Why I Won't be Celebrating my Daughters Attendance Award

This week my daughters school shared that they would be giving out "attendance certificates" to children who had attended over 97% attendance during each term. Now don't get my wrong I love celebrating and sharing my daughters excitement when she comes home with an award, a sticker or a certificate.

I love seeing the joy and pride on her face when she comes running out with her work in one hand and a shiny sticker or certificate in the other. But her attendance award will be one we won't be celebrating and I wanted to share with you why.

You see as parents, we are all too aware of how important attendance is. After all we chose to send our children to school for a reason, we are the ones who try so hard to play catch up when our children fall behind, miss out on lessons or get frustrated right alongside the teachers. I get that schools want to help parents get their kids to school but shaming our kids with not getting a certificate really isn't the way!

(photo credit www.redkitedays.co.uk)

Young children very rarely have control over whether they go to school or not. Instead its us as parents who make that choice. It's parents who have to make the decisions over whether to send our child to school or not when they wake up sick or tell us they feel poorly. Schools regularly talk about how important it is to keep our children home if they are unwell to protect other kids, the 48hour rule when sick or have diarrhoea. And we all know, most of us first hand, what happens when kids who are sick attend school and just how quickly illness spreads in a school!

So as parents we make that choice, we keep our kids home when they are sick! We arrange our work schedules, lose money and spend our time caring for our kids so that we can get that better as soon as possible. Only for our children to be told that because they followed the rules, because they were unfortunate enough to get sick or feel poorly, that they don't get an award like their friends.

Now that little piece of paper might not seem like a big deal to us adults, but when you are 4/ 5/ 6 years old and you don't receive a certificate that all your friends get, its kind of a big deal!

So schools please remember that, when you hand out an "attendance certificate" to a percentage of your pupils but not the rest, you are punishing the wrong person. Our children are so young and there are so many other great achievements our children are making and gaining all the time. Riding their bikes, learning to swim, learning to spell their name or excelling in maths, moving up a reading level, making new friends and I could go on and go.

So instead of focusing on something that's out of their control like attendance, lets celebrate their other great achievements, their hard work, their kindness and them being awesome.

Do your child's school give out attendance awards?

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