School refused to release my child until after parents’ meeting – is this allowed?

It’s a way of ensuring parents attend these meetings. It sets the tone for the year. You can’t meet your child’s teacher via a email. The fact that you say it’s not urgent and could be sent by email is exactly why they did it. The parent school partnership is important. Too many parents don’t understand this.

As far as I'm aware they can only hold a child if on safeguarding issues or have been instructed to by social services etc.

If you're just trying to understand your rights, googling it and concluding that the school asking you to stay where you hadn't explained you felt unwell is a breach of safeguarding is a ridiculous degree of overkill.

But wouldn’t you just insist on your children being excused from the meeting? I find it really hard to imagine the OP was firm (in the way I would’ve been) and they still refused to hand the child over.

although maybe they were being racist and found the foreigner easier to ignore, I have to confess I’ve seen this happen at my DC primary schools.

Google suggests this could be a breach of parental rights, safeguarding and even family life rights

Google is not always your friend. Have a sense of proportion! Annoying and perhaps badly handled by the school but not worthy of much more than a passive aggressive message to the HT if you're that put out.

I would not be happy.

It might 'only' be 20 minutes, but if it were me, I would have another child to go and pick up from school 6 miles away, then get home, get a third child sorted and dropped off at football training 45 minutes later. A 20 min meeting - which never lasts 20 mins because there's always someone asking questions- would make us late for all of this. I'd also have another child with me for the meeting who'd not want to sit still and quiet for another 20 minutes after her school day.

In my 14 years of parenting and many years of primary school teaching, I have never heard of a school doing this. Meetings, yes, but not mandatory.

The school day has finished, you have parental responsibility, so effectively holding your child hostage - absolutely not.

However, I do struggle to believe that the first you heard of it was at 10.30am on the day. I imagine it has been in newsletter/school app etc.

This is bonkers and I can't imagine anyone here has actually experienced this.

All I can think is that the meeting had been scheduled for A Long Time and you'd missed the memo and then mistook what happened afterwards.

Plenty of people have places to be, children aren't just "held hostage" on a whim.

Why do people keep talking about legal rights? How is is relevant, are you going to call the police? Can’t you get through difficult situations (welll, marginally difficult) without needing some legal framework to support you?

It is absolutely ridiculous that schools get to be utterly unorganised, rude and inconsiderate, and yet complain and YOU are the one seen to be the problem. They should be trying to build a relationship with parents, they could do with remembering that parents are not additional members of staff ready and waiting for instructions. I really do not see how anyone can defend the school staff in this situation.

OP, Mumsnet is not the place to ask about it. I find many Brits to be generally spineless/doormat-y re schools. They cower before teachers, pander to all the ridiculous rules, let school get away with murder and all this for 'not making a fuss', not being 'that parent' (what parent? With a spine?), keeping 'good relationship with school' (letting them do whatever the fuck they want).

What would you do in your home country? In mine, this situation wouldn't even arise. And not only because kids and not babied to death and parents are the ones who decide when their kid is able to walk alone to/from school and NOT the school.

If some teacher decided to hold kids for the fun of it, because of some bullshit dreamt up meeting, there'd be hell to pay. There would certainly be a scandal, parents would make sure of it.

So next time don't be meek, just march in and collect your child(ren). Don't let them take the piss, you're the parent, not them. And fuck the 'relationship with school', who actually cares? What they're going to do? Be 'frosty' with you? Ooooooh nooooo, quacking in me boots..

No they shouldn't have done that, they should've realised some kids might have had clubs, appointments, dentists etc or parents might have had other children to collect or commitments themselves. Normally if there's anything similar at our school (an activity that goes on later etc) someone (a ta or teacher) will be on the door and you just ask for xyz child and they'll fetch them for you. Ours is a small school though so they do know every parent and also it wouldn't be that many people in a rush. Ultimately it's not prison is it, whilst we legally have to ensure kids get an education, we do still have parental rights. I'd just pop an email over saying you felt it was strange and highly inconvenient that individual children couldn't be excused because you had a prior commitment and couldn't attend the meeting, so next time could they ensure that there will be a system to release children at the normal time please. I wouldn't get into rights/allowed, just explain to them why it was an issue for some parents.

So by that logic parents who are working are uninterested in their children because they wouldn’t be able to attend a 3:15 meeting either? All of this could easily have been communicated via an email

They have no right to keep your child beyond school hours!! I’d be very annoyed. I often have to go to appointments or pick up my other child.

I’d have been pissed off too OP. I often have things to get to after pick up, and as I don’t drive I rely on the buses. Being her back for 20 minutes would mean missing our bus.

offering to look after the children so parents can attend a meeting = helpful. Refusing to release them at the usual time is not!

How ridiculous. This sort of thing really annoys me about primary schools. They are so outdated. What about the parents who were working and who couldn’t make a 3:15 meeting? They have no legal right whatsoever to not ‘release’ any child from school.

Given I work from home and sometimes have to rush home for a work task (that's set to begin at a certain time) I would have had to come home and log on and potentially have go back to get them later if that were the case. Or I'd be risking my income.

Is it normal for schools to call meetings at under a day's notice which could cause the parent who doesn't get home when they expect to to lose their WFH job?

I have no access to my phone between 6am and 2:30pm so wouldn’t have seen that email at all due to my hour commute. I would have been absolutely furious.

Really surprised at all those telling OP to suck it up. I work at a school and can't imagine the chaos this would cause. Parents/carers/childminders have other commitments and can't always just change things with less than 24 hours notice. I do think the school were wrong in this instance. I wouldn't necessarily charge in talking about legalities/breaches of rights but it would definitely lead to quite a few angry emails to HT and governors if we pulled this!

It was unfortunate that you were unwell, but really you should be showing your child that you are interested in the school they are attending and not dismiss it as being something they could have emailed you!

Some strange answers on here.

No, of course it isn't allowed.
I speak as a teacher and parent.
If it was exactly as the OP described, and the e-mail sent that morning was the first notification, many parents wouldn't even have read it by the end of the school day.
Even those who had, couldn't just change their arrangements at the last minute if at all.
If what the OP has reported is factual, then the school were being ridiculous.

However
I do agree with this
Look, it’s certainly irritating, and I’d have given them a piece of my mind, but calling it a ‘breach of my rights’ is a bit fucking dramatic and won’t get you anywhere. Blowing things out of proportion just makes you look silly and self-important.

Not everyone bothers to read emails. Letters can get lost. Some parents behave like absolute twats to school staff.

I have huge sympathy for the OPs language skills and difficulty understanding school culture in a different country but tbh, I’m not sure the “rights including right to family life” translates as anything more casual in other countries, does it?!

Exactly. All the posters commenting about it’s no issue don’t have very good imaginations if they can’t see how this would be really problematic for lots of parents.

As a head myself, I would email and ask the legal basis on which they made the decision to withhold your child from you.