WIBU to mention this to school?

[ChaosTrulyReigns]

Really concerned that I might br interfering where I shouldn't but also concerned that this isa safe-guarding issue.

So MN guide me please.

Have seen a young child walking home alone from school twice now. It's probably 500yards,no major roads to cross. But he's definitely younger than the age the school suggests they can walk home from after a parent school conference.

Now I don't know whether school have made a special exception in this case and so I'm butting in unnecessarily.

Or, no arrangement has been made and the school needs to be alerted. I don't feel comfortable speaking directly to this parent.

comedycentral makes a good point which is that it's better to ask on MN and people nicely say it's fine, don't worry than for the OP to get involved in something she admits she knows little about. If we pile in with shouts of mind your own business then similarly worried people may not post for advice. I know AIBU is asking for opinions but there are ways of saying it's fine, don't worry and of saying why are you sticking your nose into someone else's business? I'm not Olivia or any of the other lovely MN staff but wouldn't it be nice if we could give people advice without ripping them apart for having voiced concerns?

You mean like grown women chatting in a rl situation where advice is given and taken and no one goes off half cock, FreeWee? Psssh!, the very idea!

Actually I think yanbu. Better safe than sorry.

Dd's (state) school will not allow kids to leave alone til year 6, something I agree with. Year 3 is still so young.

dolphins, safeguarding doesn't work like that.

If a person has a concern about a child they pass that concern onto the appropriate person. They're not required to investigate the validity of the concern, just to pass it on.

as someone with responsibility for safeguarding at my school, I am glad that people report concerns. As a PP said, it's everyone's responsibility.

This better be safe than sorry attitude will no doubt lead to OP informing the school, who will treat it as a serious complaint which, JUST IN CASE, they are obliged to treat as a serious safeguarding issue, which means they will have to make a full report to Social Services, who will visit the parents, JUST IN CASE, because it will be seen as their fault if something happens, etc etc etc. Just leave the poor family alone.

9Bluedolphins, are you actually reading my responses?

Didn't say they were poor, either.

Don't most 7 and 8 year olds play out????

they venture more than 500 yards then surely.

alot of drama over nothing Imo.

no roads and presumably the child is sensible and capable.

KickingOff well quite!

I have absolutely no frame of reference for when I will let my child do a similar walk on their own and it's only by reading MN that I get a yardstick idea of what the range of acceptability is. If the school advise Y6 then it's no wonder in the OP's mind Y3 is outside the range of acceptability in the context of the school her DC attend. However other posters say in their school's context it's fine so hopefully the OP's mind is at rest.

Pondering at the ethics of a school ruling that no child can leave unaccompanied until year 6. Can they enforce this? Can parents overrule this? Surely a child who lives two doors down from the school and has no roads to cross cannot be detained by the school if the parents are content to let them come home by themselves?

Do they have a similar rule governing how children get to school in the morning? if they do not, then it is hypocritical.

Allowing independent travel only in year 6 seems very short-sighted. It's insufficient time to prepare for high school when they will probably have to make longer journeys.

Allowing independent travel only in year 6 seems very short-sighted. It's insufficient time to prepare for high school when they will probably have to make longer journeys.

Exactly.

I think where we do need a debate is why in other countries children are expected to walk to school without parents from age 6 onwards, while in this country many schools and parents consider that tantamount to child abuse. Where did these huge differences, between western European countries, come from? Germany and Denmark, just 2 examples, are about a million times more relaxed about this.

I consider myself a fairly responsible parent. I have let dd2 (now 8) walk to our local papershop (approx. 500m away) since she was in year 3. It is A Good Thing imo. I would be horrified and quite frankly would want to throttle someone who interfered in my parenting choices in this way. And as for a school that only allows Yr 6 children to walk home on their won? Words fail me.

I am in my 50s, and certainly back in the 60s and 70s I was travelling by myself from the age of 7. That involved walking at each end and two different buses. That was seen as totally normal. (I had 2p in my purse to phone home in case of emergency!)

Lots of people didn't have a car at all, far less two, so parents normally didn't have the opportunity to drop off/pick up kids. And we all managed.

There cab literally be just a day between the oldest of yr 3 and the youngest of yr 4. yet some of you would feel comfortable with a yr 4 making the trip but not a yr 3.

does a day or a week or a month really make a huge difference

My sister and I rode to school on two buses from reception onwards, so I would have been doing this at 4yo. There was a short walk, including crossing at traffic lights, between the two bus stops, and we had to cross at lights once we got to the bus stop near the school. My mother would meet us at the bus stop, in the evening, although by the time we were 6 or 7, we walked ourselves home from the bus stop. This was in the early 70s.

However, this was seen as somewhat unusual, even then, and most of my friends were either driven, or their parents walked with them.

I do remember my mother being somewhat judgy of my "latchkey kid" friend's mother, when I was about 8, though. Which, in retrospect, seems quite hypocritical of her.

I've just checked using GoogleMaps and I walked 0.3 miles by myself from the age of 7. It was a straight road from the school to my house, so my Mum could stand at our corner and watch me come up the road if she liked, but she didn't do it every day. This was completely normal 35 years ago folks! No one picked their child up from school, we all walked!

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest of America, by the way.

dolphins, as I said upthread, you are completely wrong about how safeguarding works in a school.

I'm a trained Child Protection Officer and part of my training involves knowing when to refer concerns to Children's Services. I'm sure other MNs who carry out the same role will tell you the most frequent course of action is no further action. We do not have to write a "full report to Social Services", social workers do not visit the family unless the concerns we have shared with them meet their threshold for intervention, which are considerably higher than you would think.

Part of the government's "early intervention" drive means that concerns that met Children's Services criteria five years ago are now considered the domain of universal services such as schools or health.

I hope that goes some way to clarifying the process for you.

At ds2 school if you want your child to walk home alone before year 6 you have to send in written permission
However when they have a football match or a club or any activity after school in winter, it states very clearly on the letter that no child, irrespective of what year they are in, can walk home alone.
And, a pp asked how they enforce it? Well they just ring the parents. Over and over and over until someone collects them. A boy in ds2 football team was not collected and his parents didn't answer any phones so the football coach took him home and explained that he was not able to play any more because they were not going to allow primary school children to walk home in the dark.
They make it very clear in the letter, if you can't collect them, they can't go.

Personally I didn't let my year 3/4 children walk to school alone. They all started doing that in year 5.

If someone complains to the school, then however silly the complaint it will at the very least go on the child's file, permanently - mud sticks.
A malicious neighbour once complained by anonymous letter to my DC's school that she had seen my child taking packed lunches to school (that was the whole complaint). This was hardly a state secret, but there was a whole investigation, I was called in by the head, not told about the complaint but observed with my DC2 and a report put on DC1's file that my behaviour towards DC2 appeared to be normal, the contents of DC1's packed lunches inspected (apparently all packed lunches are inspected regularly), a report put on the file, and the anonymous complaint was kept on DC1's file permanently, even though the school had no concerns whatever about her eating packed lunches or the content of her packed lunches. I was never told about the complaint, but it came to light when the malicious neighbour escalated her campaign.
It's not a nice thing to do to someone.

Wtf. someone complained at your child being fed?

what a spiteful person would do that

The complaint being that my DC was being given packed lunches rather than school dinners (in reality she had a mix of both).

Why would anyone even care.

can't believe that complaint stayed on record. Ffs

You were very unfortunate then, 9bluedolphins or mistaken. The point of safeguarding isn,t to keep unsubstantiated rumour on file indefinitely. I appreciate your bad experience will have coloured your view on this but that doesn'tmean no one should report anything, ever.