Given detention for lateness on tube strike day

So everyone else, staff and other pupils got themselves there in time but your child didn't. Strikes are pre planned and notice is given

4 miles in a car across London on a strike day? I’m surprised you got into work at all!

I Had a car and live 4 miles from the school. I left and hour earlier and was late every single day this week.

And also as a very seasoned Londoner, what I meant by alternative route, and you’ll know this if you’re a Londoner….

say you need to get bus 238 from x stop to y stop due to the strike

however 238 is rammed

so back up option because the next 238 is likely to be rammed given the crowds surrounding the bus stop…. Walk 12 mins to a different route stop and get the 124 which will drop you 5 mins further away from school but is a less rammed route

and as a fellow Londoner.., you’ll know that often is the case

My point was

12 year old girl
Neuro Diverse
Suffers from anxiety
Cant walk far due to a painful knee

Id have at least asked my manager if I could come in late or make up the hours so I could accompany my young daughter across London on a strike day.

Did you at least ask?

Where will you be sending them if this was your only option and you don’t get in to the school you tried for your eldest?

School don’t grow on trees!

Ridiculous. I hope you complain. Honestly when schools behave like this it undermines the parent-school relationship and makes it harder to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Bizarre

I wouldn't let my 11 year old cycle around London at any time, let alone when the roads are extra chaotic.

So you know the OP's address and exactly which transport options are open to her? Either way, it makes no difference here - there may have been ten different bus routes available and still no guarantees that a bus would stop within a reasonable time frame at any of them on a tube strike day!

Or are you thinking of some hitherto unknown to me form of transport?

Tube, nope. On strike.
Bus. Not straightforward as confirmed by many other posters.
Cycle. Unsafe.
On foot. Not an option physically in this case.
Car/taxi/Uber. Impossible due to gridlock.

Does London have some thriving air taxi system I'm unaware of? Should OP have hoiked her daughter up on her broomstick with her? What other modes of transport would have been open to them? Come on...

Not to mention Owl Post to.let the school know your child has left early...

There's a lot of tiktok skits about Londoners getting to work during the strike.
My favourite was the guy who whistled for an eagle to fly him to work.
I mean everyone has an eagle on standby don't they 🤔

Don’t be silly… that’s what portals are for! 😂😂

Even if this is the school ethos they don’t get ti ignore the Disability Discrimination Act. This is not on you this is on the school have a legal obligation to make reasonable accommodations to ensure equitable access.

This is bollocks, businesses in London are aware and lenient with staff being unavoidably late on strike days.

A manager who docked your pay (equivalent to detention I suppose) for being late on a strike day would be rightly hated and I for one would be looking for a new job in those circumstances.

Children don't have that luxury and schools should stop making children's mandatory time at school miserably with this sort of pettiness.

Some people do this. It makes me wince every time I see one of those flimsy little trailers that people transport their kids in cut in front of a double-decker bus.

Yes, we also have various road closures for road works, adding to the pressure. One desperate person at a bus stop yesterday afternoon told me that there was a tree down on an Overground track... no chance of any trains moving in his direction until 6pm at the earliest.

I thought there were special child welfare rules for tube strikes which made it ok to dump your small children on the pavement in the rain outside school at 6am with instructions to wait until the school gates open? While you start trudging the ten miles into the office? After all, mustn't let the side down.

Though it turns out from some of the posts on this thread that if you're a surgeon, you don't even need to pick your kids up from school if getting into work might be a hassle the next day. Just book a comfy hotel and tell the school to keep them overnight 😂.

Alternatively the school could consider whether a punishment was reasonable and proportionate, given the circumstances.

Obviously OP should have given her a piggy back, left her at the school gates at 4am in time to get the younger children to their school, before using the phone lines as a tight rope to cartwheel to work.

It's what any reasonable parent would do...

The OP said she had primary age children too that I assume she would be getting them to their school.
Also then she would be late for work....which apparently is the ultimate no no going by this thread 🙄

Have you ever cycled in central London on a strike day?

One could cycle with their kids