Summer is over and schools are ready to open their doors once again for a new school year. 
It’s familiar territory for many but for the 600,000 four year olds throughout the UK who are just beginning their school journey, it’s a new chapter that will see parents take copious amounts of photographs and shed as many tears. 
It’s an overwhelming time for parents and children who will understandably feel enthusiasm accompanied by trepidation.
School is very different from my experience in the late 80s; we’ve positively moved away from the use of a ruler across the back of the hand for minor misdemeanours. 
But these days we have replaced punishment with a complex system of rewards, which in some critics’ minds is another form of punishment as it’s still seeking to control the child.
With the growing trend of turning schools into academies in England and Wales, many with private providers running sizeable chains of schools, we are seeing more examples of education becoming a business. 
Schools are now intensely results driven with teachers under fierce pressure from leadership. 
When priorities are majorly focused on preparing children for tests and satisfying Ofsted, it translates to less time to see children as individuals who may be at different stages of emotional and academic development.
Psychologists have long suggested how rewards can decimate our natural motivation. There’s also plenty of evidence showing how they reduce creativity. And yet, I know few schools in England that don’t use some form of rewards as part of their behaviour management policy.
Lately, I’ve been researching local schools in Kent for my daughter who will start next year. 
I’ve been astounded at the depth and range of policies and frankly silly rewards, for example, stickers for ‘good eating’ at lunchtime, treats and raffle tickets for a prize draw at the end of the week for the group with the most stars or marbles or whatever the prop may be. 
Now, don’t get me wrong, children deserve recognition for positive behaviour. I also appreciate that principals and teachers need playful and enticing tricks to motivate and encourage desirable performance from a class of 30 or more energetic children, but is this the best we can come up with? 
Aren’t we just creating young people who grow up believing that they’re owed a prize every time they put in a little bit of effort? Or worse, that it’s acceptable to control or manipulate people to get what you want.
As I scrolled through policy after policy, I found each school had some form of extrinsic motivator. 
In one school, five-year-old children will start the day on one level and move up or down the five levels throughout each day depending to their effort and behaviour. 
It sounds exhausting. And too much pressure for a small child. 
We have to start asking ourselves at what cost do such measures have on children’s confidence, let alone their creative potential and freedom to be independent, critical thinkers?
And then there are the sanctions for bad behaviour or not working to the desired standard and means missing playtime or an exclusion from a school outing. When did excluding a child from playtime, an activity they need, encourage better behaviour? It’s nonsensical.
I’ll be the first to admit that since becoming a mother, I have become gradually liberal in my views about how we treat children.
I don’t believe children – practically those barely out of nappies – need to be controlled or shaped. I believe they want to do well, to be helpful, to learn. What they need is guidance and empathetic limits, to have mentors who will understand and listen to them. 
I shudder now when I think of my more conservative, pre-child self, who would have said children should obey rules and do as they’re told. 
I now know this to be a foolish and uninformed way to think about how we teach the next generation to become understanding and passionate citizens, curious about the world they live in and ready to question the status quo. 
And let’s face it the world’s going to need more of those people in the future.