School not letting my child from the school

This thread has reminded me of a rule my daughter's youth group recently put in.

I was told she would have to be collected at the door by me and was not permitted leave alone. This was because of safeguarding the youth.

My daughter was 17. The car was parked in the venue's car park.

The way some of you are responding to this thread, I should not have challenged that ridiculousness, as in your opinion, the safeguarding lead at the youth group had their training and exceptions shouldn't be made for the blanket safeguarding policy.

"If there is no negligence and no suspicion of negligence they can't keep the child there against their parents wishes because thats also not legally ok"

The school has a duty of care under the law to safeguard children. Their policy on pupil being collected incorporates this and would have been drafted in consultation with the dsl etc and signed off by the governors. So they absolutely do have grounds to " detain" a child until they can be collected safely.

Whilst on school grounds s and at after school clubs the child is cared for by DBs staff and is in no danger. But the school does not have to immediately refer to social services if a child is kept at school if a parent is running late as these referral require certain thresholds to be passed. So if the parent does not collect safely after a certain time or a pattern of incidents are built up then a referral will follow.

Ivery much doubt the law is being broken here despite the hysterical posters adamant it is. OP contacted the police who weren't interested either.

I'm don't really see the logical connection between your second and third paragraphs. If the school had no previous concerns but a parent didn't turn up on time, then keeping the child safely in school for one or two hours without hitting the social services panic button doesn't seem unreasonably lax. But that's no reason to abandon their own apparent policy by sending the child home alone.

Another one of these?? What an over reach from the school....absolutely ridiculous. School policy?

1. They are creating unnecessary work for themselves
2. This is a parent decision.

What is going on in England??? This is not safeguarding....I'd be on to the LA about this.

I swear a school could be requiring children to do lessons standing on their heads and some parents on MN would say, well you knew the rules so if you don't like it you'll need to find a different school.

I think you have misread my post. There isn’t a law to say the children have to be collected by an adult from a certain age. I wasn’t talking about them breaking the law by withholding a child back. I’ve also RTFT

If we have written permission for the child to go home alone then they leave the school at 3pm with no involvement from me. No one has ever tried to give permission for a child in a year group lower than Y5 to go home alone so it’s not an issue I’ve ever dealt with.

Wearing a tie might be a rule.

Walking home is a life skill that should be encouraged and developed as part of independence building.

A school can't bill parents for a failure to wear a tie.

Better worded than what I said. But they've overstepped.

A failure to share information with the relevant body is a safeguarding failure. A lot of the worst tradgies come out of failures to share safeguarding concerns between agencies.

Either its a safeguarding matter or its not. The school don't get to decide the severity of that because its not their job to make that judgment call.

But it absoluetely SHOULD be part of this and should trigger a reasonable complaint.

If they are safeguarding they should report that the parents were being negligent. If they weren't reporting they are failing in their legal responsibilities to report suspected negligence to the relevant body responsible. They are overstepping their own remit and not referring when they should.

If there is no negligence and no suspicion of negligence they can't keep the child there against their parents wishes because thats also not legally ok. And they certainly can not try and charge the parents for this...

Of course schools make case by case assessments. If school believes a child isn't safe to walk home alone, no matter how old they are, they have a procedure to make a safeguarding referral.

By not making such a referral, the school have taken safeguarding policy into their own hands. They've not shared their concerns with other services.

@bignosebignose Of course. It is not the law of the land that you learn recorder or wear a blue tie. But it is not against the law for the school to have these rules in school time and on school premises. But it is not the law that the school can enforce guitars and blue ties outside their premises and/or outside school time. That is the difference.

I mean, I heard of a school that emailed parents to inform them that pupils will be punished for calling other people Sigma, and I've not spotted any pertinent legislation on that.

Incidentally aren't lots of school policies not actually the law of the land?

Great, and I expect that the fee for yesterday will be waived in the end when there's been enough jumping up and down done about it. I don't think that's the key issue though - it appears that nobody collected the child, so the school kept them at school pending collection. From here on, the parents now have the option of ASC or collection, or social services will be called.

@ChampagneLassie It's clearly a legal matter if their policy breaks the law.
School doesn't need to make a case by case assessment. Just change the rules to Yr 4 and up, or similar.

Apologies, if I'm missing something but why can't she just walk out?

I think you’re delusional in thinking this is a legal matter. It’s clearly their policy, designed to safeguard children, no state schools don’t have resources to make case by case assessments. If DH is on a call and your daughter doesn’t arrive when will he realise? 300m is still plenty distance for something to happen. I live in a very nice area, and a neighbours 10 yr old was almost snatched by some men in a car. She was certainly nearer than 300m from home.

They still can't charge for it though if its a safeguarding issue.

Its unenforcable and could be regarded as harassment or bullying if they continue to persue it.

Agree.

The irony is that their policy does override all safeguarding principles.

They've responded to a concern by inventing a system of compulsory after school attendance.

Is their concern genuine? Because if so why aren't they applying the principles of joined up thinking that we all learn about. (Within the school system)

As far as we know they have done it once, and then said they will call social services the next time the child is left uncollected. It's not exactly an abduction.

This makes the point well.

The school, because they are demanding money as part of this, have put themselves in a particularly difficult position.

They can't say its safeguarding if they haven't reported it to SS and are demanding money.

If they are demanding money then their priority isn't safeguarding its their bank balance.

In demanding money they've made it a conflict of interest which isn't centring the well being of the child. If they have concerns they should flag them not try to enforce a resolution at cost to the OP in this manner.

They don't want to report it to social services because they know damn well that SS will say they are in the wrong and there isn't a risk. Thus blowing a big fat hole in their policy as being unworkable.

A policy is just a decision to do something one way, not another. It is not the law, and it cannot possibly override the law.

They couldn't have done that - the kids had to be collected from the playground. Of course it's borderline, our school didn't allow it and while that's not an uncommon policy, neither is it a universal one, because it's a borderline age.

They are demanding money for services not wanted or requested and then holding a child saying they won't release her.

There's a massive conflict of interest here.

This is 'problematic'.