Oldbury Academy has a wide ranging set of rewards as we believe that students grow and develop as a result of reward and praise.

Acknowledging and celebrating achievement and progress across the breadth of the curriculum including in the Community, the Arts and Sport has long been a part of our philosophy at the school.

Exam results that have improved year upon year for the last seven years is testimony to the success of the school.

The Outstanding OFSTED report in 2011 offers further evidence of our successes both within and outside of the classroom.

By chance and only just today I have been discussing with staff our new pay policy, which all schools will be required to produce for September 2013. The message from governors, managers and the government is that there should be a direct link between their performance and pay progression. It seems to me that this is entirely appropriate and a parallel might be drawn with this and that of rewarding students for their endeavours and successes.

All students have access to our rewards system and the suggestion that there is a narrow focus on particular sub-groups of students is not in any shape or form accurate. Meticulous tracking of progress and target setting within the school reinforces expectation and raises aspirations and the targets set are highly challenging.

Students need to demonstrate significant progress before being considered for recognition through our reward scheme. This is how it should be in that commitment, hard work and going the extra mile brings reward at school and in life.

We want all youngsters to engage and be motivated to learn and secure success. Incentivising all students supports achievement and this then builds self-esteem. We also want our students to gain places in further and higher education, we want our youngsters to secure the best training opportunities on offer and we want them to move into careers and employment in areas of their choice rather than be limited by insufficient qualifications.

The school is more than happy to state to future employers that the school generated a passion and enthusiasm for learning through its ethos of recognition and reward. We believe it is our responsibility to maximise learning and potential and our aim is to do just this.

The development of independent learning is crucial and increasingly our students are seeing this and choosing to learn because they “want to” rather than they “have to”. We have a budget for rewards, like the vast majority, if not all other schools in the UK. Rewards for achievement, attendance and behaviour have been in place in schools for countless years and reward vouchers and stickers, theme park visits, pizza nights, Ipods and such like are commonplace in the world of education and in commerce and industry.

To suggest that this initiative will cost thousands of pounds demonstrates the lack of understanding and factual detail in the letter that we respond to. The initiative has cost less than £500 in the last three years during which over one thousand pupils have been involved in the scheme. John Martin (headteacher).