The Rewards Economy
Behaviour points as a currency, end to end — what a point buys and who priced it, the badges awarded with no human in the loop, the ledger of every award and who made it, a pupil’s balance and the counter where it is spent, and the page that shows whether the points are being handed out evenly.
A reward scheme is a currency, and most schools never price theirs
Every school has tried house points. Most schemes die the same way, and none of the reasons are pastoral. Nobody decided what a point is worth, so there is nothing to save for. Thirty adults issue them to thirty different standards, so a point from one teacher is not a point from another. The prize cupboard is opened twice in September and never again. And no one ever looks at who is doing the awarding — which is how a scheme designed to encourage the quiet children ends up rewarding the loud ones. This walkthrough follows the currency instead of the sentiment: pricing it, minting it, putting it into a pupil’s hands, honouring it at a counter, and auditing it. Every screen is the real application.
On this page
What a point is actually worth
Start at the end, because this is the decision every failed scheme skipped. A point that buys nothing is not a currency, it is a compliment with a number on it — and pupils work that out faster than the adults do.
The reward catalogue
What points can be exchanged for, with the price of each in points and the stock behind it. Deliberately unromantic things — a homework pass, a tuck-shop voucher, the front seat on the next trip — because the rewards that work in a school are the ones that cost it almost nothing and are visibly scarce.
Setting a price
The whole decision, in one small form: a name, a cost in points, and how many there are. It is worth showing because pricing is the part schools get wrong in both directions — a reward nobody can ever afford is as dead as one everybody can, and the only way to find the level is to be able to change it in ten seconds and watch what happens.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “What a point is actually worth” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
And what points earn without anybody deciding
Rewards are spent. Badges are not — they are what a total is worth on its own, and their whole value is that no adult grants them. A badge a teacher can give to a favourite is not a badge; it is a favour with an icon. So the school sets the line and the platform holds it.
The badge catalogue
Bronze, Silver, Gold and a Platinum crest, each with the points threshold that earns it. The threshold lives ON the badge, which is the whole design: crossing it grants the badge, once, at the moment the point that crossed it is awarded — with no rule to configure and no adult in the loop.
The rules that grant them
Badges grant themselves. Threshold rules are for everything ELSE a total should set off: a certificate for the head to sign, a message home, a word with the form tutor, a detention. They are the reason the same ladder that congratulates a pupil at 25 points is the one that raises a concern at minus fifteen.
Writing one
A points type, a threshold and an action. The form is small because the rule is small — and the smallness is the argument: a school should be able to say “at minus fifteen, tell the form tutor” without a meeting, a consultant or a support ticket.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “And what points earn without anybody deciding” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Putting the currency into circulation
Points are minted by adults, one at a time, all day. Teachers do that from their own workspaces over their own pupils — that is the Behaviour & Discipline walkthrough. What the office needs is different: the ability to award across the whole school at once, and a ledger of every point anybody has ever issued.
Awarding across the school
The office’s own quick-award: search any pupil in the school, open their panel and award — or select a group and award to all of them at once, which is what a head of year does after an assembly rather than typing thirty names.
The ledger
Every award and every deduction in the school, with the pupil, the category, the value, the person who made it and the date. It is a ledger rather than a feed, and the difference is the last column: an award can be revoked, and revoking it leaves the row in place, marked, rather than removing the evidence that it happened.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “Putting the currency into circulation” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
What the pupil actually holds
Everything so far is administration. This is the only phase that decides whether the scheme works, because a currency exists in the mind of the person holding it — and a pupil who cannot see their balance, what it buys or how close the next badge is has not got a currency, they have got a rumour.
The badge wall
What this pupil has earned, and — the part that makes it motivating rather than smug — how many there are in the school’s collection still to earn. Chidi has the Bronze and the Silver; the row above says so, and says what remains.
And where they stand
The school board, with this pupil’s own position and net points called out above it. Leaderboards are the most contested part of any reward scheme and this one is shown honestly: it is a ranking, it is visible to every pupil, and a school that does not want that should not switch it on.
Spending it
The catalogue as the pupil sees it — the same five rewards the office priced, with their balance, what they can afford right now, and what is out of stock. Below it, what they have already spent points on and what state each request is in.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “What the pupil actually holds” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
The counter
A currency is only as good as the counter that honours it. This is the queue, and the single most important thing about it is that it is a queue — a list somebody clears, on a page they can be asked about, rather than a cupboard somebody remembers.
The redemption queue
Every request, with the reward, the pupil, the points it cost and where it has got to. The queue carries all five outcomes, including the two nobody demonstrates: a rejection, and a cancellation. A school that cannot say no has not got a reward scheme, it has got a vending machine.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “The counter” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Is it working — and is it fair?
The last question, and the one a school has to ask about its own adults rather than its children. Every figure so far has been grouped by pupil. Group the same events by the person who awarded them instead, and a different picture appears.
Who is doing the awarding
The same ledger, grouped by adult. One member of staff here has issued more than a third of the positive points in the building; two have issued barely a handful; and one is the only adult in the school whose awards come out net negative. None of that is visible from a leaderboard, and all of it decides what a point is worth — because a currency issued to thirty different standards is thirty currencies.
And whether the whole thing is moving
The behaviour analytics surface: the trend of positive against negative over the term, the categories doing the work, and the year groups that are drifting. It answers the question a governing body asks about a rewards scheme, which is never “how many points” but “has anything changed”.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “Is it working — and is it fair?” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
And at home
A reward nobody at home hears about is a reward that only happened at school, and the child knows it. The guardian sees the same two screens their child does — not a summary email, and not a monthly report, but the record itself.
The badges, from home
What their child has earned and when. It is the same wall the pupil sees, read through the guardian’s own account and scoped to the ward they selected — a guardian with three children switches between three walls and can reach nobody else’s.
And what the points are for
The catalogue, the balance and the redemptions, from the family’s side. It exists so a parent asked “why has he still not got the trip seat” can answer it themselves — and so the conversation at home is about the eighty points rather than about whether the school is keeping its promises.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “And at home” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Run your whole school on one connected platform
Start with the base package, switch on the modules you need, and give every parent, student and staff member a single place to log in.