School harassing us over attendance...

@Allthatwegotisthispalebluedot spot the teacher perhaps?

Calling the OP hysterical in response to this giant infringement is classic gaslighting 101. Nice try.

What strikes me about this thread is how very different all schools are in dealing with absence! Surely there is some government guidelines that all schools should follow? Excuse my ignorance if schools can decide themselves! Some seem not bothered and some seem over the top. A happy medium is needed.

I think I would want everything out in the open and some clarity from them.
I would want a meeting with the head and a third person to take notes.
Questions....

Why was I phoned daily while my DD is in hospital for the foreseeable?
(Maybe it's their process of documenting that feel down, maybe it was different staff, maybe it's just what they do, maybe the head doesn't quite have a handle on how other staff are interpreting their policies).

I feel like this level of contact is unusual, is it? do you have deeper concerns that I can address?

The level of contact while DD was in hospital felt like you didn't believe me. Was that the case? At times I was speaking to medical professionals when you phoned and this added to an already stressful situation. What could have been done differently?

When she started here, I felt like we and the school were a team. I would like to get back to that position. What can we all do to help with that.

I was once in a meeting with a health professional. I caught myself feeling on the back foot and felt like I was defending something but wasn't sure what. I realised that this person was coming from a place where he had made a lot of assumptions before we even started talking. Once I'd taken a deep breath I was able to say that what I wasn't looking to do was control any outcome what I was looking for was reassurance and to understand more of what was going on. Plus any information about how we could help would be very welcome.
Just naming the problem changed the tone of the rest of the meeting. I'm still not terribly impressed with that professional but I did at least manage to ask some questions and leave with a clearer picture of his decision making. I'm guessing that he may have left with a slightly changed perception of us too than his preformed one.

If there is nothing to see then you needn't worry. Honestly SS will not be interested.

My DD was in hospital in February for almost a week. I emailed the school each day/or during the night to say we were still in the hospital and she would be off school that day. On the Thursday evening we were sent home so I emailed to say she had been sent home but advised to remain off on the Friday and therefore would not be in

School policy is to contact EVERY day so we did.

Maybe if your school have similar rules following them would help.

I have only come on to say three things :

1. They wouldn't have contacted your GP. They register a safeguarding concern with social services, and that record can be accessed by your GP.

1. Their 'safeguarding visits' are because schools have a duty to ensure that a child is safe, and if they haven't seen them for 10 days this often triggers the need for a visit.

1. This level of scrutiny for genuine illness is unusual. I wonder if they have other concerns. Either way, they are obligated to report if they are worried. You might not understand why they are, but they are. So reporting is the right thing to do. It is better to be over-zealous about safeguarding than too relaxed and miss something.

Yeah she'd be deregged from that school and moved. That's disgusting.

I'd also speak to the LADO for the area about your rights being infringed by them making false claims against you, harassment and for the calls to the GP and social services. Contact Education Welfare too and register a complaint with them and the school governors and authority.

So you would be perfectly calm and only thinking of communicating with the school when your child is very ill?

Meanwhile genuine safeguarding issues are harder for staff to deal with so the focus on situations like sick children who are missing due to health and where parents can't snap their fingers and make the health problems disappear.
I would much prefer a healthy child attending school regularly than see them sick frequently with hospital interventions they have had.

One of mine spent time in hospital as a young child @1993baby. When they were there, my entire focus was on them (DH looked after the older ones) and if the school had been phoning every day, I would have blocked them. They would have been welcome to call round the house, though the child wouldn't have been there, obviously! No doubt DH would have told them, probably quite abruptly, that we had informed school child was in hospital.

When one of my DCs is in hospital, I couldn't give a flying fuck about a school's attendance policies quite frankly. Nor would speaking to them daily be at the forefront of my mind.

Virii?

Also it spreads the virus's around. Surely after COVID you would think there would be more sense.

Several people have explained to you how attendance is linked to safeguarding. I am not sure how it can be made any clearer to you.

You can drop the hysteria about being a ‘genuine mother’ as well. It is tiresome.

The thing is they can't be putting all this energy into every child with low attendance, it sounds like they have some other concerns about her. Have you asked them outright? You cna do a data request.

In the UK it costs £75 for each vaccine. So the course is £150 per child.

It's not part of the vaccine program.

Another safeguarding red flag is parents absolutely losing the plot when challenged. Everyone knows that safeguarding children is made up of fragmented information and putting puzzle pieces together. You will be making this a thousand times worse for yourself by overreacting.

Just communicate with the school calmly.

I’d write a very clear timeline of each event, including the information about the ear infection and send it along with a complaint to the governors.

I’d make it very clear that whilst you understand that this is policy, there is benefit in applying this sensibly and in a way which doesn’t make things worse.

I can't believe how intense they're being when you have told them constantly what's going on, and her only being 4. How stressful having all that additional pressure when you're already stressed that your child is sick.
There is no compassion here at all

The hospitalisation was in Reception last academic year when she was 4. This Academic year, where she's been absent for around 50% of the term so far with two illnesses, she'll be 5.

Just to add. On top of harassment to sent sick child to school. One day despite knowing my child wasn't well enough, the ongoing pressure from school was making me question my sanity. I sent child in with a promise from the head that they would call if any concerns. I sat by the phone all day expecting a call. When I picked child up her class teacher told me child has been so ill I am really concerned about them. (This was the start of an illness that left her under hospital medical care for months I will always wonder if I had trusted my gut if she would of not got so severely ill)
I was devastated that my child had been kept in school so unwell, that I had sent her and that know one had contacted me.
I lost all trust with school.

The system is broken. If my ideas won't work then as a government they need to find something that will.

I remember being really ill with chicken pox in my teens and off school for ages.

I think having to ring every day is ridiculous

I think you should pull her out of this school and find one staffed by rational adults who can be trusted to look after children.

What they are doing shows such a lack of judgment and common sense, that it calls that into question.