As we lead into ‘Flag Day’ next week, I wanted to again circulate the process of how we select the recipients of the ‘End of Year’ awards presented at Flag Day.
Awards:
Junior School
-ESOL progress in learning English
-Emerging talent in Performing Arts
Across School
-Writing (Each Y3-6 class)
-Best effort/Most Improvement (each class across school)
-Citizenship (each class across school)
For the remainder of the awards only the Year 6 children are eligible for consideration.
The process we follow:
For academic awards it comes down to nothing bar academic levels and results. These are shared in front of the larger group and are usually very clear cut. Occassionally, we share an award between two children, as we can not separate them. For more subjective subjects like Writing, if the group can not clearly decide on a winner, a shortlist is created and the leadership team make the final decision (selecting from unnamed pieces) to ensure impartiality.
Sports awards are very similar, based on collated results across the year; keeping in mind that some awards are already decided due to being linked to a previous competition earlier in the year e.g. Cross Country.
In addition to these awards we also do have some that are far more subjective in nature. For these, all Year 6 teachers are involved in any discussion, as well as Senior Leadership and our Music, PE, GATE, ESOL teachers, with Kapa Haka tutors, and coaches consulted, as required. There is always discussion around these subjective cups e.g. leadership and sportsmanship, I can assure you that all voices are listened to and no decision is made depending on one person’s opinion. In my experience in the 8 years I have attended, these discussions are robust and can be lengthy, however, when decisions are made they are made after considering all perspectives (especially as different people see children in different contexts), and no voice carries more weight than another. Usually decisions are unanimous, however, in the cases they are not it is decided by majority vote of the group. When children are deemed to be equal, then children will share the cup.
For the Y6 citizenship awards, we collect nominations and then all staff (i.e not limited to teachers) get to vote to decide the winner, as again different people have different types of interactions with the children.
There are also occassions that we decide not to award a specific cup, due to the group feeling there is no child meeting the criteria set for it. There are also years when we may have particular children who may win a number of cups as they have excelled in a number of different areas.
I understand that every year we have some disappointed children and parents of children who have not been selected. It is natural for some people to hold different opinions about the final selection, however, I hope all can now see that decisions follow a fair and robust process, that is consistent each year.
