AIBU to think named items shouldn’t end up in school’s lost property?

As someone who works in a primary school office and has multiple conversations about lost property a day, I am in awe, real and total and actual AWE that 75% of items in a lost property cupboard were named.

I am the person in our school who goes through the piles of lost property and does their best to return named items to DC who have dumped them wherever they fancy because they can't be bothered to look after them lost them. In fact I did it this very day. I returned a princely four, yes four, named items to their respective owners' classrooms. I counted another fifty seven items that were unnamed. Our parents are utterly shite at naming things. It drives me witless but they never learn!

Unfortunately though, in general, lost property is another area where parental entitlement and rudeness has gone off the scales in schools. Always the school's fault that something has been lost...

DC started at a Junior School (yr3-yr6) this term following on from Infants. It’s a huge school, 5FE. Quite spread out with PE, after school drama, his classroom, the library and after school care all in separate buildings

Op you answered your own question really, you said it's a huge school. Not all staff are going to know all students, unless someone had time to go through the lost property box find who each student is and return to their form group all lost items. The to isn't going to happen there aren't enough staff hours to do this in any large school, so ot does end up being the students or parents responsibility to find it. At lest if it's named you know it's your child's.

maybe you can volunteer to do this

It takes you half an hour to wade through it, so a staff member should take half an hour of their day to do it for you? Parent here, and also primary school receptionist. My children lose things constantly and it's my child/my responsibility to sort out belongings, not some harried staff member that is doing their best with a class of 30 kids and trying to remind them constantly to keep their things together! And the incredulity of parents when I insist that I can't put out a school wide panic alert for little Josie's cardigan that's she already lost 3 times this week - sorry but no, I have actual real work to be getting on with 😑 have a word with yourself 🙄

Our school put out lost property buckets once a term for parents to rifle through. Anything left over gets donated to charity. I think this is a good idea, perhaps you could suggest it via a parent rep if such a thing exists.

Otherwise you could get together some like minded parents to sort the cupboard of doom. Done once, it might encourage others to come forward the next time. Although thinking about my DC’s school and lack of PTA volunteers for fun stuff, maybe not!

I send DD to rummage for missing items and if she can’t find it then I’ll make time to go and do it. There’s always loads there and I’m really shocked that some of it isn’t claimed - expensive coats etc. The charity shop next to school does quite well at the end of the year!!

I am a TA. It’s important children learn to take responsibility for their own belongings.
Many children make no effort to collect their coats/jumpers in from the playground as they know someone else will do it for them - this really isn’t teaching them anything useful. Much better that they experience the minor inconvenience of having to go to the lost property box as this will help them to remember next time that they need to collect their belongings.
Many a time I’ve seen children deliberately leave their items as they can’t be bothered to go back and get it (and yes they have actually told me this when I reminded them to go back and get it).

I used to do this at our junior school. I didn't really have time to help out weekly but I'd pop along towards the end of term or half term, grab a class list from the office and sort it into piles. You could volunteer. It always seemed to be appreciated.

My bugbear was people who just put "smith" or "j.smith" or initials. It's amazing how many JSs and LBs there are even in one class sometimes, let alone an entire school.

They do the same at our very small single form entry school where everyone knows everyone. I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't insist that all kids wear the branded logo jumpers that cost £18.50 each.

Let's face it if little Jimmy drops his coat or jumper wherever he likes and it makes it's way back to him he is going to continue doing the same thing. There is no incentive to look after his property.

I picked up 9 coats last week as I walked through the playground. It was starting to rain and I didn’t want to leave them outside. If it was one I may have checked for a name but I was about to get my class so I flung them in lost property.

It’s a knockoff ikea kallax sort of thing. At least then you have a place to start!

I work as a midday assistant, among other roles in a school- at the end of each play we have a mountain of coats, jumpers, cardigans, water bottles and lunch boxes that have been left around the school. We have a bench we put most items for parents or child to collect at afternoon play/end of day. If the weather is poor it goes to reception. When not claimed on that day, it goes to lost property.

I haven't the time or want to return all items to individual children or classrooms at the end of my shift. I haven't the time or pay to traipse around making sure every item finds it's owner. At the end of my midday shift I'm straight into another role on the campus. We do remind children at the end of play, we do help children find items at the end, but we don't have time to search for tags and personally drop of items to their pegs or classes.

We do a few times a year have a lost property table in the playground where parents can search for their 6 month old mouldy sandwich boxes and rain soaked jumpers. After that we throw the crap stuff, clean the good and sell it as 'pay what you can' in our uniform shop.

It's clearly not feasible for staff to be spending their time doing this. Maybe you could put together a group of parents who all volunteer once a month or so to go through it and reunite kids with their items? Or maybe join the PTFA and see if they could take over doing it?

I haven’t said I think teachers should do it.

You also haven't said who you think should do it.

If not teaching staff then who, in a school setting, do you think is available to do it?

This term it has become clear to us that if you use wraparound and have a child in KS2, even one of the youngest, who isn't an effective searcher, you're basically on your own. Yes I would love to search the cloakroom myself, but they're obviously not going to let me in to do so.

I’m not sure any school would have a person designated to sort through lost property. It would be an extra to their job. That sounds like such an admin heavy task for one person to do on top of all their other duties.

That is how our school handled it. Unless it was something critical like an inhaler or an assistance device, it got chucked in the cupboard.

they did lay them out nicely on parents nights and things like that so we wouldn’t all be trying to get into the cupboard. At that point it was very easy to browse and grab your items.

honestly, since I have a child with executive function issues that is prone to losing things, anything that really mattered got an AirTag.

I learned to keep duplicates of other key items that could be purchased cheaply if I wasn’t pressured for time.

she eventually did get better about it. Still not great, but better.

I’ve not been a year 7 form tutor that many times but my goodness, the number of emails from parents complaining that their child had lost their coat and could I help them find it? Delete.

Part of the challenge is the size of the school, 5FE is huge for primary.

However, from year 3 they should be able to look after or at least attempt to find their items. Ours have a big covered box in playground that all items go into and then children can go into it to find their lost items. I have 1 in year 5 and 1 in year 3. The youngest lost 1 PE hoodie last year, oldest has never lost anything significant. Sometimes they mix up items and come home with each other's jumpers, and then they just swop them the next day.

Our school has cubbies in the hall with stuff by type - so a cubby of water bottles, gloves, lunchboxes, jumpers etc. parents or kids can go look in it if they’re missing something. At some point it’s thrown away I think. I really struggled to get in to try to find things as my kids were in breakfast and after school club when they were younger so just had to rely on my children finding it. My daughter was quite on top of it. My son… well, eventually he just didn’t have any jumpers left but then he grew out of everything anyway.

well a great volunteer oppurtunity for a parent/s to go through and help, lots of parents want the school to do everything so their child or themselves dont have too so parents can help

I worked as a lunchtime supervisor and one of my colleagues was paid an extra half hour to sort lost property and return to child if it was labelled. She left and I said I'd do it but was told they weren't going to replace that half hour a day to save money and the reception staff would deal with it. This just meant there was a large box nr reception where everything got chucked.

I did always try to collect stuff round the playground and shout out names for the labelled items but there was always sooooo much unlabelled.