Son is in year 4. He works really hard but never get these Welldone certificates

[Guest]

How do I handle this please or do I speak to teacher? Son is in year 4. He works really hard but never get these Welldone certificates. I understand the certificates are given to the ones working above and beyond. He is above where he needs to be but he’s getting demotivated cos to him he works so hard but not recognised.

Also, when he gets stuck teacher doesn’t seem to help. He’s asking me if it’s favouritism not sure how to handle this. Any advice welcome.

Thank you!

[Leigh]

The disruptive (naughty) children get rewarded for being good the quite working hard pupils get overlooked.

I worked in a school for 35 yrs and have seen it implemented.

Please reassure your son that him working hard and behaving is really important to you, and you will celebrate his achievements. Have a word with his teacher and explain how he feels.

This may result in the teacher realising that good pupils are not being recognised x

[Sarah-Jayne]

Iv recently had this with my daughter, they have certificates for implementing the school values (respect, kindness etc) and she’s never gotten one in the 4 years she’s been there (until this week!) I find that the children who just get on and do as they should be doing and behave, don’t make a fuss or don’t particularly demand acknowledgment from the teacher can get left out and over looked to be honest. It’s sad really.

The children that misbehave and are good for a day or 2 get rewarded!

[Jacky]

Sadly, I worked as a classroom assistant some years ago and it used to sadden me that the well behaved, generally hard workers rarely received praise.

It seemed to be the children that disrupted the class the most, did as little work as possible, put very little effort into anything but if they sat still for 5 minutes, stopped misbehaving for a few minutes, produced a piece of work regardless of the amount or quality they would get rewarded, the class would have to be silent whilst the teacher told everyone how happy they were with said child’s efforts.

This was usually followed by said child being sent to the head with a note telling them how proud we all were of said child.

Meanwhile all the hard workers, well behaved children received nothing. As you can imagine and to me was obvious from the outset some of the ‘good’ children reverted to misbehaving and not working.

[Anna]

This is the stupidity of rewards systems. All research suggests they ultimately act to demotivate and cause harm. They're a way of controlling and manipulating the children to get them to complete tasks in school that often don't interest or engage them.

Send the school some articles to inform them of the negative impact of reward based learning system.

Don't miss: Can I do a poll to see when your kids go back to school in September?

[Vicki]

They are called the forgotten middle… the group that sit and perform day in day out … The super clever kids get recognised and the kids that are disruptive are too… So sad but that’s what they are grouped as… The forgotten middle …