Rachel Wright’s son 10-year-old, JJ recently won a perfect attendance award from his school. Along with the award came a prize: an outing to a soft play centre.
But Wright has decided not to let JJ accept the award. She explains why, in a post that has been shared more than 12,000 times.
“We don’t reward luck,” she writes. “In this family we will think of as many reasons as possible to praise our children. We will celebrate and reward them, but being lucky enough not to get sick is not one of them. He’s lucky to have not developed a fever, had an accident or live with a chronic illness.”
The UK mum, who blogs at Born At The Right Time, has two other children, apart from JJ. One of them, Sam, is severely disabled.
“In this family you are not shamed for ill health, vulnerability or weakness,” she adds in her post. “In this house you are not encouraged to spread germs when you are not well. In this house we look after ourselves and the weakest amongst us.”
Wright’s post has had nearly 4000 comments. Some of them are from people whose children have missed school due to ill health.
One mum said her daughter had a chronic illness and had so many hospital appointments that she would never get an award for attendance.
“Now they give the children with full attendance badges to wear too, it allows them extra privileges,” she added. “She suffers enough with her health and from bullies without the school pointing a finger of shame at her.”
However, others defended the awards.
“I teach my kids they can’t have a day off school just because they feel a bit under the weather or have a cold,” one wrote. “Doesn’t work like that in the real world.”
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There were also people who attacked Wright for her decision not to let her son accept his prize. One accused her of “sucking a simple joy out of life in the misguided pursuit of an unachievable utopian dream of a totally ‘fair’ world”.
But Wright explained that her son agreed with the decision she’d made.
“It helps that we’re planning a trip to a soft play with friends and other children who don’t ever get 100 per cent attendance,” she added.
“I wanted to teach him to see stuff that’s unfair and try to improve it.”
Do you agree with this mother? Are attendance awards discriminate against disadvantaged students?
Top Comments
To those disagreeing with attendance awards - our school gives certificates for both 100% attendance and 95% attendance. Since we started this, the average attendance at our school has gone up from less than 80% to over 90%. That means that there were many children before who were missing school 2 or 3 days per week, all year. The turnaround in attendance is the only way to begin to be able to teach. A child who is sick but misses on average no more than 1 day per fortnight is still eligible for the 95% certificate. This is similar to the number of sick days they might get per year if they were in the workforce. Some of you may think it is discriminatory against children with chronic illness, but I know how much it has done to change the culture of our school and get the families to send their children.
I think that's a good idea if awarding attendence. As I now know, even 95% attendence probably wouldn't have happened for me, due to chronic conditions.
But for many kids, 95% is an attainable goal while not going to school sick. While 100% just isn't feasible, even for most healthy children, without a lot of luck or going to school sick.
Achievable goals deserve reward more than flukes in my opinion.