Bribery is not a behaviour management tool. I’ll say it again for the people at the back: bribery is not a behaviour management tool.

Of course, we don’t necessarily know this when we start out. Or at least, I didn’t know it when I started out.

I remember one class that had just enough class clowns on the register that when they all synchronised their watches, they would come together in perfect harmony to derail my class and halt any learning.

Being the ideas person that I was, I tried to corral these pupils to work with a reward that I thought they would like. Quite how I was going to deliver it never really occurred to me.

“Guys, if you get all of this done today, I can bake you some cupcakes to enjoy in Friday’s lesson,” was how one bribe went.

“Whoever gets me the best piece of homework will get 500 house points” - that was another.

“The person who stays most focused can get a queue-jump in the dinner queue for the rest of the week” - yep, that was one, too.

Did it improve behaviour in the short term? Sometimes. But it always came undone.

The offer of a lunch-queue jump? I had forgotten about it until the child marched up to the front of the queue causing outrage in the dinner hall. The house points? I had to knock them all down by 490, as the entire term’s house-point data had been skewed and it caused widespread unrest. The cupcakes? Of course I forgot almost immediately that I was supposed to bake them.

Ah, so rewards are only bad when you don’t wield them properly? Yes, I was pretty bad at using them, but no, that’s not what I’m saying.

Instead, what I’ve learned over the years is that if you really do want to use rewards, they need to be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. And the prize at the end? That has to be really carefully thought through.

Promising gifts for compliance simply won’t work in the long run because long-lasting change is all about students actually wanting to change, not changing in return for gifts.

There is a fine line between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, and I have learned that my job as a teacher is to help my students find that balance. They need to find a passion for learning that I can subsidise with support, not overwhelm with bribery.

Nikki Cunningham-Smith is an assistant headteacher in Gloucestershire

This article originally appeared in the 4 December 2020 issue under the headline “Why bribery doesn’t pay”