not make such a big deal of it.

@CarpetKnees Baffles me how teachers have time for all of this reading out. This one must have known dc would not like it or be motivated by it.

I think sometimes the kids who need the points the most are the ones who miss out.
The quiet, non disruptive, lower ability, maybe unrecognised sen.
DD found the system motivating, until in y9 teachers stopped bothering because most didn't care. But she still needed it.

I can totally see why your daughter would be upset by this. It's totally ridiculous to be ranking 11/12 year old kids house points so publicly. The teacher could read out the three top scorers and leave it there, no humiliation needed.

I agree with the others, teachers will be handing these out inconsistently and for many it will be arbitrary. For all it's subjective.

If I were you, I'd pop an email to the form teacher with your concerns. At my DD's school, they were very keen to set the tone and be encouraging at the start of Y7.

I'm sure you have already done this (as it happened in primary) but have an honest conversation about the value of these behaviour points systems, pointing out they are subjective and inconsistent. She probably notices this herself but it'll be nice for her to see you realise.

Don't read anything into it. If you get notified by a parent app that your DC got a point for something, use it as a talking point eg oh I saw you got a point in English, well done, what did you do to get that? Aside from that don't be overly invested

We were all told we had to read them out to our forms in form time. I've never done it and neither have several of my colleagues. It's unnecessary and we all know that some kids get achievements points for everyone else's normal expectations and for just not kicking off in a lesson for once. I'd hate to be the one to make some poor kid feel awful like this.

As others have said it varies between teachers.
My dc's school they tried to even it up a little by saying that every lesson 5 points should be given out, three of those should be given to the quiet middle.
But you still had teachers who would start the lesson with questions and anyone who answered got a point, then anyone who finished the work got another, anyone who did the homework got another, anyone who asked a sensible question.... etc
And others who would remember at the last minute that they hadn't given any out and give them out at fair randomness as far as the students could tell.

And they gave out loads for extracurricular ones. Which is kind of fair enough, but for some of the groups (eg football team, but sports weren't the only one) there were limited spaces, so children were picked, and I always felt it was unfair when they got heaps of awards on top of those.
One my dd was in, they always got 2-3x as many wanting to be in than they could accommodate and it was a big thing to get in. They then would get awarded many tens of points around twice a term, and often get awarded the headmaster's breakfast once a term on top.

However the points were able to be cashed in. My dc always seemed to go for the Amazon voucher, but there were other things they could cash points in for - priority card for lunch (for a certain number of lunches), and that sort of thing. The oddest one, which apparently was requested by the students was to have lunch with a group of teachers of their selection. I suspect the teachers dreaded being picked for that!

I don't think it was ever read out by name, but I will ask them.
I think at one point they used to give the form who in their year group had got the most a reward each term, but other than that I don't remember anything being said.

“the students usually stop caring at Christmas Year 7”

that. It will wear off. The issue is that your DD feels isolated in some kind of “lesser” group. Is there anything she enjoys doing out of school that could give and work up her confidence?

Good luck op,
teenage years ahead, put your belt on.

Former (30+ years) secondary teacher here - whilst I accept that some schools have gone down the pan thanks to 14 years of Gove et al messing them up, this doesn't sound acceptable.

I would arrange to see the teacher who read them out, and ask them - after quoting a few of your daughter's comments - how they (the teacher) is going to ensure that your daughter does better as, as far as you can see, she is working as hard as she can and neither you sir her can improve her results. I would aim to get promises from the teacher (write them down) so they can be used in future.

Why is she bottom? You’re trying to treat the symptom, not the disease.