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

Exactly. It all gets shoved in a cupboard in the library for over 1000 students here. They can go and look for it, otherwise it all gets laid out at the end of every half term. The librarian runs multiple clubs and decorates the library for any big event, so she simply doesn’t have time to send/take items all over to children.

I once saw a coat and checked for a name. It belonged to the brother of a child in my form who happened to be there so I gave it to her and the brother later said he no longer wanted it! A coat was delivered to my room last week, the child lost it last year.

I was thinking this too, very kind of OP to offer to go in every week to sort the clothes and return to correct class

If you don't have the time or inclination to go through everything, what makes you think the school staff do? It doesn't even belong to them.

My kids' school had lost property bins by the playground door. On a Friday keen year 6 kids were allowed to sort through it in their lunch break if they wanted to and take named stuff to the classes. Worked brilliantly all round.

How kind of you to have offered to sort it all out!

You put names on items so that when you go look in Lost Property, you can identify yours. That's the whole point? If you never expected your child to lose them, you wouldn't need a name tag!

Of course teachers aren't going to sit around organising Lost Property into neat named piles for each child.

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.

Exactly. The staff don't have time to go through a black hole of lost property. Our school is down to 50% permanent teachers and 50% supply this week due to illness. None of them have the time or capacity to sort through lost jumpers whilst running 3 nativities, Christmas parties, fairs, serving christmas dinner and making calendars. Our (very few) TAs are working with high need non-verbal pupils who can't be left alone for a second and our office lady was in tears today, about to resign as she is so overworked. The head was cleaning up sick half of the afternoon as the caretaker only works till 11 and, to be honest, she looked like she was going to cry by the end of the day as well.

If this bothers you so much, why don't you volunteer to go in and help them sort it out?

This feels incredibly hard on parents

So your answer is to get the already stretched teachers to do it?

Who do you think has time to sort and return hundreds of items of lost property every term?

Who is supposed to sort all this stuff, find out what class the child is in and take the lost item back to their class?

The answer is for children to look after their stuff and if they can't do that, then go and look for it in the lost property cupboard.

I was on the PA of our kids primary school and we sorted their lost property for them. Once a month we had a rail with everything on it for parents to look through. Anything not claimed went to charity

I think schools would have to pay someone to do this as their job and that’s just not realistic or practical. Plus plenty of children pass on their clothes so the name label is out of date.

We have a school of 490 primary children. If most children only lose two things a year that’s nearly 1000 items to sort, locate class number, get thing back to class. In an age when schools are run on threadbare staff - the kids need to look after things themselves or parents need to step up.

Since this year we have a small group of parents who meet on a Friday to sort through the labelled things and reunite them with their owner. They also post pictures on ClassList and encourage parents / children to rescue them.

whatever the answer it isn’t teachers spending their time rescuing kids stuff.

Unless the school had appointed a person to manage lost property this is what happens.

even named, it still needs someone to look up the name what class they are in and then return it. That takes time.

not to mention, things are often continuously returned and lost, if it’s an old item the student has grown out of. And sometimes if parents have bought secondhand things the old name is there and there is no one to return it to.