Worried that her grandson is rarely seen with a book in his hand, my mum made him an offer last month: a penny for every page you read. My son, 11, flatly refused: “You shouldn’t pay me to read. It’s kind of embarrassing.”
Embarrassing or not, my mum’s offer was also considerably below market rates. Two years ago my daughter revealed that a Jewish pupil at their mainstream secondary school was paid £10 a week by her journalist parents to read for half for an hour every day.
And this is not the only way in which these parents monetise their daughter’s learning. As I write, the girl is in the middle of her A levels and if she emerges this August with the grades she needs to read psychology at university, she will start her higher education with a nice financial cushion. Her parents are paying her £500 for every starred A she achieves, £400 for every A, and £300 for every B. Lower grades will not be remunerated.
There is a difference between paying up when top grades roll in and getting your book-averse offspring to read by offering them a financial incentive to do so. In the first instance, you are effectively paying a bonus for results. In the second, you are rewarding effort and application.
But in both cases money is elevated, and this raises an ethical issue. Shouldn’t we be teaching our kids that learning is its own reward, that some things in life, such as a university education, should simply be valued for their intrinsic worth?
Amanda thinks it’s possible to over-think the matter. “I have an exceedingly bright son who is at Oxford reading maths. He has always been driven academically but when he was at his Jewish secondary school, I wanted to spur him on that little bit more. So in the run-up to his GCSEs I told him he’d get £75 for a starred A, £50 for an A and that if he got any Cs, he’d have to pay me! He got nine starred As and two As, and damn near broke me!”
While she understands that some might find it tasteless to conflate learning with money, Amanda says she is simply grateful that she has been able to provide her son with both a good schooling and money. “I never forget that my parents had neither of those things. In a couple of generations our family has gone from the shtetl to Oxford University.”
Artist Mike Griffiths, whose son attends JCoSS, also has no problem with cash for grades. “In his GCSE year, I told Benjy he’d get £20 for a starred A, £18 for an A, £16 for a B, £14 for a C, £12 for a D and £10 for an E. He got five starred As, four As and two Bs which meant he ended up with £188. Considering his achievement, I don’t feel the money was excessive. Although I set the scale of rewards beforehand, it wasn’t meant to be an incentive as such, more of a reward. He was motivated to do well and I was proud of his efforts.
Mike had planned to set up a similar reward system for the A levels which Benjy is sitting right now. But his wife put her foot down, pointing out that they were already spending a lot on their son’s post-exam holiday and a new laptop for when he is at university.
I didn’t ask what his sliding scale of rewards would have been for A levels, but Mike’s GCSE payment system was certainly unusual in that had Benjy got Cs or lower, he would have remunerated for those grades too. Mike’s claim that he was rewarding effort, not simply results, is genuine.
The other unusual thing about Mike is his openness over the matter. Anecdotally, I know that many parents in the community — and countless more outside it, of course —offer their children money for good exam results. In some cases, quite staggering amounts. Last year, the grandparents of one pupil at Immanuel College promised him £1,000 for every A he got in his GCSEs.
However, very few are open about the phenomenon. In the words of one parent: “It’s bribery, isn’t it? Who would want to confess to doing that?”
Or as another put it: “I think the practice is quite normal nowadays, I have certainly incentivised every one of my three kids in this way. Why? Because like many Jews, I attach huge importance to academic success, so whatever motivates them is, within reason, fair play to me. But it’s a private arrangement between me and my children. I don’t particularly want it bandied around the Jewish community.”
JCoSS Jewish studies teacher Laurie Rosenberg understands why. “Giving children money for strong grades is a bit crass. By all means reward your children, but do so with books.”
Crass or otherwise, trainee teacher Ruben, reckons that paying for grades is probably counterproductive in the long run. “An occasional reward makes sense, but if you pay regular bonuses to your kids you’ll destroy any intrinsic motivation for learning – if you learn in order to earn, you’ll stop when the cash is no longer there.”
Suzanne agrees: “Rewarding children with money might ensure they get to university, but it won’t ensure they stay there. Children need to find their own motivation to do well and understand that grades don’t have a price. That’s why it’s actually good for children to fail early on. That feeling is ultimately a bigger motivator than the lure of cash.”
And if they fail later on, it is not the end of the world either, says Sam Lethbridge. Her campaigning work to reduce the number of children suffering from poor mental health has been widely reported in the media, and she is adamantly opposed to parents rewarding good exam results with money. “Every year suicides among children and young people peak in exam season. Knowing this I simply cannot comprehend how parents could even consider adding to the pressure by bribing their kids. They are playing with their children’s psychological well-being. Exams can be re-sat, different roads can be taken. A lost life cannot be re-lived.”
But if your children do get the exam results they’d hoped for, how should you mark their achievement?
A nice meal in a restaurant, says Anna Rabin, who has two children at Yavneh College. “But whatever prize you have in mind, make sure it’s announced after their results, not before. It shouldn’t be an incentive. The message we give our children is work hard and then hopefully good things will happen.”
And if good things do not happen on results day this August? Well, at least your offspring won’t suffer the additional humiliation of missing out on the cash you promised had they done better.
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