Absent without notification to school - what's the norm?

If a secondary child isn't in registration and the parent hasn't notified the school, you go actively looking for them?

I'm impressed. Pretty sure my school doesn't or in the first instance they would never have emailed me as she was exactly where she was meant to be, and any of her friends would have told the absence team that she was at the activity.

She's not new but I completely agree it's a training point and she's just clueless. I don't believe current SLT have set the process up so that it's the mother (it could be an old system though and be a legacy issue). Problem is that last time I accepted the 'i completely agree, will talk to the absence team' but clearly no one has actually provided any training (or not so that this person can understand it).

The first time the same absence person told me 'oh it's probably because your DC is in xx activity so don't worry' but didn't see the need to actually check that DC was actually there.... It's all a mess!

You want me to put an air tag on a secondary aged kid? Why would I do that - if I wanted to track them 24/7 I'd use their phone!

But then what, check my phone every hour to see their location? Or check every morning to see they're in school? What if the PE teacher takes then to the local park for their first lesson - should I call school and ask why my child isn't there?

I don't want to have tracking on my kids, I consider it a breach of their privacy and they haven't done anything to suggest they need to be tracked for their own safety. In not that many years they won't even be living at home and they and I need to learn how to manage situations where I don't know where they are. I appreciate some people do want to track their kids but I don't.

This issue not to do with me knowing where my child is every second of the day. My question was whether I was expecting too much of school to notify me reasonably quickly if my child didn't turn up for registration. If the answer had been 'you're expecting too much' then I'd get my child to message me when they get to school but that is easy for them to forget.

Well actually by emailing me and me then calling, they have had a notice from me about the absence, so they are technically complying. If I don't respond to the email, they have an infinite amount of time before they actually need to pick up the phone.

Don't think that's what they intended by the language though.

I've just searched - there's one line in the absence policy and focus is entirely on ensuring children attend rather than safeguarding. They're not following it because it says they will telephone. Time is meant to be 'after' 9.50 (school starts at 9) if the school hasn't been notified of the absence so technically they could call in a week and be complying.

I doubt anyone at the school realizes this is the policy but good one to bring up!

Just to be clear, I'm not saying don't delay by 30 minutes to check they're not hiding in the toilets but I really doubt secondary schools are running around checking the toilets and school grounds to see whether kids who have missed registration are actually there (unless for some reason the child is flagged as high risk). In your bus example, if they knew the child came by bus, I'd have wanted them to check with the bus company before me if they know the child comes by bus (finding the child has to be the priority). At secondary, the school doesn't know how kids get to school!

I mean at secondary when it is very common for children to make their own way to school, the lesser of two evils is surely very clearly to send notifications earlier and risk incorrect notifications! I had a complete panic when they incorrectly told me my DC wasn't in school - that panic was that they'd been lying in a ditch somewhere for three hours and no one had been looking for them. If they'd told me within the hour, I'd obviously still worry but at least if it was a real issue there would be more chance of finding my child quickly.

Same goes for primary if on a school bus. Young children have died being left on school buses on hot days.

In primary in a situation with secure gates, where children are dropped off at the gate by a parent, then I can understand waiting as the chances of the child not wandering around the school somewhere is pretty low. Even then though, surely we're talking waiting 30 minutes and hour to check obvious places they might be, not three hours!

Thanks everyone.

Can I check whether concerns around this type of notification is something that I could raise as a potential safeguarding concern? I don't want to go overkill, but equally last time the head of year agreed with my concerns and said that they would sort it out, but six months later the process is exactly the same. This time (different Head of Year) I've had an even weaker 'I'll tell the absence team' response. I'm not clear if the previous head of year was just placating me and never did anything, but it's pretty clear that I need to come in stronger if I want anything to change.

Seems like 3 hours is longer than usual, but not completely unknown so I will take that into account. I agree that it must take a lot of time to go through all the emails from parents to work out who is expected to be absent but I would prefer that they emailed everyone absent (and could understand waiting until both registration and check in until that email) saying 'don't worry if you've notified us' than having to wait three hours to be told DC didn't make it to school. I will approach from that perspective.

They must be reconciling emails to the school somehow as it's not normal for me to be contacted when I've notified school but unless they have some fancy pants machine learning system to scan emails, someone will need to be reading each email to be able to reconcile (it's a free form email not a form submission and same email address for any absence whether it's for that day, or the following Tuesday). I can understand why that might take 3 hours but then I think they need to change how this works!

I asked why I was contacted and not the primary contact and was told it was because I am the mother and "I feel that this is something for the mother". Not sure if this is an individual making this decision (she gave the impression she had decided this, but if it's decided case by case and day by day, their systems even more of a mess than I suspect!), or if for some reason the system defaults to mother. I'll raise this as well and say that there needs to be the ability to specify who should be contacted about this type of thing. Given how many people in education are working mothers, and that a large number of them have access to phones restricted, I'm always amazed that schools set up processes assuming that every family set up has a mother checking their phone regularly!

The first incident DC was in school but for reasons the absence team should have known was not at registration (school activity meaning they were somewhere else in the building at registration time). Therefore the email the absence team they had obviously missed the email. This stuff happens and there's only been an email sent by mistake twice over two DC and several years - not a biggy.

Note that whilst DC actually does have SEN and does make their own way to school, I'm not expecting their teacher to think 'oh DC isn't here I must notify'. I just want the standard process to pick up sooner than three hours after registration that they've been knocked off her bike into a ditch (or has truanted or whatever reason they're not in registration when they should be).