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

This feels incredibly hard on parents,

What sorting through a lost items box for your children's items is incredibly hard? How easy must your life be generally if this even registers as a hardship.

The problem is the children who lose jumpers in the first place are the same children who just lose them again immediately when you return them to them. It literally reached the stage where I stand over children as they zip said jumper into their bag (in KS2). I have a small class and do return items whenever I can but I'd say 95% of lost jumpers belong to the same handful of children.

I also take lost property outside and often not a single parent looks.

Why on earth would you think that it's the teacher's job to look after your child's clothes????

Your argument rests on there only ever being one lost item - not six, five named and from different classes although it turns out two of those have the names of the older cousin/ mum's friend's child who passed it down to the current owner, and one unnamed and requiring taking to lost property...

It would be very easy and not at all time consuming to pop it to the right class when first found (if it’s named).

Who should do this? If staff are with children (lunchtime supervisors, first aid etc.) they cannot leave children unattended to take items to classrooms. If they are not with children they will be either on a break or preparing for their afternoon lessons/activities.

There are no staff milling around school, they are all busy.

This - at my children's primary school parent volunteers did this, but teaching staff made it very clear that from year 1 onwards they were not cloakroom attendants and wouldn't be spending time looking for lost possessions including clothing, or trying to find owners for abandoned items. The lost property was available for parents to go and dig through at the end of the day, or the volunteers sorted it towards the end of each half term.
If nobody is volunteering now that part will be gone (a lot of things done by volunteers weren't being done at all by the time my youngest was about to leave as fewer people volunteered for this type of quiet, routine stuff requiring a regular commitment (people still volunteered for fund raising and being representatives...)

DGS school brings out the list property box every Friday after school for parents to look through and retrieve the kids belongings. It's less than 5 mins to take the box to main door and replace it in cupboard ( hopefully depleted) after parents have been through. Anything not collected by term end goes to secondhand uniform stall

I agree our junior school is the same. They even chuck in pack lunch boxes in there to rot

Sounds like you feel that strongly about it, that you should volunteer for an hour a week to reunite pupils with their belongings.

Most parents would just tell their child to look where they think they left it then in lost property.

Yep. When my dd came out without her PE kit I sent her straight back to find it. She moaned and said it'll still be there tomorrow she can get it then. But we all know she would 'forget' again and it would be pushed to the back of the narnia cupboard.

If we teach kids that their mum or even staff will look on their behalf then they're not going to bother looking after their belongings.

Everyone saying ‘but who has the time to sort through hundreds of items’…. It never needs to get to the point of being a cupboard full of hundreds of items of clothing. It would be very easy and not at all time consuming to pop it to the right class when first found (if it’s named). Anything not named should of course end up in the cupboard of doom. It would take the same amount of time to read the label and take it to the classroom as it would to take it to the cupboard.
It doesn’t need a rota of volunteers to sort through it once a month FFS. I’ve never had a school with such a ridiculous system.
OP, you’re not asking too much at all. But like others on this thread, it sounds like school are of the opinion that no one should ever do anything remotely helpful or useful even if it would be more efficient overall.

You’re supposed to teach your child to look in lost property themselves when they lose something.

Ours all goes in an open tub in a shelter shed. Named or not. I think most kids just don't bother looking, and parents don't have time.

They lay them out at the end of term and there's always heaps! My DC rarely lose anything but I don't send expensive items that get stolen (DD's purple glue sticks were taken last year!)

DS once brought home a hat I'd searched lost property for multiple times. A year later. I'd love to know where it went!!

@HJ40
What did the school say when you offered to help sort out the named list property and return it?

Or have you not offered and just assumed someone else will do it?

What's the point of naming them if not?

So that their owner can identify them in Lost Property.

I'm really surprised at the responses. I too would have expected / assumed named items would make their way back to the owner. What's the point of naming them if not?

Who do you think should it OP?

I'm honestly wondering which paid member of staff you suggest taking away from their duties.

How incredibly entitled to think teachers should spend their time going through and sorting lost items! Why don't you organise something with some other mums- once a month you all go through the clothes and sort them by class. Oh you don't have the time? But the teachers do you mean? Seriously I feel so sorry for teachers putting up with this level of entitlement.

I think the kids would be fine doing this on a rota

I went through it once and 75% of the stuff is named, but there’s so much in there it takes about half an hour to wade through.

You said it yourself.

It takes forever to go through it.

So what’s your solution?

Im a KS1 teacher and I clear the cloakroom everyday ensuring all items are given to children. Lots still lose things. They leave jumpers on the field, water bottles in the hall, coats on the fence. I have no time to find them.

Sounds normal to me. I searched the school lost property cupboard every time ds lost anything. It was usually there. 😊

The cupboard is honestly a black hole. I went through it once and 75% of the stuff is named, but there’s so much in there it takes about half an hour to wade through.

Compare the half an hour (was it really half an hour?) to the cumulative time staff would spend on a daily basis reuniting kids with their named but carelessly abandoned stuff. I teach in a secondary school of over 1000 students. Kids leave stuff in my classroom pretty much every single day. The lost property store is at the other end of the school, which is annoying enough, so I let stuff accumulate for a while, then yake a big bagfull. There is no way on god's green earth I'm trailing round the school to find the owners of named items. I barely have time to go to the loo or have lunch as it is.

The school should have a system, whatever that system is. A student committee that do this weekly for example, or a volunteer system of parents. Even a segregated cubby alphabetically or by size or something so it's not all one mess. It doesn't have to be time consuming from a school resource point of view.