Noone picked up my daughter and school didn't ring.

Just on a tangent...I. so curious to know how much the afterschool charged you, from the thread it feels like a substantial amount.
I'm not in the UK, but where I am it would be €10 for a random last minute drop in.

What does the school policy say about late collection?

In my experience it is unusual for a school to just not ring. My son's school rang me when I was just 10 minutes late the other day, and gave us a talking to :/

Now you are just being silly! The child wasn’t ‘thrown’ anywhere. The school noticed the child wasn’t picked up and she was moved into appropriate child care.

The issue was the parents and guardian’s messed up. That is usually the issue. The number one priority for the school cannot be calling parents every day when they are a bit late for pick up. do you know how many flaky parents there are out there?

it is likely the teachers and office staff were handling a million other things and a perfectly safe and happy child is unlikely to be top of their list.

The school should be complaining about you not the other way around. This is neglect.

I would email the ASC and thank them for taking your DD when she wasn't booked in. Apologise that your planned pick up let you down. Then ask about their normal procedure in this situation and if they can call you (although you don't expect this to happen again). I imagine staff are busy looking after the children and will prioritise that before working through a contact list. There may be some families who regularly forget to prebook.

Where you typed 'complain' was that a typo for 'hand in flowers and biscuits for the lovely caring staff who kept DD safe'?

This, schools really can’t do anything right anymore can they

I disagree with many on here, if a child is uncollected from school I would think they would attempt to find out what the issue is rather than just throw them in to after school and see what happens.

My kids primary has a policy of keeping in the after school club on the basis that sometimes parents get held up. Traffic and so on. But if no show by end of that or close to it. They would call parents and if they cant get hold of anyone they then call social services.

The club finished at 4 so really it was just giving parents a little extra time . And most of the time when going to be late parents do phone the school.

You have a sister problem not a school safely put your child in after school club, problem.

Though I do think they should have rung ultimately they'd have needed to put your dc in the club until you got there anyway - assuming you wouldn't have been a minute or two away.

YABVU!

OP, your complaint is basically that you did not receive a phone call in the first 40-45 minutes after the school day ended.

Although being phoned might have been at the top of your list of priorities, I would like you to reflect on where it was – and should have been – in the school's list of priorities.

If the school day ends at 3.20pm, no-one from the school is realistically going to be on the phone at 3.25pm calling up parents. For lots of reasons - volume of activity in the collection zone, chats at the school gate, parents experiencing short delays in getting to the school – I can imagine a good 15-20 minutes before it's clear which kids have been left behind.

Crucially, the most important thing was done – your daughter was taken to ASC where she was safe and looked after.

Of course the school was going to phone you if you neither phoned them nor turned up, but once again, perhaps there were other, more important, tasks that they needed to attend to?

I think the reason why you're getting criticised for entitlement is because teachers are tired of nothing ever being good enough. The school had a plan in the event that you didn't collect your daughter, and yet it wasn't executed well enough because you didn't receive a call sufficiently quickly. Can you see how that might imply that you think that you and your child are more important that everything and everyone else? How do teachers ever 'win' if all parents take that approach?

This is very entitled. You can’t expect the school to run around after you. Why should they run around ringing to see what’s happened? They can keep the child safe until closing and then they would ring if no-one arrived. Your poor planning is not their responsibility. Doesn’t matter it was your sister who didn’t turn up. The child is your responsibility. It’s your sister you should be complaining to.

As it seems like it was only 40mins since end of school and you ringing, I would imagine your child was sat waiting to be collected until the all the kids had gone (maybe 15/20mins) then the office notified/child taken to wraparound. So really, likely only a 20min window to call you and I wonder if the office staff might still have been busy dealing with parents etc. Certainly at our primary school, the reception hatch has a queue as long as your arm at the end of the day. Your child was safe in wraparound and I expect they would have called to find out where you were when they could. I also think they might have been expecting a call from the collecting person to say they were stuck in traffic etc (rather than your sister having forgotten hence no call).

I totally get that it's annoying they hadn't rung you, especially if you could have collected and saved the wraparound fee. In an ideal world, with plenty of staff, it would have been great if they could have rung you straight away.

Lucky mum local and about

was your mum surprised that sister aka her daughter didn’t pick up ?

but yes do check to see what their procedure is for non collection and when they would call you if you hadn’t turned up

guessing dd excited aunty picking up and told teacher this

What works for us when it’s going to be different to normal in terms of pick up is to check the night before. Was your sister ok the night before when you checked and confirmed?

I wouldn’t complain in this instance as I’d just be relieved my child was safe, but I’d wonder about what would happen if the club was over capacity?

We have just returned to the UK from abroad and DH is teaching here again for the first time in a decade. After five weeks he already feels ready to throw in the towel. He loathes what schools here have become, and a large part of it is parents turning every minor incident or disgruntlement from a child into a complaint. He has never experienced this level of unreasonable expectations before. We are moving back to our home abroad next summer.

Quibbling that they’ve charged you for looking after your child is pretty ridiculous OP. You should be thanking them. Jeez 🙄

You should be directing your ire at your feckless sister, not school who kept her safe.

I would definitely mention it to the school, without complaining, as I’d expect a phone call if this happened. I would also thank them for keeping her safe.

I was responding specifically to a poster saying school could have reported OP for abandonment. No they couldn't because they hadn't yet gone through the basics of calling the contacts. Which is exactly what OP was hoping they should have done so...

I’m surprised that school didn’t try and ring you. But, I certainly wouldn’t complain to them. Does it happen often enough that school know to put her in after school club?

Definitely a query as to why there was no phone call and give the school an opportunity to respond. Maybe they tried and didn’t get through. Probably unlikely, but not impossible.

The point about whether the school knew the aunt should be collecting is a good one. If the child was asked who was collecting her and told them her aunt, they wouldn’t have the contact number for her anyway, because she’s not on the emergency contact list. You might expect them to try the others perhaps.

It’s worth a mention to the school and it’s worth reminding children when arrangements are different. It’s a lesson learned and a chance to tighten up procedures perhaps.