IT’S THE last day of the school year today and parents are getting outraged at the format for inclusion in schools’ fun days or parties for primary school pupils.

Children are being denied inclusion, they say, because it is dependant on 100 per cent attendance throughout the school year. It’s fair, say the schools, because the events are rewards for high attendance and it’s “part of their duty to promote good attendance and reduce school absences”.

Unfair, parents shout, because children can’t help being ill and having to take days off school. Quite right, I say, it’s the parents who are responsible for ensuring children’s attendance at school, not the children. The only fair system for deciding inclusion at these fun days would be for schools to discount the number of school days off a child has had due to illness and then calculate attendance percentage based on the remainder.

Even better, don’t have fun days at all. What’s the point? Children should not be rewarded for attending school. It is a poor message to give children because they won’t get rewarded for attending work when they are adults. Regular attendance should be considered the norm and a free education a luxury that millions of children around the world would kill to have.

Parents are torn over the merits of schools offering a nice treat to reward 100 per cent attendance. Some say their child should be applauded for it and deserve public recognition because it then becomes an incentive, others baulk at the whole idea because it punishes the “weak”, those who have illnesses or ongoing medical conditions they have no control over.

How then to explain to small children why they are not allowed to attend an event all their friends go to? Who tells them; the school or the parents? It should be the school as they’ve set up the whole ludicrous thing in the first place.

The stress for a child aiming to achieve 100 per cent attendance so that they can go to the ball adds stress to their lives when they least need it. They are already under pressure from SATs, exams, life changes they have no control over, so why add more when mental health in our children is a worsening crisis? Fun days are one of those school gimmicks designed to waste valuable educational time during the school year, the same kind of gimmick that sees pupils watching films, spending a day at Alton Towers and visiting New York for five days, all in school time.

All of these also contribute to added pressures on parents too, both financial and emotional, with children demanding to go because everyone else is and they don’t care if their parents can’t afford it because if they don’t go, everyone will know they can’t afford it and they’ll be bullied for it.

How can schools justify throwing away time on non-educational pursuits? Schools are there for education. Out-of-school time is there for the fun things in life. Schools have continually tried to turn themselves into pleasure domes, beginning with teachers insisting on being called by their first names during the Sixties, perching their backsides nonchalantly on the edges of desks rather than standing rigidly at the front of the class with a cane held menacingly in their hands.

There is something to be said for abandoning the fear and terror teachers felt obliged to strike into the hearts of their pupils back in the day, but I can’t help feeling it has just gone too far the other way.

In the most extreme cases of school rewards for 100 per cent attendance, schools are spending up to £25,000 a year on rewards such as iPods, bicycles and Kindles, convinced that the spike in attendance that they invariably produce is worth the cost.

Sandi Mann, a psychologist at the University of Central Lancashire, believes the schemes don’t work because it teaches children good attendance is only worth it for the reward. It doesn’t produce long-term change and it also doesn’t guarantee the pupils “attend” while they are attending. As soon as the prizes stop, attendance falls again.

So what do you do? Give bigger and better prizes? No, says Mann. She runs an anti-truancy project, explaining: “The project aims to move away from the culture of trying to motivate kids to attend school by offering them external incentives and instead looks at the young person in a holistic way so as to build up their internal motivation to attend more and aim higher. We want them to want to attend school because of the perceived benefits of what happens there, not in order to get a certificate, badge or pizza.”

Exactly. Incentives provide the wrong motivation. it gives pupils the wrong message. It produces only a short-term result. Let’s ditch the treats.