Yeah I agree it’s celebrating being lucky to not get sick.
An article based on a mumsnet post.
Local journalism is a joke profession.
Urgh. Mumsnet. Get in the sea. All local newspapers are a shell of what they once were and use that same horrible ad ridden UI
Anyway
I can imagine the school thinks it’s an incentive to improve attendance, but I can’t see it doing anything of the sort….
However, should we ban sports day trophies because some kids can’t run fast? Or academic achievement awards as some kids aren’t as clever as others?
A child can’t help being sick. Also it seems unfair if some children get rewarded for going to school sick, then they pass it on to others who then stay home ill.
Man, fuck attendance awards. It’s just ingraining in people the need to put the needs of the school before attention to your own health, which is to get them in that mindset for work too, but can be very harmful to individual health if people try to just soldier through all the time.
Isn’t it unfair to take away the reward of the kid who attended the most?
Personally, I wouldn’t have wanted that award.
I was never the fastest kid at Sports Day, far from it, in fact.
But I never thought the fastest kid shouldn’t have gotten their reward for being the fastest.
How bitter are people that logic takes them to that train of thought?
Life’s not fair, and if we’re going to try and make it fairer.
Let’s start with more important things than school attendance awards, eh.
Why is it unfair? Her son is never going to win the Olympics either so that’s unfair? He won’t cook well enough to win Masterchef so stop showing that?
Just cope. You won’t win everything. Perhaps you won’t win anything. Definitely not if someone else’s mother cries about how unfair the thing you’re good at is and it’s banned.
Totally agree with her view. Such awards truly emphasise to those with disabilities, that they are never, ever going to be able to achieve 100% attendance as a result of medical appointments taking precedence over schooling.
In my own personal opinion, any headteacher/governing body/academy promoting this nonsense are discriminating against those who have to place medical appointments above school attendance,
This then begs the question which is most important? the health of a child, or a school attendance!
for me, my child’s health came first!
An attendance reward is unfair because showing up is the ‘normal, and staying away the ‘abnormal’. Rewarding that is backwards. What you should be doing is worrying about the children that are not there.
Pour extra effort into them, find out what the reason is, build support structures, and reach out!
They might have fallen on rough times, wrong crowd, physical stuff, mental stuff. Now is the time to prepare them for the future.
Not reward ‘regular’ kids for doing ‘regular’ things…
A sports trophy is exceptional. A lot of kids run, 1 wins. That is a great achievement! That is worth a reward! Not regular kids doing regular things..
I can remember my mother having to ask to be allowed to take me to hospital appointments because I got genetic disorder
I never got attendance awards for this reason . I felt singled out
It’s not just the illness argument.
Some parents just can’t be bothered to take their kids to school some days and the child has no say so in the matter.
Yea it’s a none award, congratulations on never getting sick
We had employees that were proud of coming to work sick. They helped make everyone sick but they got a pat on the back. Of course they crack down on sick leave for the other staff as the sick leave usage goes up.
It is ableist as hell and conditions children into adults that will be going to work even when sick as dogs.
It needs to stop.
Yeah attendance awards are bullshit. It’s unfair on the kids who have had time off for genuine reasons, such as illness, having to attend medical appointments or a funeral or something. And rewards kids who are lucky enough to not have any of those things to deal with for doing the bare minimum of showing up. I’d imagine it does very little to encourage the kids who do truant to attend, because why would they care about receiving a bit of paper with 100% on it at the end of the year? So overall I feel they are pointless. A sticking plaster that glosses over the actual issue, as usual.
One of my children has a minor health issue which they are under hospital care for, they have an appointment every few months and they are nearly always during school time, there’s no way around it I get no say on when these appointments are I get a letter through the post stating the time and place. So they would never ‘win’ one of these awards through no fault of their own. The one time I tried to reschedule, they said my only option was to cancel the appointment and put my child back on the waiting list to wait another 4-6 months for an appointment that will likely still be at an ‘inconvenient’ time. Not happening, their health always comes before their school attendance.
I’d rather schools focussed on rewarding children for their hard work, for improvements in their work, for over coming a challenge or for helping/showing kindness to a fellow student in some way rather than just for turning up. Those things are far more important than having a spotless 100% attendance record.
As a recipient of such an award several years running until I staged a rebellion and demanded to have a day off so as not to get one, I agree, these things are awful.
Terrible idea even in normal times, but absolutely batshit crazy given the recent pandemic. A lot of parents are already under a lot of pressure to fill sick kids full of Calpol and send them to school, where they will spread their virus to other children. Children with chronic illnesses have enough to contend with as it is.
People are acting like kids who get 100% attendance win an all expenses trip to disney land. I work in education and it’s literally just a little certificate usually or something like that just as a little incentive to encourage the children to try and come in as much as they can seeing as it’s their education. This is just more entitled parents angry that their children aren’t the centre of the universe.
As a parent of a child with complex health needs who has multiple appointments and gets sick really easily, attendance rewards annoy me. It is abliest.
It also contributes to school outbreaks as parents will send their sick children in and end up infecting the other children.
I’ll be honest, I have always found them annoying, even pre kids. It’s rewarding children for actions completely out of their control.
Nobody seems to have mentioned this from what I saw through scanning the top level comments, but:
A school is seriously thinking of giving the whole class a reward if they’re all in each day? Are they fucking insane? Has nobody let these idiots know what’s likely to happen if there’s one disabled kid who frequently is the reason the whole class doesn’t get a reward, especially in primary school where kids actually give a shit about these things, on a regular basis? They’re effectively doing their utmost to make sure that the rest of the class resents that particular child with the obvious result.
When I was at school (a long while ago now) attendance awards only became a thing in secondary and the kids who won them were bullied. I mean if you survive a whole year of school without an illness that takes you out for a few days, that’s impressive. Is it worthy of an award? No.
The Article mentions the school potentially starting an award where the whole class gets a reward if everyone is in.
I can def see their argument against that one, kinda turning the rest of the students against someone whose sick or has a medical condition
No, they should be rewarded for their attendance, I’m 30 and I’ve never had a day off school, high school, college or work, why? Because I’m not soft, as long as I’m breathing I’m working, why? Because I have a work ethic unlike a lot of people in the UK who ring in sick with a headache and a cold, stop being so bloody soft 😂
In fact this is our problem, we’re too soft, no wonder the world laughs at us now, it’s pathetic
I was always missing time due to illness, I really didn’t care if others got anything for being in.
There was a couple of kids in my class that were a bit oity toity about it, so I just said to them one day, I’m happy for you that you love coming to school everyday and that you enjoy everything about it.
One of them turned around and said I ****ing hate this place.
So I said, well if you are in all the time everyone will think you love this place and enjoy being here, not a very cool thing if ya want any cred.
All of a sudden they started to be late coming in a lot after that, lol.
School attendance rewards are fucked up. I have severe IBS and I had to fight so many times with my head of house for her to permit me to go home because ‘think about your attendance.’ Miss I am about to diarrhoea all over your floor please we’ve done this like 5 times now.
I’m surprised that people are so against this in the comments.
One of the primary causes of poor educational outcomes is low attendance. Even having 90% attendance is losing a day every two weeks, which is a massive disadvantage.
An guess who those students are? They’re generally the poorer, disadvantaged ones. If schools don’t seriously tackle poor attendance, they’re allowing a cycle of disadvantaged kids- low attendance – bad educational outcomes – who become disadvantaged adults who then have more disadvantaged kids
Accessibility and equality isn’t achieved by dragging people backwards – all the people saying they should be scrapped are ironically being very ignorant.
The people who you want to encourage to attend are the ones who probably need a lot more encouragement (and help) than an attendance award would give them!
The kids who truant or who’s home life is so chaotic they don’t always make it into school. They need proper support and help!
Ex teacher – completely agree that staying home when ill should be the norm and punishing what should be praised as sensible behaviour is ridiculous.
However please try to catch up what was missed! One year I did over £2,000 worth of unpaid catch ups for stuff people had missed.
Same goes for missing the last day of half term or whatever – just catch up.
The teacher has like 300 students to worry about, and can’t track all of them so take it upon yourself to do it.
Also please don’t say that attendance of 90% is good – that’s missing an afternoon a week.
Also, teacher’s pay and progression often takes exam grades into account – being told you’re not getting any progression one year because a student got a low grade, when that student had attendance of less than 30%, well that sucks.
But with that in mind – don’t come to school if you’re ill! No one here wants to catch it!
For 6 months at school my year group had a weird trial that the worst students were part of. If they didn’t get detentions and turned up to every lesson they would get £20 each week. Parents complained and the smartest kids stopped doing homework, it caused alot of tension as the teachers thought it was the last thing they could do, I think that was during the final year as we had such a small year group and worst average grades/behaviour…. this was mid 2000s
It’s not easy turning up every day but those who do should surely be rewarded? My attendance was awful for a variety of reasons out of my control but I would never take that away from someone who turned up every day, let them have some praise for it and instead put your efforts towards a different award wtf?
I have a friend whose daughter has a weakened immune system and enlarged tonsils, which means she is more prone to infection and struggles with breathing (especially when asleep). She’s had to have multiple days off for the sake of her health, yet all the school does is badger my friend about why her daughter’s attendance isn’t up to what they expect.
As far as I am concerned, attendance awards are ableist and discriminatory, and only reinforces ideas of presenteeism that can easily bring down an entire workforce.
I won a perfect attendance award in secondary school. Anyone who had perfect attendance in a term was entered into a raffle to win the main prize. These did not count authorised sick days or holidays, it literally only counted days you were awol skiving from school as an absence. I “was sick ” fairly often during school. So much so, that during the assembly for perfect attendance, where they announced I had won an award for my perfect attendance. I was at home, playing Uncharted 2. Anyway I came in the next day and they still gave me my prize. A portable DVD player. I watched Dodgeball 3 times in the car on a holiday to Devon, and then never used it again. I wish instead I could have seen the assembly where they announced I’d won a perfect attendance award but wasn’t in.
My point is people are acting like these encourage kids to come in when they’re sick, they don’t. If a parent wants their child to have a day off, they can.
Completly agree its wrong. I always had bad attendance due to a balance disorder, would have felt really shitty if I felt like I was being punished because of it
Keep taking days of for sniffles and you’re going to miss out. Seems fair to me.
Tbh I agree. They are ridiculous.
I’m not even joking when I say this. Our school recently had a competition on which year group had the highest attendance. The year with the best attendance would get free ice-cream from an ice cream truck. The school sent an update on which year group was currently winning…. But in the SAME email they announced that there is currently a sickness bug making its way through the school and it’s important to keep children off if they have certain symptoms.
Well why the hell are they holding attendance competitions in the first place!
My son gets this every year since he doesn’t seem to ever get ill, luck of the draw I suppose.
37 comments
Yeah I agree it’s celebrating being lucky to not get sick.
An article based on a mumsnet post.
Local journalism is a joke profession.
Urgh. Mumsnet. Get in the sea. All local newspapers are a shell of what they once were and use that same horrible ad ridden UI
Anyway
I can imagine the school thinks it’s an incentive to improve attendance, but I can’t see it doing anything of the sort….
However, should we ban sports day trophies because some kids can’t run fast? Or academic achievement awards as some kids aren’t as clever as others?
A child can’t help being sick. Also it seems unfair if some children get rewarded for going to school sick, then they pass it on to others who then stay home ill.
Man, fuck attendance awards. It’s just ingraining in people the need to put the needs of the school before attention to your own health, which is to get them in that mindset for work too, but can be very harmful to individual health if people try to just soldier through all the time.
Isn’t it unfair to take away the reward of the kid who attended the most?
Personally, I wouldn’t have wanted that award.
I was never the fastest kid at Sports Day, far from it, in fact.
But I never thought the fastest kid shouldn’t have gotten their reward for being the fastest.
How bitter are people that logic takes them to that train of thought?
Life’s not fair, and if we’re going to try and make it fairer.
Let’s start with more important things than school attendance awards, eh.
Why is it unfair? Her son is never going to win the Olympics either so that’s unfair? He won’t cook well enough to win Masterchef so stop showing that?
Just cope. You won’t win everything. Perhaps you won’t win anything. Definitely not if someone else’s mother cries about how unfair the thing you’re good at is and it’s banned.
Totally agree with her view. Such awards truly emphasise to those with disabilities, that they are never, ever going to be able to achieve 100% attendance as a result of medical appointments taking precedence over schooling.
In my own personal opinion, any headteacher/governing body/academy promoting this nonsense are discriminating against those who have to place medical appointments above school attendance,
This then begs the question which is most important? the health of a child, or a school attendance!
for me, my child’s health came first!
An attendance reward is unfair because showing up is the ‘normal, and staying away the ‘abnormal’. Rewarding that is backwards. What you should be doing is worrying about the children that are not there.
Pour extra effort into them, find out what the reason is, build support structures, and reach out!
They might have fallen on rough times, wrong crowd, physical stuff, mental stuff. Now is the time to prepare them for the future.
Not reward ‘regular’ kids for doing ‘regular’ things…
A sports trophy is exceptional. A lot of kids run, 1 wins. That is a great achievement! That is worth a reward! Not regular kids doing regular things..
I can remember my mother having to ask to be allowed to take me to hospital appointments because I got genetic disorder
I never got attendance awards for this reason . I felt singled out
It’s not just the illness argument.
Some parents just can’t be bothered to take their kids to school some days and the child has no say so in the matter.
Yea it’s a none award, congratulations on never getting sick
We had employees that were proud of coming to work sick. They helped make everyone sick but they got a pat on the back. Of course they crack down on sick leave for the other staff as the sick leave usage goes up.
It is ableist as hell and conditions children into adults that will be going to work even when sick as dogs.
It needs to stop.
Yeah attendance awards are bullshit. It’s unfair on the kids who have had time off for genuine reasons, such as illness, having to attend medical appointments or a funeral or something. And rewards kids who are lucky enough to not have any of those things to deal with for doing the bare minimum of showing up. I’d imagine it does very little to encourage the kids who do truant to attend, because why would they care about receiving a bit of paper with 100% on it at the end of the year? So overall I feel they are pointless. A sticking plaster that glosses over the actual issue, as usual.
One of my children has a minor health issue which they are under hospital care for, they have an appointment every few months and they are nearly always during school time, there’s no way around it I get no say on when these appointments are I get a letter through the post stating the time and place. So they would never ‘win’ one of these awards through no fault of their own. The one time I tried to reschedule, they said my only option was to cancel the appointment and put my child back on the waiting list to wait another 4-6 months for an appointment that will likely still be at an ‘inconvenient’ time. Not happening, their health always comes before their school attendance.
I’d rather schools focussed on rewarding children for their hard work, for improvements in their work, for over coming a challenge or for helping/showing kindness to a fellow student in some way rather than just for turning up. Those things are far more important than having a spotless 100% attendance record.
As a recipient of such an award several years running until I staged a rebellion and demanded to have a day off so as not to get one, I agree, these things are awful.
Terrible idea even in normal times, but absolutely batshit crazy given the recent pandemic. A lot of parents are already under a lot of pressure to fill sick kids full of Calpol and send them to school, where they will spread their virus to other children. Children with chronic illnesses have enough to contend with as it is.
People are acting like kids who get 100% attendance win an all expenses trip to disney land. I work in education and it’s literally just a little certificate usually or something like that just as a little incentive to encourage the children to try and come in as much as they can seeing as it’s their education. This is just more entitled parents angry that their children aren’t the centre of the universe.
As a parent of a child with complex health needs who has multiple appointments and gets sick really easily, attendance rewards annoy me. It is abliest.
It also contributes to school outbreaks as parents will send their sick children in and end up infecting the other children.
I’ll be honest, I have always found them annoying, even pre kids. It’s rewarding children for actions completely out of their control.
Nobody seems to have mentioned this from what I saw through scanning the top level comments, but:
A school is seriously thinking of giving the whole class a reward if they’re all in each day? Are they fucking insane? Has nobody let these idiots know what’s likely to happen if there’s one disabled kid who frequently is the reason the whole class doesn’t get a reward, especially in primary school where kids actually give a shit about these things, on a regular basis? They’re effectively doing their utmost to make sure that the rest of the class resents that particular child with the obvious result.
When I was at school (a long while ago now) attendance awards only became a thing in secondary and the kids who won them were bullied. I mean if you survive a whole year of school without an illness that takes you out for a few days, that’s impressive. Is it worthy of an award? No.
The Article mentions the school potentially starting an award where the whole class gets a reward if everyone is in.
I can def see their argument against that one, kinda turning the rest of the students against someone whose sick or has a medical condition
No, they should be rewarded for their attendance, I’m 30 and I’ve never had a day off school, high school, college or work, why? Because I’m not soft, as long as I’m breathing I’m working, why? Because I have a work ethic unlike a lot of people in the UK who ring in sick with a headache and a cold, stop being so bloody soft 😂
In fact this is our problem, we’re too soft, no wonder the world laughs at us now, it’s pathetic
I was always missing time due to illness, I really didn’t care if others got anything for being in.
There was a couple of kids in my class that were a bit oity toity about it, so I just said to them one day, I’m happy for you that you love coming to school everyday and that you enjoy everything about it.
One of them turned around and said I ****ing hate this place.
So I said, well if you are in all the time everyone will think you love this place and enjoy being here, not a very cool thing if ya want any cred.
All of a sudden they started to be late coming in a lot after that, lol.
School attendance rewards are fucked up. I have severe IBS and I had to fight so many times with my head of house for her to permit me to go home because ‘think about your attendance.’ Miss I am about to diarrhoea all over your floor please we’ve done this like 5 times now.
I’m surprised that people are so against this in the comments.
One of the primary causes of poor educational outcomes is low attendance. Even having 90% attendance is losing a day every two weeks, which is a massive disadvantage.
An guess who those students are? They’re generally the poorer, disadvantaged ones. If schools don’t seriously tackle poor attendance, they’re allowing a cycle of disadvantaged kids- low attendance – bad educational outcomes – who become disadvantaged adults who then have more disadvantaged kids
Accessibility and equality isn’t achieved by dragging people backwards – all the people saying they should be scrapped are ironically being very ignorant.
The people who you want to encourage to attend are the ones who probably need a lot more encouragement (and help) than an attendance award would give them!
The kids who truant or who’s home life is so chaotic they don’t always make it into school. They need proper support and help!
Ex teacher – completely agree that staying home when ill should be the norm and punishing what should be praised as sensible behaviour is ridiculous.
However please try to catch up what was missed! One year I did over £2,000 worth of unpaid catch ups for stuff people had missed.
Same goes for missing the last day of half term or whatever – just catch up.
The teacher has like 300 students to worry about, and can’t track all of them so take it upon yourself to do it.
Also please don’t say that attendance of 90% is good – that’s missing an afternoon a week.
Also, teacher’s pay and progression often takes exam grades into account – being told you’re not getting any progression one year because a student got a low grade, when that student had attendance of less than 30%, well that sucks.
But with that in mind – don’t come to school if you’re ill! No one here wants to catch it!
For 6 months at school my year group had a weird trial that the worst students were part of. If they didn’t get detentions and turned up to every lesson they would get £20 each week. Parents complained and the smartest kids stopped doing homework, it caused alot of tension as the teachers thought it was the last thing they could do, I think that was during the final year as we had such a small year group and worst average grades/behaviour…. this was mid 2000s
It’s not easy turning up every day but those who do should surely be rewarded? My attendance was awful for a variety of reasons out of my control but I would never take that away from someone who turned up every day, let them have some praise for it and instead put your efforts towards a different award wtf?
I have a friend whose daughter has a weakened immune system and enlarged tonsils, which means she is more prone to infection and struggles with breathing (especially when asleep). She’s had to have multiple days off for the sake of her health, yet all the school does is badger my friend about why her daughter’s attendance isn’t up to what they expect.
As far as I am concerned, attendance awards are ableist and discriminatory, and only reinforces ideas of presenteeism that can easily bring down an entire workforce.
I won a perfect attendance award in secondary school. Anyone who had perfect attendance in a term was entered into a raffle to win the main prize. These did not count authorised sick days or holidays, it literally only counted days you were awol skiving from school as an absence. I “was sick ” fairly often during school. So much so, that during the assembly for perfect attendance, where they announced I had won an award for my perfect attendance. I was at home, playing Uncharted 2. Anyway I came in the next day and they still gave me my prize. A portable DVD player. I watched Dodgeball 3 times in the car on a holiday to Devon, and then never used it again. I wish instead I could have seen the assembly where they announced I’d won a perfect attendance award but wasn’t in.
My point is people are acting like these encourage kids to come in when they’re sick, they don’t. If a parent wants their child to have a day off, they can.
Completly agree its wrong. I always had bad attendance due to a balance disorder, would have felt really shitty if I felt like I was being punished because of it
Keep taking days of for sniffles and you’re going to miss out. Seems fair to me.
Tbh I agree. They are ridiculous.
I’m not even joking when I say this. Our school recently had a competition on which year group had the highest attendance. The year with the best attendance would get free ice-cream from an ice cream truck. The school sent an update on which year group was currently winning…. But in the SAME email they announced that there is currently a sickness bug making its way through the school and it’s important to keep children off if they have certain symptoms.
Well why the hell are they holding attendance competitions in the first place!
My son gets this every year since he doesn’t seem to ever get ill, luck of the draw I suppose.