All schools I have been to have a rewards system in place, the yin, to the sanctions system’s yang. I think it’s about time school rewards were dragged into the 21st Century, and I have a few thoughts…

Yin & Yang

My current school is doing what most schools do every few years and discussing how we deal with behaviour: good and bad. The focus, as usual, has been mainly on the bad and associated sanctions rather than the good and their rewards. We currently use Capita’s SIMS as our information management system, within this is a behaviour module. Through this we can assign good and bad points to students. We call the good points ‘merits’. At present these count for little, a certificate at the end of the year if the pupils are lucky. Although not valued by many pupils, many will still strive to earn these merits, despite the fact they rarely even see the total they have earned. This has always puzzled me, I guess these merits also represent my approval of pupils, and this in itself is enough for some pupils. But still, I felt I was missing something. Continue reading →