Do you use Golden Time?

You know, the practice where children gradually accumulate periods of time each day or week to spend as they wish (within reason) at a set point in the future?

It has always fascinated me as I believe it is a very flawed concept to incentivise good behaviour.

Behaviour management

There is a straightforward reasoning behind Golden Time: if a child does the right thing, then they should be rewarded. I’ve written in the past why I don’t necessarily agree with that particular statement, so I won’t rehearse the arguments in detail. But I will restate that we risk giving the message to children that good behaviour or working hard are worth it in order to gain something, as opposed to being inherently valuable and worth it for their own sake.

While you may not find this practice called Golden Time in secondary schools, it still exists in various forms and can be summarily described as ‘time off for good behaviour’. It won’t take you long to find examples in your own school whatever the setting. 

This practice has a number of built-in limitations:

1. It runs the risk of characterising work or good behaviour as a chore to be endured. The work becomes a vehicle to obtain the dividend of free time.

2. It can follow from this that quality can suffer as it may seem desirable to rush work in order to complete it. A student might assess what the bare minimum is that is required in any situation.

3. Some students must, by definition, lose out in Golden Time. If everyone always qualifies for Golden Time, then it ceases to exist. It simply becomes a longer break and the incentive, if it ever worked, evaporates.  

Quick fixes

Perhaps you operate a graduated approach to Golden Time?

Some children may earn three minutes, some may earn 20, some may earn none.

What happens after three minutes? If those children go back to doing some work, then study can become as attractive as a hefty dose of castor oil. They are sat in the classroom doing some work, while their peers are out there in the playground or on the computers.

“Well, that’s obviously part of the point!” you might say, as if the pain of missing out on Golden Time is the pressure the children need to improve their behaviour.

This is an inherent weakness in the system. For the children who have not earned Golden Time or whose time has finished earlier than their peers, the work they do must, by its very nature, be less than enjoyable. The teacher is forced to offer an alternative that is disagreeable, compounding the ‘work is a chore’ message.

Use it or lose it

Lastly, I’ve seen earned time removed as a way to ‘pay back’ for transgressions that occur later on: “You’ve just lost your Golden Time!”.

This is unwise as any time earned becomes conditional upon future conduct.

As with all rewards-based systems, Golden Time teaches children the price of good behaviour and hard work, but it certainly does not teach children anything about their value.

Jarlath O’Brien works in special education in London. Better Behaviour - a guide for teachers is out now, published by SAGE