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

I would stop acknowledging her birthday or her kids, if they make no effort with yours.

And just token presents for Christmas.

It does sound like they thought she was booked in tho if you have an app to book only , then that wouldn’t make sense

in the end she was safe and cared for and maybe they would have rang you at 4

equally if they had called you /dh - how easy is it for dh to drop everything and get her asap as you said she could have been picked up at 4 and saved you money

I totally understand why you’re upset, OP.

She has probably done this so you never ask her again.

I would stop making any effort with her.

Does she send your kids birthday and Christmas presents?

I'd be buying the school staff cakes and a box of chocolates for looking after your daughter when your other plans had fallen through.

Complain to your sister and thank the school profusely despite the charge!

Did you reminder your sister at lunchtime? if not chalk if it down to experience and complain to no one!!

I imagine they were giving you the benefit of the doubt. If child normally gets picked reliably they might have thought there’d been some emergency. There was space in after school club and she’s used to going. Maybe they were giving you an hour and thought they were helping you. I’m sure they would have started chasing you at some point.

If you want to call I would phrase it as confirming the procedure should this happen again.

No, read the post. She wants to complain that the school did NOT attempt to contact her when nobody turned up to pick up the kid.

I would be overjoyed and relieved that they had her safely . Turn your anger towards your sister .

Stop scapegoating the school, they kept your child safe.

Never do your sister a favour again and don’t invite her.

If I was you I'd just be grateful there is an after school club and your DC was safe. There wasn't an after school club at my DCs school and they had a policy about reporting uncollected children to social care after a certain amount of time.
Of course you should pay for the place. They provided childcare for you.

YANBU - they should I have called you to inform you that your child had not been collected. I would email the school about this aspect only. You ought to know where your child is. The school knew, you didn’t. They should have communicated that to you by generic text message at least… “your child was not picked up by <insert time> and therefore has been placed in the after school club. Please contact X person on Y telephone number to confirm you have received this message and to confirm who will be collecting your child.”

YABU - …to be complaining about a charge when your unreliable choice of childcare fell through and they made sure your child was looked after in a safe space. Your sister should be paying this as a bare minimum.

I'm an ex-teacher and completely agree with this. I would be HIGHLY surprised if they weren't planning to call you. The end of the school day is extremely busy and it had only been half an hour after the official end of pick up time when you called them.

It was always standard procedure in any school I worked in to call the parents to check in these sorts of scenarios. You need to find out if it's a mistake, or there has been an emergency and not leave it until much later when staff at after school club will potentially then have to stay late.

I completely understand how furious you are with your sister and I get the question because yes, of course there should be a phone call to check in. But I think in this case it's likely you pre-empted their phone call. I definitely wouldn't complain.

You need to thank them for looking after her not complain. They could have contacted child services to report it as child abandonment.

I'm amazed at the voting. I've voted YANBU.

School should have contacted you as part of safeguarding. The relevant part of your OP is "what would have happened if no-one was there to collect her at 5pm?" It is also in school's best interest to do that too - what would they then be doing at 5pm if no-one turned up for her? Having said that, school may well have rung before 5 if you hadn't rung first - presumably their policies will guide you here.

Just imagine if a single parent was in a car crash and taken to hospital and no-one knew.

YABU re the fees however. The club did the work and there was no alternative. You wouldn't expect them to gift you the session, would you?

It is your responsibility to collect your child on time, and you want to complain because they found a solution and this is going to cost you some money??

I would be very embarrassed and apologetic and although errors happen I would be furious with my sister, not the school.

You would have received the call after the school club. Schools are busy enough. Be grateful they look after your daughter.

'Farm-based delays" 😂🚜🐮

I disagree. As I was commenting on the observation that these sorts of things are the reasons why teachers are leaving the profession.

Yes I think ideally school should have phoned you, but for whatever reason they hadn’t yet. She was safe and cared for by the school so I would just be grateful for that. I would absolutely never trust your sister to do childcare ever again though.

We have a family whattsap and always text about childcare arrangements outside of the norm but these things happen i suppose

Actually - I work in a school.

A pupil would be put in ASC and parent charged but equally we would ring the parent to check what was going on because if they weren’t there at finish (6pm) it’s much harder to get in contact with SS and the ASC and site team are delayed further.

If a you start the procedure at3.30pm you have 2.5 hrs to make sure the child will be collected when ASC finishes and also you have 2.5hrs to deal with the situation if (for example) a parent has had a medical emergency or similar.

O wouldn’t complain as such but I’d certainly be asking for clarification for hair procedures.

i was just making a general observation really, rather than particularly directing it to the OP

Yes, it has absolutely nothing to do with the OP.

I don’t think you should complain to the school but I would maybe speak to them and say that going forward you would like them to call either yourself or your husband if she is not picked up and not booked in to after school club.

with you saying that you do use the afterschool club it is a possibility that they just assumed it was an oversight on your part and had forgotten to book her in on that day so sent her there when your sister didn’t show up. I can’t imagine it would be school policy not to call parents if their child is not collected and instead send them to afterschool club and hope for the best that they turn up when that closes.