Can School insist on DS registering his car

[AngelsWithSilverWings]

My DS17 is at sixth form and has started driving himself to school. He parks the car a 10 min walk from school ( parking nearer to school is impossible)

School know he drives because he is the first in his year to pass his test so other pupils talk.

School have said he has to register his car with the office in case of complaints about parking but he doesn't want to.

Reason why he doesn't want to :

Local residents around the area don't like cars being parked outside their houses and particularly get annoyed when they see a school pupil in uniform doing so. He is worried that even though he parks perfectly legally a resident will make up a complaint about him to try to put him off parking there.

He parks in a different road every day so as not to "annoy" the same people everyday but he has been verbally abused three times now and today someone left an anonymous note asking him to elsewhere.

These are just normal , fairly busy public roads on a huge 1930's housing estate , not quiet little cul de sacs. We live in a similar type of road near a station and have commuters parking outside every single day and I've never ever told anyone off for legally parking their car.

Anyway - DS registered my car with the school as he was driving that initially but he now has his own and doesn't want to register it - can the school insist as and when they realise that he is driving a different car ( they will find out ,due other pupils chatting about his "new" car )

My feeling is that it's nothing to do with them how he travels to school and he should not be made to give his registration number to the office.

Do other schools do this?

I agree with you - it's none of their business where he parks his car. Do the teachers register their cars out of interest?

@Auntieobem ooh good question. I've no idea but if they do I imagine it's a requirement of their employment contract.

Have you looked up the guidelines on the college website?

I imagine it's in there stating something like 'students are required to register their car as part of their registration on the course' type bollocks. Threatening to deteguster pupils who don't. No idea how they'd stand legally ?!!

My sixth form asked us to do that.

There were 2 main reasons;

1. if students were parking illegally / inconsiderately then they could do something about it

2. if they were parking legally but getting abuse from local residents the college could support them / talk to the residents.

My college was in a city not famed for being car friendly. There was limited street parking around anyway so cars were discouraged.

It's a school not a college, it's nothing to do with them how the;students get there unless it's some kind of strange private school with micro managing rules

They are being ridiulous, how did it come about in the first place that they know about it?

I can't see how they can insist as he is not parking it on the schools property. I can't see how they can legally claim it is their right to know his registration number.

I'm not sure about the school, but what I would recommend is that he takes a good clear photo on his phone every morning when he parks his car, so that if he gets any aggro or complaints he'll have a record showing that he was parked legally and not inconsiderately.

("Inconsiderately" in this case might mean on a corner, or making it difficult for someone to get out of their drive, rather than "outside the house of someone who believes the public road belongs to them personally".)

@WinterMusings I'll check - he's been at this school since he was 11 years old so I have no idea if it's in the school rules. I don't imagine they could legally expel a child for this though.

It is normal to keep a record of who has which car, and it is normal to ban or limit lifts. Most deaths in this age range come from sixth formers sharing lifts

If he’s parking on school grounds, yes I think they can.

parking perfectly legally elsewhere? No.

on a housing estate though he’s going to get all the parking arseholes leaving notes. Probably an everyday occurrence. Can he take his own note and leave it on his car so the idiots think someone else has got their first 😂

How does a school do this? What legal right do they have to say who can get in a car with someone and how often?

Where have you had that information from?

It can, and often is, made a condition of enrolling at the school, and the reason being to prevent teenage deaths, so no one sensible has any argument with it.

The biggest cause of deaths in this age range in the UK is boys showing off their driving, largely to passengers, so the opportunity for this is limited by most reasonable schools.

Incidentally, although it is more likely to be male driving that causes death, it is more likely to be teenage girls who lose their lives.

even if residents complain, what does the school think it can do about pupils parking perfectly legally?

agree with pp only appropriate to ask for a reg if the pupil is parking on site

My sixth form did this. There had been a spate of girls from younger years being lured/tricked/pulled into older boys' cars, and they were trying to keep track of who might be picking up underage schoolgirls.

There was also some county lines-esque activity happening involving sixth formers' cars being used to store/transport drugs, which the school was working with the police to try to quash.

So maybe there's more than just petty bureaucracy at work here? They might be saying it's about parking, and maybe it is to a degree, but really it's about something else.

It does sounds like one way or the other the school will find out anyway — either via registration or the school grapevine.

The school may have a policy on this, so check the guidelines/handbook/rules/whatever.

It does seem a bit of an overreach to ask for registration details, given that he's not parking onsite. But then if they're getting it in the neck from local residents I can see why they might be trying to keep a handle on it.

If he does have to register it, what realistically would happen in the event a resident makes a complaint about his car? The school can't give out any of his personal details to a complainant, that would be a major data breach. I can't see how it would be any worse than a resident bending his ear directly, which it sounds like is already happening.

I used to work for a vehicle insurance broker. Young adults driving at high speed at night with their mates in the car are at higher risk, not those going to and from school.

That may be, but it happens during the school day too

Whilst he should not have to register his car with the school, if he has had complaints from residents, then he really needs to think hard about where and how he is parking. Parking legally is not the same as parking considerately.

Under Data Protection legislation how can the school justify keeping records of pupils car ownership details for cars that are not being driven on school property? 🤔

Do you have statistics for that? Compared with, say, assaults and knife crime on the way to and from school.

There will be other teacher's on here who have taught through one of those indescribably horrendous days when we know a car full of teens has rolled over at lunchtime a few roads away from the school......

emails/ written notes coming round on numbers, ages, sexes, state of being cut out, number of confirmed or predicted deaths...

Keeping the children busy, keeping them quiet, keeping on top of any phone or internet usage to the exclusion of all other priorities....

Then the emergency staff meeting, and the plan for immediate assemblies.....

The terrible news, worse than confirmed death, that a girl who should have been sitting in your A level class is so severely injured that there is no hope, and "they" are desperately trying to locate her parents in time to say goodbye.....

The knowledge that the boy who walked out of your class 2 hours earlier, shouting at his mates over his shoulder, will never walk or talk again.....

Other teachers on here will have suffered days like this too

I fully support any school keeping track on sixth form cars, and banning and limiting lifts

Don't derail the thread @OhNoNotThatAgain .
I'm interested to find out exactly why the school need this info too, they can't use it

I've told you why

so have others

How can you claim to work in insurance and be familiar with these figures and not know that deaths in car accidents are by far the bigger cause of deaths compared to knife crime or assault?

Knife crime and assault get a bigger press, because they are less common

On thé utter side, it’s very clear from threads on MN that some people have major issues with anyone but them parking in front of their house. My NDN being a good example of that. (NDN wanted visitor to park in front our house, which is in a corner and nearby opposite side of an intersection. Now THAT would have been inconsiderate and prob illegal too but hey Ho. It wasn’t in front if his house….)

Is it inconsiderate to park in front of someone’s house? Because that’s what the OP is talking about there.