Advice please-school runners in secondaries?

My DD's school didn't do this, and I am glad!

However I freely admit that both DD and I would've loved the opportunity to skive for a day!

My dc did it, they loved it even though ds ended up in hospital,but thats a different story.
Its one or two a days a year in year 8.
Dcs school has awards for communication, they are way ahead on emails, school portal etc They were in the 20th c long before other local schools.

Dds old school used to do this. A whole day too once a term.
Dd who has sen and REALLY struggles socially and was being bullied by that point was given responsibility of going round telling the kids who had skipped detention to report to the year head which i thought was a bad idea.

They also had to catch up but had to ask other kids for notes not the teacher.

Dd however loved it...

Think your schools need to enter the 20th century and install telephones, wifi, Internet, emails etc etc. What a waste of a day for a child. I bet they love skiving off lessons for the day though!

Ours does it and my dc have enjoyed doing it and it doesn't take much to catch up.

If they struggle to catch up from one day away, just think how bad a week of flu is!

'necessary' no.
But schools have tight budgets.
It may be that by using pupils as runners they can save on the cost of one admin staff, and the money saved can go to something else. And the children get a sense of pride and responsibility. So presumably some schools see it as a win-win.

But it can't be necessary, can it? I've never heard of it and loads of schools manage without taking children out of class.

Oh for goodness sake! It can only happen once of twice throughout their school career.I thik it is a great way of giving the littlies in the school a sense of responsibility and service

Kerbors
Yes I would be livid at 6.5k a term, I'm not paying for my child to run errands. Thankfully the school agree.

Yes DD's school have office duty. It's a split site school so they do it in y8 and y9. They each get one day a year, and choose a friend to do it with them. DD got chosen by two friends last year so missed three full days. Two of them in the same week!

I don't object to it in principle but I was pissed off at the two being in the same week. There is no communication with parents and DD didn't tell me beforehand so I didn't have chance to complain. I suspect she didn't tell me on purpose because she knew I'd intervene.

They do this at one of the secondaries in my area that is very highly sought after and over subscribed with amazing exam results. When we visited on an open morning they introduced us to the two children who were on 'office duty'. It was indeed considered to be a good role to have and they seemed to be enjoying it. The school told us it helps them learn personnel skills, organisational Skills, time planning etc as well as 'helping' the school.

I thought it looked quite good.

Livid? Really? FGS get a grip.

We did this at my school (a million years ago) and it was considered one of the best days of the school year.

Never heard of it!
Dear God if I found out my DS was running errands instead of in class, I would be livid!

Yes they do this in DS school as well. They also get them to wash the teachers cars, clean the windows, refill all the ink pots in the school, sharpen all the quills, and climb up the chimneys to sweep them out (only in the autumn term though in preparation for winter).

FFS people. Meant to be in school, not child labour!

If I'm teaching how am I able to check emails, text messages (especially given one area of the school has direct reception for all networks) or answer a phone that is situated in a different room?

So they do what happens at our school - "I'm sorry, Mrs Lovegood, Ms Cricketballs is busy teaching Art to S1 at the moment, can I take a message and ask her to call you back?" Then the message is passed on at break/lunch or the office staff get you to email.

If it's really urgent urgent, along the lines of a teacher's child being taken ill or another DIRE emergency then they ring the classroom, or one of the office staff goes to the classroom. Most of the messages that children are running around school with are not this urgent I'd bet.

sorry just read that auto correct changed 'dire' into direct! In other words in my one part of the building, no mobile network has a signal!

They do this at ds school, again it's something the boys will do only once in their school career and they look forward to it - ds missed doing it because he was at a competition and I never heard the end of it!

If I'm teaching how am I able to check emails, text messages (especially given one area of the school has direct reception for all networks) or answer a phone that is situated in a different room?

The year 8s that do it at our school love doing it.

I once worked in a school where the only person who used this system was the attendance officer... Oh, the irony. She pulled a child out of lessons for a full day so she didn't have to go and check on individuals missed off of registers herself... Despite the school being a new build where eVery single classroom had a phone. Used to drive me mad. If it affected a child in my class I used to tell her they had an assessment they couldn't miss ...

Having children running around the school on errands is like something out of the Victorian times.

Indeed. They've clearly not heard of email, texting or phoning. They don't do this at my son's school. What an antiquated and inefficient way of working. But then again, receptionists themselves are used less and less for messages anyway. I don't think I've ever talked to the receptionist at my son's school - the email addresses of all the staff are shown on the website, so I just send an email directly which is usually responded to within an hour or so during school hours.

They have this amazing system at our school called "telephones". If the office need to speak to a teacher or leave a message, they make something called a "phone call".

Incredible.

Having children running around the school on errands is like something out of the Victorian times.

Normal at my DC's school, they are told about a week before so are expected to talk to their teachers in advance and gather some work to do in between jobs. Their conscientiousness in doing the jobs is taken into account when deciding on prefect and other student roles in school.

This is a new one on me, if I ever rang school with a message for someone they passed it on via email rather than with a runner.

My dds did it, they got work or homework to do whilst waiting.

I remember doing it at my school in the 80's, it was considered an honour and we all looked forward to it. We had to sit by the main entrance, greet anyone that came in and take messages to whoever, like work experience but actually doing something useful and contributing to the school.

Missing lessons was a bonus, obviously....