Paying children for good grades

BY HAROLD AYODO

Since there have been children, there have been adults trying to get them to cooperate. Indeed the Bible warns that if you spare the rod you spoil the child.

But over time the stick has lost favour to the carrot. Today petty bribes — a sweet for a child to stay calm in the presence of visitors or a cookie for going to bed on time — start before children can speak in full sentences.

But the pursuit of good grades has lately made these transactions more businesslike. Today parents, teachers and schools pay children hard cash or give expensive gifts for getting good grades.

Mr Paul Kamau, an engineer, believes money is a great motivator and has promised his daughter, a KCSE candidate at Alliance High School, Sh15,000 if she scores A. He is convinced that a similar promise five years ago made his daughter study harder, excel in KCPE at Makini School and join Alliance Girls High School.

"I bought her a 14-inch colour television for being among the best in KCPE in Nairobi but now that she is older, the stakes are higher," Kamau says.

He hopes she will join his alma mater, University of Nairobi to study medicine.

Ms Zipporah Mutiso’s daughter will be Sh2,000 richer if she scores over 400 marks of 500 in KCPE this year. "I want her to qualify for admission to either a national school or a top provincial one like Precious Blood Riruta," she says.

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Uncomfortable

Kamau and Mutiso are among a growing number of parents who are turning to money to motivate their children to get good grades.

While it would be difficult to find a student who does not admire this trend some parents and teachers are uncomfortable with rewarding students for doing what they should be doing of their own will.

Amid the discomfort, schools have taken academic bribery to a whole new level. Two years ago, Nairobi School offered a brand new car for any candidate who made it to the top 100 nationally. Alliance High School’s Parents Teachers Association awards Sh10,000 for every student who features among the 100 top KCSE performers nationally. Those who score A at Alliance pocket Sh5,000 while those who get A- minus walk away with Sh3,000. A record 104 of 221 candidates at the school scored a mean grade of A and 65 A- with 22 making it to the top 100. "The cash award system is a brainchild of parents who want to sustain the tradition of excellent performance," David Kariuki, the principal says.

Not to be outdone Mang’u High School awarded Sh10,000 to the 40 candidates who scored A in last year’s KCSE as the top performer at Kanjuri High School Francis Itote dove off with a motorbike worth Sh75,000 and Sh5,000 in cash.

And the rewards are not just given for excellence in national examinations. Today many schools give more than just books or mathematical sets to students who do well in end-of-term examinations.

‘Bribing’ for good grades is not just a local phenomenon. It is an emerging trend in Europe and US where parents promise children up to Sh38,500 for passing national examinations and continuing with their studies.

But the question is does academic bribery work? This is the question that Harvard economist Roland Fryer intended to answer when he ran a randomised experiment in hundreds of schools in four US cities. Urban school districts that were desperate to find strategy to improve academic achievement bank-rolled the research.

He used mostly private money to pay 18,000 children a total of Sh485.1 million. During the study, a fourth grader in New York could earn Sh19,250 and a seventh grader up Sh35,700. In Dallas, students earned Sh15,000 for every book that they read while in Chicago they earned Sh3,850 for scoring an A and Sh2,695 for getting B.

The results of the study exclusively shared with Time magazine are fascinating.

Did better

In New York City, the Sh116 million paid to 8,320 children for good test scores did not work. In Chicago, under a different model, the children who earned money for grades attended class more often and got better grades, two major accomplishments. But they did not do better on their standardised tests. In Washington, the children did better on standardised reading tests. Getting paid on a routine basis for a series of small accomplishments, including attendance and behaviour, seemed to lead to more learning for those students. In Dallas, the experiment produced the most dramatic gains of all. Paying second-graders to read books significantly boosted their reading-comprehension scores on standardised tests at the end of the year and those pupils seemed to continue to do better the next year, after the rewards stopped.

So why did the results vary so dramatically from one city to another? One clue came out of the interviews Fryer’s team conducted with students in New York City. The students were universally excited about the money, and they wanted to earn more. They just didn’t seem to know how. When researchers asked them how they could raise their scores, the students mentioned test-taking strategies like reading the questions more carefully. "No one said they were going to stay after class and talk to the teacher," Fryer told Time.

In contrast in Dallas, paying kids to read books — something almost all of them can do — made a big difference. "If you pay a child to read books, their grades go up higher than if you actually pay a child for grades, like we did in Chicago," Fryer says.

The study finds that if incentives are designed wisely payments can indeed boost pupils’ performance as much as or more than many other reforms you’ve heard about before — and for a fraction of the cost.

Ultimately though, the study finds that money is not enough but for some children, it may be part of the solution, especially for short-term specific goals. "It turns out that there is no consensus that money is a motivator. Money can motivate, but usually when it is tied to a short-term specific goal," Fryer said.

Maseno University head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology Erick Otieno Nyambedha says monetary rewards monetary rewards signify some form of exchange or price paid for services rendered and do not pass the message of appreciation," he says. Nyambedha, who is a specialist in child anthropology, says such rewards can lead to dishonesty where candidates are tempted to cheat to excel for money.

Maseno School Principal Paul Otula, says parents play a crucial role in the success of students.

He says students improve on their performance when they realise that their parents are keeping tab. "Hard work is a skill that can be enhanced as parents encourage children to be active," he says in his book Mastery of Modern School Administration.

We all want our children to grow into self-motivated adults. The question is, how do we help them get there? And is it possible that at least for some children, the road is paved with Sh1,000 bills?