Should You Reward Your Child for Good Marks? What Helps and What Backfires

23 October 2026 · by Larry

The exam results come home, or the week’s spelling test, and a parent wonders: should there be a prize? A treat for full marks, a bit of pocket money for an A, a trip to the bookshop for a good report. Plenty of parents do it, plenty feel uneasy about it, and both groups are usually trying to do the same thing: help a child care about school. This piece looks at what a reward actually teaches, which kinds tend to help, which tend to backfire, and a simple way to decide for your own child.

What a reward quietly says

Every reward carries a message along with the treat. “If you score 90, you get a game hour” says: the score is what matters, and the learning is the price you pay to get it. For some children that is fine. For others it changes what they are working for. The child who is working for the score has a reason to take the shortest road to it, and the shortest road is not always learning the thing.

You may recognise some of these. A child who asks only “will this be in the test?” A child who stops reading anything that is not set. A child who hides a bad paper because the prize is gone. A child who rushes a practice page to reach the end, because the end is where the reward is. None of this means the child is greedy. It means the child has worked out, quite sensibly, what the system is asking for.

Reward the part the child controls

A mark is partly in a child’s hands and partly not. How hard the paper was, how the marker read an answer, whether the child slept badly that week: none of that is theirs to steer. What is theirs is what they did in the weeks before. Did they sit down when they said they would? Did they redo the questions they got wrong? Did they ask when they were stuck instead of guessing?

So when a parent wants to mark an achievement, it usually goes better to name the effort than to pay for the number.

“You went back over all the ones you got wrong without being told. That is what I wanted to see.”

That sentence is a reward. It is specific, it is about something the child chose, and it can be earned again next week whatever the paper looks like. Compare it with “Well done, 92!”, which is lovely to hear and also tells a child that 88 next time would be a disappointment.

Rewards that tend to go well

• Small and tied to the habit, not the score. A sticker chart or a Friday family treat for “finished the week’s practice every day we agreed” rewards what the child can do.
• Agreed in advance, and short. A reward promised for the end of the term is too far away to work for a young child. Something they can reach within a week is more real.
• Time together rather than things. A walk, a cooking session, choosing the Saturday meal. Children usually remember these long after they have forgotten the toy.
• A celebration, not a payment. There is a difference between “you worked hard, let us do something nice” after the event and “if you get this, I will give you that” before it. The first is a thank-you. The second is a deal.
• Recognition of improvement against the child’s own last paper. Not against a classmate, a cousin or an older sibling. The piece on comparing your child to classmates goes into why that comparison tells you so little.

Rewards that tend to backfire

• Money for marks. Cash per mark, or a fixed sum for an A, turns a school subject into a job. It also raises the price: next term the same amount feels small, and the conversation becomes a negotiation. A child may start to ask what it pays rather than whether it is interesting.
• A big prize for a result that is partly luck. If the paper turns out to be hard and the class average drops, a child who worked just as hard as last time gets nothing. That teaches “effort does not count”, which is the opposite of what you meant.
• Taking a reward away. Promising the console and then removing it after a poor mark makes the next paper something to fear. Fear is not a good state to think maths in; the piece on a child who freezes on a question they know covers what that looks like on the paper itself.
• A reward the child is already getting. If screen time or a weekend outing happens anyway, calling it a reward only makes it feel like a punishment when it is held back.
• Rewarding only the top score. A child who is steady at 70 and works hard to reach 78 deserves to be noticed. If the prize starts at 90, the child at 78 learns the effort was invisible.

Does the subject matter?

It can. A reward for something a child finds dull and difficult is a different thing from a reward for something they already enjoy. If a child loves reading and you start paying per book, you may find the pleasure shrinks, because it has become work. If a child dislikes a topic and is dragging their feet, a small, short, habit-based incentive may be what gets them to sit down at all.

A rough rule: the more a child already likes the activity, the more careful you should be about attaching a prize to it. The more it is a chore they need to build a habit around, the more a modest, practical reward can help get them started. Either way, aim for the reward to fade away as the habit settles, not to grow.

What if the child asks for a reward?

Some children bargain: “If I get full marks, can I have a new game?” You do not have to say no, and you do not have to say yes. A calm answer is often enough.

“I will not pay for marks, but if you do the practice we agreed every day this week, we will do something nice on Saturday.”

That keeps the door open, turns the bargain into one about habits, and does not set a price on the result. If the child is bargaining because they are anxious about disappointing you, the real conversation is a different one, and the piece on a child who says they are bad at maths is closer to what is needed.

When the marks are the problem, not the motivation

Parents sometimes reach for a reward because marks are slipping and nothing else seems to work. Before assuming a lack of effort, it is worth ruling out the dull explanations: a gap in an earlier topic, a habit of careless slips, or a child who understands the work but loses marks in the way answers are written. The piece on what to check when maths marks drop goes through those. A prize cannot fix a gap. It can only make the child more anxious about it.

And if you find yourself sitting beside the child every evening to keep them going, look at how much help is too much before adding a reward on top. The goal is a child who starts the work without an incentive being waved in front of them.

A simple test before you promise anything

Ask yourself three questions.

• Can my child earn this by what they do, or only by what the paper looks like? If it depends on the paper, rethink it.
• If the reward stopped next term, would the effort stop too? If you think it would, the reward is carrying the habit, and it may be better to reward less and notice more.
• Would I be comfortable if my child told a friend exactly what the deal is? A deal you would rather not describe out loud is usually the wrong deal.

A week to try at home

If you would like to test it, here is a small version that costs nothing. Pick one habit, not a mark: ten minutes of practice a day, or correcting the wrong answers on a worksheet before moving on. Agree it with your child, in their words. At the end of the week, notice it out loud, in specific terms, and add one small thing you do together on the weekend. Do not announce a bigger prize. After two or three weeks, look at whether the habit is holding without you reminding. If it is, you can quietly stop the treat and keep the noticing.

For short daily practice that does not need a printed worksheet, the free maths practice gives instant feedback after each answer, which many children find rewarding enough by itself. And if you are weighing a bigger step than a treat, the piece on whether to get a maths tutor covers what to try first. How your child’s school grades and reports results is the school’s own business, so go by what comes home in your child’s bag rather than assuming a scale.