My son is a good boy and a bright boy,. He’s never in trouble to speak of at school: never been sent to the head and we’ve never been called in. At parents’ evening we get told every time that he’s attentive and a hard worker. He’s doing well. You’d think with all that going for him he’d be well rewarded at school wouldn’t you? But, you’d be wrong.
They have a certificate scheme at school to reward children. The idea is that if you work hard or do something good, you get a certificate. The thing is that so far this year my son has about 8 certificates. You have to have 30 or more to get any sort of recognition (beyond the certificate itself) and more to get the better ‘prizes’ within the scheme. It doesn’t look likely that he’ll get even close. It had crossed my mind to wonder which paragon of virtue might have got those sort of figures, but I hadn’t worried about it.
As I say, I wasn’t that fussed about that until I realised that children who don’t behave as well and don’t try as hard, often seem to have more certificates. Not just a few more either. They seem to get given certificates if they do work hard or behave to encourage them, but day in day out hard work and good behaviour don’t stand out and aren’t rewarded in the same way. Of course, this sends out the wrong message and makes good children feel aggrieved. I do think these schemes have value, but you have to make sure that you give out certificates to all the children that deserve them. If you implement a system like this, you have to work hard at making sure you are rewarded those who deserve an accolade. Those paragons of virtue need to get the rewards and not the little pain in the neck who manages to be well behaved one day a week.
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