A 6 year old missing on school trip- why isn’t this on every news show and headline?

[FrogsInHeels]

He vanished from Newport Pagnell services last night on the way home from a school day our to London.

I second about media intervention not aleays being in the best interests of the child.

Doubly so If the child has SN. Its not quite the same, but if a kid got lost at our local zoo usually they'd do an announcement and description. But if its a kid with SN they circulate a description to staff who do a sweep of the zoo. A kid who will happily go off with a stranger is not a kid you want to advertise as being lost on their own and vulnerable.

The BBC article on this mentions nothing about a school trip.

The school had been on a trip from Nottingham to London. Not an unusual trip for KS2. But he was only 6 so it would have been a very big day out for him as they were due back at 8pm.

I've know Y2 go to the seaside for the day from the Midlands.

My son with SEN went missing on a school residential trip.
He was only missing for 2 hours but I'm glad I wasn't informed until he was found safe and well (several fields away from the site).

So glad they found him - the mere thought of it makes me shiver!
Poor little soul, he must have been petrified! :(

The child got lost at motorway services at 7pm last night.
Locals helped police throughout the night in the search and he was found sitting near the m1 roadworks.
It makes your blood run cold but I don't know that wider publicity would have helped. I picked it up via a local fb appeal from a local trucking firm.

Wider Publicity probably wouldn't have helped. People who were searching were asked to go home so people could use thermal imaging cameras.

Have a read here and move out of the bubble.

Poor wee soul. Glad he got back to his family ok. Didn’t people see a small child alone and intervene?

I’m the least precious/ overprotective mother ever but surely that’s way too day/too long a day for 6 year old children?

*far

DowntonCrabby - presumably the school and parents felt the children were capable of it, hence putting in the trip and the parents presumably agreeing their child could go.
To be fair I teach 6yo children on year 1 and year 2 and many would be more than happy to do this. Some schools take their year 2s on overnight trips. DDs primary school took their entire school on day visits once a year - often a couple of hours or so away. They even took reception and some of the older nursery children and there was never an issue.

Fortunately this is a very unusual situation. It's very rare for a child to go missing on a school trip.

There was a huge police operation and locals were involved in the search I don’t see in this case how further (social) media intervention was warranted or necessary

Not really, my dc go on three day residentials with their school age 6.

I’m the least precious/ overprotective mother ever but surely that’s way too day/too long a day for 6 year old children?

I couldn't agree more! That's just crazy. No need for such school trips. Poor little boy out there in the night and the cold. Sends a shiver down my spine just thinking about it. He must have been absolutely terrified. Heads will roll at that school!

He wasn't KS2, he's KS1, possibly Year 1. That would have been a hell of a long day for an infant.

@MissPear
I read that article and was interested to read this in the comment section.

I thought let’s fact check what is said here: The article speaks of ’The EPIDEMIC of missing Children of colour who aren’t photogenic enough for us to find’.

Now people were rightly angry at why the Independent had not published the photos of this EPIDEMIC of missing children, I was too. But they did publish lots of name who by the title of the article one would assume are missing children? Right? Wrong?

First though they did publish at least one photo of Aisher Gibril but the problem here is she is not missing. Independent you have published a picture of a child you are reporting as missing who is not missing but was found safe and well 1 day after going missing. The appeals have been pulled and the Police have issued a statement saying she is safe and well. I suggest you should remove the photo and the claim she is missing.

But now on to the other ’children’ missing in this epidemic: (all ages listed as age when missing) Fatima Olodo - 41 years old, Jasvinder Kaur - 34 years old, Ramla Malo - 53 years old, Gina Lander - 46 years old, Fatima Mohamed Ali - 52 years old, Sofia Abdi - 52 years old. At what age are you classing people as children?

As for the children Aamina Khan has had lots of media coverage in BBC, Guardian and even in the Sun... couldn’t find the Independent articles though. This child was kidnapped by a parent (and taken to Pakistan) and not by some stranger as also is the case with Elizabeth Ogungbayibi so regardless of colour it’s not the same type of fear presented by the prospect of a stranger sneaking in the night and kidnapping your child from their bed!?

The other children are also not known to be kidnapped, as tragic as it is Aaya Al-Saedi was missing when a boat capsized in the Aegean Sea... I am not sure how a front page news story in a UK news paper will help here?

Reneisha Brown is not a child but 18 years old and is now missing for the 5th time, all other times she was found safe and well... Maybe with this in mind and the fact she is an adult we can accept she does not want to be ’found’??

This article is misleading and is frankly a disgrace! To say an epidemic of children are missing and provide these people as examples is a lie. The Editor should have fact checked this and never allowed it to be printed and I will be sending this as a complaint to the Independent! Even the few other listed people Lan Pham, Tyana Medaini, Elizabeth Chau, Trang Nguyen, and Hafsa Tarambis while tragic and worthy of press are not missing children. In lying in this article to this extent you have destroyed any chance of raising the issue you tried to present!

• for information I struggled to find background on Falawiyo Oladejo and Payera Begum except in this and the original linked article so I have not commented on the facts of these cases.

Oh also don’t bother trying to complain to the Independent Press Standards Organisation as i got this email from them:
’IPSO is able to investigate complaints against those publications which are members of the regulatory system. At this time, The Independent is not a member. As such, we are unfortunately unable to assist you with your concerns.’

I understand it is very stressful but thank heavens for conscientious teachers like you Sazquatch !

There's always one who takes every opportunity to get on their soapbox, isn't there?

Oh, is that why junction 25 was closed on Thursday morning?

No Agatha this was late last night.

Agree! I really hate it when people copy and paste (shite) from ‘articles’.

I think it's true that missing adults are more likely to get press coverage if they're pretty and blonde but all children are treated as a big a big story, until it becomes apparent that they're not missing, in the sense that the public would assume, ie not snatched by a stranger.

There is a case locally of a teenager who is often missing, with the family posting heartbroken appeals. And his situation is heart breaking in that every adult in his life has let him down, but the police and social services know where he is. An entirely unsuitable location and not where he should be, probably at risk, technically missing, but not in an unknown location.

Also, I think the police and probably the press know much earlier than the public do whether the case is likely to involve foul play or to be someone missing of their own accord.

I suspect that they probably had CCTV footage of him seeming to wander off on his own. Hence the searching locally with thermal imaging.
If they'd had CCTV footage of him walking away with an adult, then it would have become bigger news and a bigger search.

It was on all the news websites overnight.

They managed to scramble over 1000 people in a search operation.

Dog tracker police teams, fire service searching bodies of water.

How is that not a serious response? Oh... getting it all in the news is far more important.

It was a school trip to the Museum of London. Not that odd, surely?

Amazing work by the police.