School coming to home to view sick child - Normal?

I live in the US so don't know how things are done over there but if my kids' teacher ever showed up at the house bc my kid was out sick with chickenpox, I would laugh heartily as I shut the door on them. We don't really go for that sort of overreach here.

There has been a recent shift for us - nursery now have to call us if the child hasn’t arrived on an ‘in’ day by 11am. I took him to grandparents a day this week and got a call (I forgot to tell them). They told us there has been a shift in safeguarding policy hence the checks that all is ok. Appreciate that’s different to your situation, but it may have prompted some schools / nursery to take a more extreme approach. So sorry, super stressful.

I’ve said you are not being unreasonable but I honestly think it would be down to councils/where you live. Just an opinion though. I had fabulous care when I was pregnant but many others hardly had scans, midwife appointments etc. obviously due to funding. I would be pleased to know schools were checking up on absent children x

Our school does this, they're really hot on attendance and more schools are doing it. It's all about schools trying to improve their stats so please don't feel you've done anything wrong or are being watched.

Our secondary said it was 10 days before a check was made.
Our DS (autistic) was school refusing at the time (they couldn’t support his needs) and had been home for a while, even though the LA Specialist Support Services had been to do a session with us to help support his eating disorder, and the welfare officer from school and another teacher came to my house, and said they had to see him in person. Bearing in mind, home is his safe space, where he doesn’t have to ‘mask’ and feels safe.

When I said he was upstairs in bed sleeping, they insisted on me taking the male teacher upstairs into his room to check he was there! DS hid under the duvet and whimpered that he was there.

He never went back to the school and I wrote a letter of complaint.

That being said, there will be families where children are at risk and so it’s a tricky line. But for a child with usually good attendance and chicken pox, you’d have thought they would have waited a few more days until after the weekend to visit you.

Emma2023
Omg! You seem so calm that they were contacting social services about you even though clearly you’d done everything as you should have. I’d have been furious. My youngest is in year 10 and it is a very good school, we got very lucky - but with the current government overreach I’ll be pleased when it’s done.
I was shaking and didn’t sleep for days. I spoke to the head and he said they have an ‘x days and you have to contact* policy and ss had looked at everything we sent in and it was fine but the school was to keep them up to date if a similar number of days off continued. It is so scary!!!

Well done @CandlelightGlow for not spiraling (I know how easy it is to get stuck in that loop), you've done really well to keep things in perspective and be measured in communication with school.

Although it doesn't sound like this has a bearing on your recent visit, persistent lateness will flag if nothing else because you're on a fine line to affecting school attendance. Arriving late before the register closes doesn't affect school statutory attendance, but once the register has closed, your child's late arrival will. School will want to do all they can to get your children in school for registration. In a small primary, it doesn't take very many persistently late families (especially with more than one child each) to really affect school attendance figures.

@CandlelightGlow i think it's safeguarding, they need to check the child is OK.

There was a tragic case of a child who could have been saved if his school absence had been acted on a little sooner after the parent died unexpectedly at home. It seems that the school did try to check on the child. I remember reading it here: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/08/boy-4-died-alone-in-hackney-flat-two-weeks-after-his-mothers-death

I know it's off-putting to have an unexpected visit but I can see why it might be done

If there are concerns about safeguarding them yes it's understandable.

Three days off for chicken pox is nothing, my dcs were very ill with it. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't expect a teacher at my door

It's incredibly rude to go to someone's home uninvited and unannounced.

I think they are having to be hotter on safeguarding. My child has autism as part of ehcp funding has a tutor who sometimes phoned or checks in if she is I’ll.

Don’t believe a word of it?!!!! What on earth are you saying?

I certainly would never visit a house unless I was the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL). Or I knew the family very well and wanted to drop off a card from the class and wouldn't know - just post through. Seems very odd to me. Would be frowned on where I work. Definite overstepping.

Just contact the school and ask for a copy of the sick policy and teachers duties in this regards.
I'll ask my brother as he is a teacher but this sounds well dodge.

Safeguarding check that is and is normal

I had this in October with my 15 year old, when he didn't answer the door, the school called me, and had to talk to him by 12pm or they were involving social services!!

Is it not in the Keeping Children Safe in Education guidelines that a school should have eyes on a child who hasn’t been at school every 3 days? This is the policy at my school and the Attendance Team conduct the visits. They can even do it via Teams and video call the child.

Have any big child protection cases happened in your area? If so they may well have brought this in recently. In areas where a child is killed / harmed often everything will ramp up a gear.

This would happen in my school, any long absence would have a pastoral staff member doing house visits. It's just a welfare check.

Speaking as someone who works in a school and deals with attendance, this is unusual unless they have concerns already about child's attendance or the childs home life. They absolutely would do a home visit if they had concerns. Normally with chickenpox it is 5 - 7 days or more before spots have crusted over (when child is no longer infectious) so they should update registers accordingly. I would defo query this! It seems a tad too soon to be doing a home visit for this. But maybe ask about the other and why they felt the need to visit.

We do home visits regularly at our school. Learning mentors go out.

Hi,
I worked in schools before having children (both secondary and primary) and it was one of my jobs to do this very thing. We had low school attendance and the head was very keen to change that.
I wouldn’t take it personally.
I hope your son feels better soon ☺️

Likely a school tackling low attendance who adopted this new approach to deal with persistent low attendance from other families. They obviously have to be consistent and after 4 days every family gets a visit. Day 4 also is a good indicator of a holiday...I worked at a school where two families took holidays and this effected the attendance data enough for the school to drop from Outstanding to Good.

Dont let it worry you if attendance has never been a concern before. It is designed to protect a handful of other children whose families are regularly keeping them off school, allowing them to fall behind and negatively effecting the schools inspection rating. Attendance is a huge issue which schools are held entirely responsible for improving. People often get upset with schools for dealing insensitivity with time off school but should really take their issues up with ofsted who have created this situation.

Sorry the teacher made you feel rubbish but I wouldn't give it another thought. If they have an issue with your child's attendance you will know about it!

Unfortunately it is becoming more and more common. Domestic violence is on the increase sadly. Children are kept off "ill" to hide the injuries. It will have nothing to do with you @CandlelightGlow and everything to do with ticking a box. In the majority of cases, we find nothing but if it means we can stop just 1 child being abused, then it is worth it.

So in that case parents can do whatever vile things they want to them? Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, and if a school adopting this policy identifies and saves just one child from a life of abuse/death it will be worth it.
Something has to change, every week there’s a new case reported and the response is always “why didn’t someone stop them?” Well it appears the answer is because it would be too inconvenient or offensive, or not their business.