or have I just had an unbelievable conversation with the school (primary) Welfare & Attendance Officer?

[scaleymcnamechange]

Basically, she said the school will not send a letter home to all parents reminding them about the 48 hour rule for vomiting and/or diahorrea, because, ultimately, the external attendance & welfare inspectors will give the school a hard time for it.

Is this ridiculous or am I being unreasonable for thinking it is?

What prompted me to call the school office was standing in the playground today listening to another mum cheerfully telling me her son "must have a bug" because he threw up last night. There he was lining up to go in to class ...

????

But it's fine to not remind them and there be H&S implications from sick kids running around?

That is stupid, either it's a rule (that needs enforcing), or it's not.

D

processes over service users - tis always the way

YANBU - They can send out letters, my school does.

Also, you should have publicly shamed the other mum

YANBU - that is nuts.
If the external attendance people can't tell the difference between children being kept off school because of D&V, and children wagging school, then they have got serious problems.

I guess the school values attendance figures more than the health of children.

Their attendance figures will be crap when loads of children come down with the Norovirus.

You have a point there, Bangingnoise. There has been an almightly push on attendance at the school for the past two or three years.

But if this little boy gives a bug to say 6 dc in the class, and they give it to their brothers and sisters, and possibly their mum who is a teacher, and she takes it in to the staff room etc ...

then they lose so many more days of attendance than if this little chap had just stayed off for two days.

I will write to the Head. Do you think?

Yes. Do it.

YANBU but experience teaches me that there is nothing that schools or LAs can do which will surprise me any more.

If I were you I'd be letting my local press and MP know what I'd just been told.

I once worked in a school that used an outside agency that sent someone in once a week to work with children with poor attendance. Fair enough, there were a couple of families who did things such as oversleep and then not bother to send the kids to school at all quite regularly, but the vast majority of families were very good about attendance. Anyway, this woman came into the classroom each week with a list from the office of the children whose attendance was very low. Then she took them out of the class, talked to them about coming to school, did colouring in sheets, etc (the kids were 4 and 5). One week one little girl, who I shall call Clare, was on the list. I protested that actually Clare had been very poorly in hospital then recuperating at home the previous 2 weeks, so her attendance could hardly have been helped, and that taking her out of class would make no difference, as her parents had an exellent attitude to education and that now she was better she would almost definitely have excellent attendance again. My pleas fell on deaf ears, and Clare was taken out, then sent home with an 'attendance diary' to fill in. I don't know what her parents thought - maybe they thought everyone got one that week, but I think if it was me I may have complained! The poor kid had been really quite ill, and there was nothing that could have prevented that, so why make her parents feel guilty about her missing school? I see that quite a bit at schools. Parents bring children to you saying 'he's not feeling very well but I don't want him to miss any education' and the poor child can barely keep his eyes open. I always tell them to take the kids home again as they won't get much of an education if they're too ill to concentrate. I do think some schools are quite bullying about 'you must be here no matter what' and don't take into account that sometimes children are ill, and the best place for them is at home, not throwing up on my classroom floor!

Yes, our school uses an outside agency (where do they come from then, how can I find out, can I complain to them?) and the school's own W&A officer was basically telling me that some parents will use letters home like the one I suggested as "an excuse" not to send their child to school. They basically sound scared of the consequences of reminding parents not to send vomiting children to school.

How tf did we end up in this situation?

I suppose it's all to do with league tables and 100% attendance being some measure of how good the school is. Although I don't know if attendance is included in Ofsted reports so could be talking out my arse there.

It does make me when I see things about ill DC being penalised like this though - like the DC who have conditions that necessitate hospital appointments, meaning that they don't have 100% attendance and can't attend Christmas parties and the like - how fucking stupid and mean is that. Especially when it involves primary school children. :(

I had to keep ds off school each time he threw up in the car....... He was car sick, but there was no leeway with the rule, which is stupid for travel sickness. Sometimes common sense is needed!

Couldn't agree more thumbwheel.

Ask them to confirm in writing that that's the policy.

our school regularly says in newsletters - if d and v - off for two days.

It's made very clear.

Loads of parents ignore it because they don't have any childcare and don't feel they can miss work unless the child is virtually in hospital. I feel for the school and these parents. It's really tough.

But if my ds is sick, he's off for two days automatically. I think it's the responsible thing to do. But many many parents don't think of the school community at all, they only think of themselves!

.

Dear Mrs P

I would be grateful if you could send a reminder letter home to all parents that children with vomiting and/or diahorrea should be kept off school for 48 hours after the last episode.

May I suggest the following wording:

For fucks sake don't send your sick kids in to school.

That should do the trick.

Yours sincerely

Scaley McN

Oh god the trouble we had with this 'rule' in dd1's first year of school.

She suffered from chronic dihorrea/constipation of unknown cause for about 18 months. Meaning lots of time off school. Mainly with appointments to gp/consultants/peads/nutritionists to try and get to the bottom of it. Add to that the time off when she had dihorrea and her attendance fell below the magic number.

Cue 'informal' chat with the EWO telling me if her attendence did not improve before the end of term then we would be fined. But no she could not come into school if she had dihorrea (even though we knew it was not a bug causing it) .

They could see that at least 75% of her absences were for medical appoinments, but apparently it is still absence (even when it is authorised ).

They insisted on being cc'd into all future correspondence between dd1's doctors and myself. And I had to take photocopies of all appointment letters. Which meant I actually had to trek to the doctors to make an appointment in person, rather than just phone.

In the end I invited the EWO to come and sit in the bathroom with us for an hour while dd1 either screamed in pain because she ould not go or stunk the place out because she could not stop going. She declined, funnily enough. But I did get my point accross and they were more helpful to me after that.

I am always a bit unclear on whether it's diorrhea AND vomitting or diorrhea OR vomitting.

DCs' nursery always used to have 24 hours after diarrhoea OR vomiting and 48 hours after diarrhoea AND vomiting. But recently they've changed it to a flat 48 hours.

Surely attendance is split? On any report I've seen it's always distinguished into 2 groups - authorised (ie illness) and unauthorised (ie mitching / holidays). Is not this the way to get round it?

Our school has a 48hr policy - rigorously enforced and massively promoted.

Yeah it is but authorised absence is still absence unless it's 'holidays' which have to authorised well in advance and you only get 10 days per year. SO for seriously sick children or children with ongoing illness then 10 days won't be enough anyhow.

But surely if the absence is authorised then the school have to know about it and therefore authorise it? Are schools not capable of supervising their own children? What nonsense. Another example of our big brother society.

You're lucky to have 10 days holidays. Our schools don't do it at all anymore. DDs had an unauthorised absence last year to attend a family wedding. It was their first in 12/9 years and they were devastated! I haven't told them yet that they'll be getting another in the Spring, for the same reason!