Praise and Rewards - Thomas Adams School

This policy reflects the School’s continued belief in the “Every Child Matters” agenda which
states that all pupils should:
Be Healthy
Stay Safe
Enjoy and Achieve
Achieve Economic Well-being
Make a Positive Contribution
and with the recognised Safeguarding Procedures within school, including Child Protection
and Health and Safety. These highlight the need for this policy to take into account the
Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL):
Self awareness
Managing feelings
Motivation
Empathy
Social Skills
for all those working and learning within our school.
Praise
The very best schools have praise cultures both in their classrooms and also within every aspect of
their schools, whereby students all receive praise on a continuous basis which is;
o justified
o personalised, in that it is based on a good knowledge and understanding of
individual students
o delivered sensitively in ways which the individual student prefers
backed up by communicating this to parents and family on every opportunity.
Introduction
There are few more valuable forms of both reward and also motivation than justified praise
and recognition of achievement. Studies show that children respond quite remarkably to
systems of positive reward and there is immense educational gain.
The basic problems of a school's positive rewards system are, however, hard to overcome:-
i. Teachers vary in standard and/or frequency of praise giving.
ii. Teachers vary in how much time they give to making use of praise systems.
iii. Monitoring to ensure consistency is difficult.
iv. It is equally difficult to ensure that every student is receiving appropriate and deserved levels
of praise and as a result less able and also quieter, hard working students in particular often
do not get enough recognition.
v. Students vary in the way they wish to receive praise and rewards.
In the last resort a school has to rely on all teachers making use of the system whilst
making use of procedures that are continuously highlighted and involve as little work as
possible for the teacher.
Criteria for Positive rewards
1. All praise should be justified and based on high expectations and standards.
2. All students should have equal opportunity to receive praise regardless of ability
level.