To already roll eyes at the whingy school threads..

[Ditsyprint40]

Working in a school, and being totally inundated with both serious and trivial things..

If my school started a 'someone must be here in 10 minutes' policy, I would most definitely be that parent on MN and elsewhere.

Sometimes school rules are poorly thought out and need to be discussed. Sometimes they are sensible policies.

Jeez, though. Get a grip. This is POLITICS, not personal. You don't think the govt might WANT parents and teachers at each others throats?

"That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital."
Noam Chomsky

Oh - and on support networks - and this has been discussed before - would you collect a child who is not yours and who may have a contagious illness that could be passed on to your DC - thus affecting your work and home life?

Or would you want a Grandparent to get that illness?

"What do you expect when there are loads of threads moaning about teachers?"

Are we playing tit for tat in the playground?

"Or heaven forbid put your dc first and work closer to school, or choose school close to work. It disgusts me when you see children breaking their hearts"

Heaven forbid a parent work more than 10 minutes away in order to feed their child, pay for their school uniform and put a roof over their head? You are delusional!! I work a whole 10 mins away, I'd have to be replaced before I could leave and wouldn't get there for at least 15mins. Call ss

What a twatty post, Gilly. Lots of jobs are in central London. Most people can't afford to live there. I know nobody who works locally.

But even if I put another SAHP down as the emergency, they might be out and it take a while for them to get to the school.

Real life, eh? Still, back to your fantasy la-la-land where people stay close to school all day and every day.

Back to the 1970s where there's always a sahm on hand.

Yes, it takes effort to build these relationships and you often need a hobby to find local friends, but it doesn't need to be a grandparent/ uncle/ aunt all the time.

You really think parents who work full time have got the time, energy or money to take up a "hobby" just on the off chance that someone they meet is able to pick up a child? And how well do you think the child would know this person? Do you really think it would be less upsetting for a child to go off with a virtual stranger when they feel like shit than it would be to stay at school where there are at the very least familiar faces?

You wouldn't have gained a place at 2 of our 3 dc schools.
No show after 10 mins and you'd have been vilified. No excuse I'm afraid, it's disgusting to leave an ill child that long.
Some people don't care about their kids, you find cover.

Meanwhile, in the real world....

• You have to live near a school in order to get a place.
• People have to work in order to live.
• Jobs don't always come up within 10 minutes travel from home.

Or are you suggesting that we all sit at home (well, we won't have a home, because we can't afford one),
...sit in some sort of social housing (hang on, there's none left),
...sit in the street (actually, no homelessness policy states that as a family we should be placed in temporary accommodation and the closest to here is in the same town that I work in - an hour away).

However will we manage to be within 10 minutes of the school, just on the off chance that someone is poorly?

Do you think it would be preferable to move the children's school alongside our jobs, so that we can be on call? Or just ask some random stranger to pick them up? Because everyone we know is either working, has their own kids or is too ill to be on call. And one of the kids is in a special school (which took fucking years), so that might not be so easy.

I am lucky to work from home. But when I am meeting clients I could be anything from 10 minutes to 6 hours away.

Ex-H also works from home but spends at least 50% of the week travelling.

It isn't always possible for everyone to remain within 10 minutes of school.

Fortunately DD's school appreciate that and poorly children go lie on the sofa in the headmistresses office and are generally cosseted and loved until a parent/carer arrives.

Back to the 1970s where there's always a sahm on hand.

In the 1970s nobody had a mobile. Lots of people didn't have a landline. Second cars were extremely rare.

So if the SAHP was e.g. out shopping, they couldn't be contacted. And even if they were at home, they'd have to walk or get public transport to the school. I bet many ill children still had to wait to be picked up.

Would the people who are ok with this thread and moaning about parents be ok if I started a thread moaning about my patients? I work in health care and wouldn't start a thread moaning about all the things the patients and their family do to piss me off.

Just a genuine question to see where the line is.

YR at our school. 3:30pm. Exasperated teacher leaning against the door frame.

Mr Important: But do you think he is academic enough, he needs to get into x school.
Ms Tiger: She should be set spellings. She's reading Harry Potter at home
Ms Helicopter: But did she eat the broccoli at lunch, vegetables are important.
Ms Worried: He isn't wearing his jumper. He'll catch a cold, he must be reminded.
Mr Busybody: I shall bring up this lack of structure with the HT.
Ms Tidy: He's lost his PE kit again, I expect school go replace it.

The other 25 parents hurry their kids out "No, darling, we'll check lost property tomorrow and I'm sure Miss Exasperated is really keen on your story about the frog, tell her tomorrow." I always thought Miss Exasperated was a hero. This kind of parent behaviour stops the 25 other parents to occasionally check something with the teacher, because those 6 are in the queue every bloody day. It's not just teachers who hate this. The 20 minutes fending off daily unreasonable requests could have been spent preparing tomorrow's lessons.

Would the people who are ok with this thread and moaning about parents be ok if I started a thread moaning about my patients

Name no names, keep it unidentifiable and there you go.
The ones who miss appointments.
The ones who take no care of themselves at all.
The ones who really take the NHS for granted. Who shout at receptionists, who expect you to drop everything for them.

I bet there's loads you could say...

Would the people who are ok with this thread and moaning about parents be ok if I started a thread moaning about my patients? I work in health care and wouldn't start a thread moaning about all the things the patients and their family do to piss me off.

Fine by me U2. Crack on!

good grief what a world we live in.

yes, my dc did expect a sick child to be collected within 10 mins, certainly no longer than 30 mins.

Unfortunately, many schools don't have sick bays, or indeed anywhere for sick children to go, or anyone to look after them/ school nurse.

Children were being left for up to an hour and the schools round here took action. Nobody expected it to necessarily be the parent though, a gp, friend of family, extended family etc.

There were children standing in the playground chucking up into buckets, not nice for other children in a small playground when they went out to break and more importantly no good for the child who should be tucked up in the warmth.

I'm surprised parents don't accept this, it's quite shocking, tbh.

I used to cover for a couple of dd friend as did other parents who could.
We did emergency contact, inset days, snow days etc.
I know it's hard when you work, but as I say I'm surprised that some parents think it's fine not to have local cover when they work so far away from school.
It obviously must just be me then, maybe it was seeing the distressed children with nobody looking after them.

I would like to ask parents who think local cover is too much to ask for who on earth they expect to look after their ill children, whose job is it and where on earth they expect schools to place ill children, when there is nowhere in the school to do so.

Fine by me U2. Crack on!

I could write a book

In the 70's I had a severe head trauma - I had to walk home alone and hope Mum was in! So no SAHP to collect

I could write a book

It's been done - the Secret Doctor, GP, Teacher, Social worker series in the Guardian

I would love to be a fly on the wall in any staffroom in any sector dealing with the public.

Believeitornot

You said I had a 'dreadfully patronising' attitude when I said a teachers job was to educate children.

You may or may not be a teacher. That was not my point.

My point is, a teachers job is to teach children.
They are employed to do so.

Who is the 'client' then? the child? the family? the LA?
To whom is a teacher responsible and accountable?
Or, is it no one?

gilly - since you ask, these days I send both DC to private schools. Which do have sick bays and school nurses.

Being a working parent is so much easier if you can afford private. But most people can't.

There were children standing in the playground chucking up into buckets, not nice for other children in a small playground when they went out to break and more importantly no good for the child who should be tucked up in the warmth

What kind of school was this

You wouldn't have gained a place at 2 of our 3 dc schools.
No show after 10 mins and you'd have been vilified. No excuse I'm afraid, it's disgusting to leave an ill child that long.
Some people don't care about their kids, you find cover.

Agree with the many others who have said this is stupid

And i stayed at home with my children for 16 years

Cross post gilly

Of course the teachers think it's OK to talk about patients in a derogatory sense.. because they don't want their own unprofessionalism to be challenged.

It doesn't make it ethically OK.

Patients are vulnerable. Kids are vulnerable. Some parents are vulnerable themselves.

I remember nasty teachers disparaging kids and parents for "being disorganised" when they hadn't brought in the right food for food tech. It was painfully obvious to all of us that the families couldn't afford the items or were too pissed to get it together for the children/give them money to buy it.

Judging people to the extent that you think they're bad parents because they can't collect a vomiting child inside of 10 minutes indicates something is badly wrong; gossiping like that shouldn't be normalised. Let alone on the UK's biggest parenting forum.

What was the point of this thread except to upset people, shame them and start a bunfight?

And agree with HainaultViaNe