Why would school refuse a call and insist on a meeting

[Insistingonit]

My dd is in year 5. Attendance hasn’t been good due to frequent illness. Once she got to 90% the school insisted on a GP appt to verify Illness each time which we did. We already supply the appt letters for appts in school time.

She is now at 88% . We have continued to provide proof of illness. They are insisting on speaking to us we agreed and said we will arrange a phone or video call. They said it has to be in person. Why? We are happy to discuss but don’t see the difference?

I'd tell them you'd be happy to meet in person but it will have to be outside of your working hours as you can't get the time off work. If that doesnt work for them then you're happy to do a phone or video call. Leave it up to them to sort whichever works best for them 🤷‍♀️

I asked them and their response was nothing they just kept saying that they needed to book the meeting at school. I’m not a troll and if you consider my responses to be whining then you don’t have to comment . It’s very hard for parents of children who through sheer bad luck can’t meet the 97% required

My last post as you’re winding me up OP.

You are raising so many safeguarding alarm bells in me. I really hope the school refer you and social services get involved. You come across really badly on here.

I hope your child is Ok and gets the help they need.

Maybe they can show you some of her recent work. Maybe they can show you a way to help her catch up what she's missed.

Tell the school they’re welcome to send a member of staff over for a home visit when she’s off ill if they want to do their due diligence for safeguarding purposes but you won’t be bothering the doctors any more with normal minor illnesses.

Luckily she is very ahead on all her work and doing well , we had a great parents evening (where no senior staff spoke to us ?)

As do many families where neglect, DV and child abuse are present.

In the midst of dozens of other families appearing for a few minutes, and dozens of DC charging or wandering out where staff can't be expected to interact with everyone.

Or notice everything as their primary role at that point is making sure no DC haven't been collected and looking for the parents whose DC had a bad day, an accident, didn't bring in their book bag, lost their book bag, wet themselves, didn't eat their lunch or whatever other myriad thing that staff have to think about in the midst of chaos.

Whenever there is a high-profile case of child abuse, neglect or murder, parents rush on to social media to say the school should have known/noticed or done something differently. When often the same parents get annoyed and complain about schools when they're making efforts to safeguard children that effect them. Saying it's unnecessary or inconvenient and a variety of reasons why it shouldn't apply to them.

This is the thing they’ve never even suggested that and I’ve heard that a lot of schools do. They also didn’t say anything to us at parents evening ?? It’s just frustrating as we have fully complied with all demands for proof and I’m open to communication.

I'm a school governor and honestly, the school does not have to do these things.

OP has not been "confrontational" and neither is she "making things worse for herself". She's jumped through every (OTT) hoop the school has set, she has engaged with her GP thoroughly, and she has to balance the competing need to keep herself in employment and a roof over her daughter's head and the need to mollify the school who are taking a sledgehammer approach. Schools that absolutely destroy the idea of a home/school partnership by treating parents like supplicants and/or naughty children make me crazy.

OP, I suspect my approach in this situation would be: "you'll appreciate that with the amount of time we've had to take off to care for our daughter, it's almost impossible to take time off at short notice. We can do a video call this week, or we can come into school on x date when we will be able to take the time off."

You're engaging positively but also maintaining the spirit of partnership.

They’re being unreasonable.
If they were that concerned, they would do home visits.

If you are dropping your DD off why don’t you offer to get there a bit earlier and have the meeting before work.

The problem you face is that even though you might feel what you are asking is reasonable there is a chance it will be interpreted as a reluctance to engage effectively with the school. Tell them you can do a 15 min meeting before work or a video call during working hours.

You risk taking longer disputing the need for a meeting than the meeting will actually take.

You obviously have your opinion what is right or wrong and it doesn't matter what other people are saying. Not engaging with school e.g. asking to do the in person meeting at a time convenient to you but deciding to go above the schools head to refuse the meeting is only going to raise safeguarding concerns.

Go in, suck it up and move on or don't and accept whatever safeguarding consequences follow.

If dd was off and they suggested that I wouldn’t have a problem at all with it . It’s really we’ve had so much time off and she has more appts coming up soon we are trying not to take off unless we really have to and I didn’t think we could enhance the meeting by doing it in person so thought a video call would be adequate

@Insistingonit ,

Unless your work is miles from the school, I think that you are being unnecessarily stubborn.

There might be other issues besides absence which have come up in school. Unless you cooperate, you won’t know.

Unfortunately, schools are monolithic entities and the school could refer up to the local council safeguarding team, and then you may have to deal with social workers etc.

I know how frustrating absence targets are for those with genuine illness.

It might not be ‘fair’ and maybe, logically, a video conference could achieve the same result. But, the school have insisted and, ultimately, you have to ask yourself whether it is worth the hassle of going to war.

I’d be frustrated with them, I found schools to not understand working parents very well. It would not surprise me if they are following some sort of process blindly without engaging common sense. I would send them a few options for when you can do a Teams call and add that you are also happy to meet at school outside of your workday.

Why do you not want a face to face appointment?

I’m quite confident that social services would be quick to assess there’s no risk they could speak to the GP and hospital , they’d probably tell the school not to waste their time

Because we really don’t want to take any more time off work plus if I felt that a face to face meeting would help the situation I would, but it doesn’t as this is due to bad luck. What can i say in person that I can’t say in a video call?!

To be fair , one year my son had chicken pox and two stomach bugs which tipped us into the cause for concern for attendance, nothing we could do about it and as two teachers we had really had to juggle to cover, asking for time off to go to a meeting would have not gone down well. I understand it’s a safeguarding issue if the staff have not seen the pupil or parents but if they have seen both, what are they getting from the meeting that can’t be done over the phone? Sometimes schools moan parents don’t attend things but are often not flexible letting staff go ( as I’m sure other workplace are the same ), I guess if the meeting can be when you are not working that might work but otherwise I can’t see why a phone call isn’t ok, especially as you have evidence for all absences.

I would even go further and say that in person or through video call, no one will gain anything at all from this meeting.

She's been ill, there is nothing that can be done or changed about that. And she might be ill again, and there is still nothing that can be done about it anyway.

So no reason to take time off work just to be told "you're child has been ill a lot".

If you drop off and pick up each day, offer to see them then..no need to be obstructive

But if you drop your child off and collect her at home time, the meeting could be before or after school in the school building itself. You do realise teachers don’t work 9 - 3.30 don’t you?

We had parents evening and no concerns raised we walked past senior members of staff and nobody spoke to us and this was not long ago at all

Exactly !

Just go with what they want this time with a smile on your face and hopefully there will be less difficulty in the future.

Tell them what they want to hear.

It will be easier even though it's not what you think is correct.