I want to start this post off by saying that I have no idea whether Boo’s school hands out prizes for 100% attendance – now that may be that due to her absences we’ve never been privy to the conversation – I don’t know; however the notion of rewarding primary school children for 100% attendance is a topic I’m hearing more and more.
If you follow me on social media, you will know that Boo was diagnosed with a nasty case of Scarlet Fever a few months ago – thankfully she made a full recovery and returned to school the following week. That’s three days of school absence to add to her apparent ‘unacceptable’ levels of attendance.
To imagine that Boo has any say in whether she attends school is utterly ludicrous and if schools are under pressure from the LEAs to improve the magic number of attendance to achieve the elixir that is ‘outstanding’ from OFSTED perhaps they should instead hand out bottles of Prosecco to parents instead of certificates and prizes to children; or is the guilt trip by proxy an intentional tactic by school senior management?
If we’re to continue with the idea that children respond to be rewarded for something that is out of their control then let’s start rewarding those that haven’t had head lice or chickenpox. We also need to explore the notion that parents will send children in when they have notifiable diseases just to still be int he running for attendance awards. Boo and many other children with lowered immunity are at risk of becoming really ill by such behaviour.
School policies are very often divisive but when it comes to attendance surely health trumps awards; and serve no purpose rather than to create divisions between children when they should be focusing on creating friendships and having fun.
I agree with you and have read similar from the parents of other children with health problems that can make catching something a lot more serious. I hope that the message gets home to the schools and they reconsider.
Nat.x
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I am pretty sure our primary school doesn’t award for 100% attendance, it they are quite hot on when a child has a virus or infection that is infectious. It is unfair in others, parents and childs, if parents feel they need to get their child back in school just to get a good attendance record,
Yes, I’m with you. It is crazy. A few years back one of my girls broke her arm and we had to go to the fracture clinic a number of times. The appointments were always at 9.10am so she couldn’t be there for registration. I think she ended up missing 6 registrations in the end and we got an amber warning. What did they want me to do differently? Mich x
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I think such things as attendance certificates given out at the end of term in assembly’s can make children who have been off school feel left out. When a child is poorly they should be kept off. It’s like the school punishes the children for being poorly.
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Poor Boo, thats a nasty virus :(. I heard that one school hands out ice creams to children at the end of the year with 100% attendance, those who have not achieved it don’t get one. I can only imagine the tears… I understand the implications of attendance records, but I don’t agree with rewarding, instead schools should do what they can to help parents like putting inset days at the end of holidays etc to help keep the cost down of travelling during the holiday period. If these types of absences are less then they will not be so affected by genuine sickness. Its always got to be whats right for the child!! Regardless of stats xx
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I 100% agree and am going to be talking to school governors about it. If they are going to award for attendance then they have to discount days that children are off sick. To penalise children for being ill seems ludicrous to me, especially as we are not in fact allowed to send them to school when they’re not well…..