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.

Great research, @SebandAlice 👍🏻

I can see that it didn't need to be on national news, as that wouldn't have helped. Thankfully, this had a positive outcome. Poor love though, he must have been so scared, and last night was very cold.

I do think some school trips are overly ambitious though. Age 6, travelling three hours each way - yes the kids will get through it, but will they get the most out of it at this age? It's a big day, and it just seems so unnecessary, when there are plenty of lovely and educative things to do in the Midlands.

They did have CCTV footage of him walking off alone. There’s pictures of it in one of the online news articles.

I suspect most children reported missing because they’ve wandered off at this age don’t get anything but local coverage because they turn up pretty quickly. If he hadn’t been found early this morning I think it would have been very different and there would be much more coverage.

I wouldn't want to be the head of that school this morning.

What would the protcol be? Do you take the rest of the children and (all?) The staff home? At what point would you make that decision?

A child went missing on a KS1 trip in my first year of teaching. It was horrendous - I think it was for around 30 minutes, but it felt like much longer. When she was eventually found, she had climbed under the coach seat and fallen asleep. Very strange child. She'd be about 35 now!

It made the 10 o’clock BBC news. And I agree that publicity wouldn’t have helped too much.

I also completely agree that there would have been more publicity if he had been a blonde girl.

My DS1 was "lost" on a school trip.in reception. Thankfully I didn't know until after the event. They were at a children's farm in the play area, he'd wandered off to play in the "big boys" area, climbed a tower and couldn't get down. Staff were looking in the wrong place, as he shouldn't have been there.

I'm still not sure if I should have been cross with them, cross with him, or it was just one of those things, all's well that ends well.

DS got lost in the science museum. One minutes he was there - then he wasn’t. I almost had a stroke and the security guard was lovely and was trying to track him on the security cameras - then DS rocked up and told me off because he was ‘lonely’ after he wandered off (remember he was the one who wandered off).

Please don't make this about race, a child is a child.

And to say a blonde blue eyed child is more photogenic is a pretty racist comment. However the UK is a predominently white country so it stands to reason more white children will be reported.

I also completely agree that there would have been more publicity if he had been a blonde girl

What more publicity? It was on national news at 10 last night. It was on all the major media sites overnight. He was found at 4am so story over (except for happy ending, thank god) for all of today’s news

It was obviously big locally as 1000 people were out looking.

My children are not blonde, not white, so I am not being defensive, but why is ‘being in the news’ a bigger thing in people’s minds than the emergency services actually going out and finding a child?

Because of public sympathy. It’s an important point that’s being made.

I think taking children of this age on such a long trip is madness itself.

Because of public sympathy. It’s an important point that’s being made

What do you mean, public sympathy? What more should have been done than national news last night and all news websites overnight?

I would be very up in arms if the police response had been slow or half hearted, but I don’t get why a whole load of MN wanting to show how distressed they are about a child helps the important business if getting the child found.

The OP of this thread didn’t even take the 20 seconds it took me to google after seeing the thread title, to see that the child had been found. Didn’t even bother to check for news updates before posting. Just straight in with the hand wringing

hes luck there were roadworks there could have been so much worse walking along the hard shoulder

@Somanysocks spot on, every word.

You posted a good 4 hours after he was found. That's probably why it wasn't all over the media this morning.

*Usually it’s because the police know more.
**It isn’t just because of racism as people assume. The police may know
*Exactly where he is but then obviously they can’t make everyone aware of info that would hinder an investigation.

I can't fathom this at all. The police don't waste time and money looking for a kid and putting out appeals if they know where they are

*It's weird that he was apparently on a school trip and went missing at 7:15pm. It doesn't add up.
*The good news is, he's found. But my kids, at age 6, were never on school trips at dinner time. And no school trip ever involved stopping in at a service station. Also, he's from Nottingham. What kind of school trip was this? Odd.

You should climb out of the bubble you are in. We don't all live the same lives and have the same school trips.

It's not always in the best interests of the missing child to have it all over the media. The police will decide if and when it should be made public, and normally that is done on a local scale first, often through social media.

This. And in this case local media was what they needed. A kid wanders off, the best chance of finding them is asking locals to look out. No point asking me up in Scotland to keep an eye out for a kid who has wandered off 400 miles away. Trust the police to do their job. They actually did a bloody fabulous job finding this wee boy.

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

Really? I mean really? Some people actually baffle men's. They were due back at 8pm. Some 6 year olds get home at 8pm every day

A brilliant operation by police and volunteers, Thank god he was found safe. What a ordeal for his family.

I agree with PP that I would never share "missing child" cases over Facebook unless it comes from a police appeal. Obviously we all empathise and want to help a family going through this but without knowing the case and whether it's genuine we don't know if the child's location is being hidden for their own protection.

To the one who said it would if it was a white kid

Hmmmm

Like it was all over the papers at the time that WHITE girls were being groomed ? Not ?!!!
People like you, and your comments, are what's wrong with this sodding country .

Race isn’t entirely out there as a factor in what makes a missing person newsworthy, When. It’s just probably not the only one.

@vanguard Have you been on any school trips? Take a bus full of children anywhere and I bet you end up stopping at a service station because someone needs the toilet, has travel sickness etc.

Glad this story has had a happy ending. I absolutely hate taking kids on school trips and thankfully our school has virtually stopped doing them as the stress for staff outweighed what the children got out of it. We live in a rural area and the choice of places to visit is very limited and most of the kids have visited them multiple times already. Parents moan that the kids haven't been on a trip but unless they have been on one, most of them have no idea just how stressful it is.

It would have been if he was a white English girl hmm

Totally unfair in this instance. I live close to Newport Pagnell Services. It was all over social media and local news sites, being shared widely and 100s of people of all ethnicities, faiths, ages and genders were up all night searching, praying (Muslims and Christians together) and worrying. Police even asked people to leave some of the housing estates around the services because their body heat was interfering with the thermal search technology. It was an amazing community response and there were lots of positive comments about how NOT divisive/racist/discriminatory it was. Aadil is a 6 year old child who was missing - nothing else about him was important.

If he hadn't been found overnight, it would have been national news this morning, I am sure. I think it was at least mentioned nationally last night. There was no other reporting to be done - he was found in the middle of the night.

What an absolutely stupid fucking comment @MrsPear

“Race isn’t entirely out there as a factor in what makes a missing person newsworthy, When. It’s just probably not the only one”

Yes.

But why invoke it in this case when there was national news coverage from last night and the OP was flinging out the now obligatory opinion 5 hours after the child had been found?

My kids are subject to racism in RL. I read endless threads on MN where blatantly racist incidents are dismissed by people referring to the professionally offended’ etc.

Trotting out the ‘photogenic blonde child’ stuff (which is itself racist as a pp points out) when the emergency services have gone all out to bring the child back to safety under the eye of national and local media is pointless and helps the RL experiences of racism not at all, IMO.

It is just, to use another over-used phrase and sarky concept, virtue signalling.

'It would have been if he was a white English girl '

Ugh

Awful

Just... thank God he is home. What he, and his family must have gone through doesn't bear thinking about. And bless the emergency services. They did stellar work from the sounds of it, and their delight in finding him alive and well must have been incredible.