School sends 10yr old DS home to empty house.

[khaleesi71]

I work 50 miles from home and DH is SAHD. Yesterday DS was to go to an after school club until 4. However he 'hurt' his ankle and said he didn't want to do his activity. I say 'hurt' as our old cat was put to sleep this week with little notice and he's been sad and clingy (understandably). The school know this. As DS was not due back until 4 he was out on some errands. Unfortunately the area has a dreadful signal and there are some complete black spots so he did not see the 4 missed calls from the school. When he emerged from the black spot he picked up a message to say 'Finlay didn't want to do his club, he's hurt his ankle and we've sent him home'. To an empty house. DS was scared and upset but had the sense to take himself to a friends house and they wrote a note to put through our letter box so DH knew where he was when he got home. DH had come home as they were doing this. We have complained to the school and asked for their policy on this but I'm so cross that they put DS in this vulnerable position. Is this normal practice? I can't understand why they didn't keep him in his (paid for) after school activity whilst they contacted DH - who would have picked him up at 4 anyway.

glad the school have come back to you OP.
get your ds a phone. saves all the worry, especially one you can track them on.
i have to tell myself a lot "let her go, this time next year she'll be at secondary going a lot further than x,y,z on her own". difficult especially for your eldest (and youngest!) .

This is a problem with assuming that people are always glued to their mobiles!

I don't think that 10 is too young to walk home, but best that it's all known about beforehand.

Presumably went he left he was told that his dad knew & that caused the upset?

Well done that he went to a friend's house.

My ds is 9. I wouldn't let him walk by himself between our village school and home because it is a bendy road with no pavement or visibility. I'm nervous crossing with the dc myself. I do let him walk other places - local shop and park.

I leave him in the house for up to about 20 mins. But being sent home unplanned without a key and not knowing where we were would frighten him. He is still a primary age child and I expect that when he is in the care of another adult they look after him until we return. I don't expect them to leave him on his own without our express permission.

YANBU at all.

I'm glad the school are reviewing this. Irrespective of anything else (walking alone, keys, etc) you had booked an afterschool activity where you expected your son to be until 4 and where he gets collected from. It's massively irresponsible of them to allow him to leave on his own when that's not the arrangement (on that day of the week). Leaving a message with a parent, not actually speaking to them, is very irresponsible too.

I suspect they said to him "does your dp usually pick you up" and he said "no, I walk home- df's at home".
No, they shouldn't have let him go, but they had left messages and I would guess asked him-which in year 6 is reasonable. And he was sensible about it too when he found you weren't in.
At secondary next year he will be just released and that feels very scary when they're new year 7s.

A few weeks ago, ds (just 9yo)'s afterschool club was cancelled. The first thing I knew about this was a call from dd2 saying ds had arrived home.

They hadn't bothered phoning round to tell us, and had told the children to go to the afterschool club. Unfortunately this is a big school and ds' form hadn't got the message. He came out to do it and found it wasn't there. Looked for the judo van and saw it wasn't there. So walked home. 50 minute walk-he'd have been on his own as well because he'd got to get changed and then find it wasn't there so everyone else had gone.

I was not impressed firstly with him:
He should have gone and asked at the office. The girls would have done this without considering another option. Unfortunately in emergency situations ds tends to go into army initiative tests. May save his life some time, I guess, but at times it isn't helpful. So he considers what to do and his conclusion was he needed to be home. He has a mobile in his bag so could have even called me (although he's not meant to at school, it's under the lining as emergency. This was the time to use it!
Secondly at the school: The fact he hadn't been told was not good. But that they hadn't reacted to him being missing was a huge safeguarding issue.
In all honesty, as it turned out well, I'm very glad the first thing I knew was a call saying "ds is here". A call saying "ds should be at afterschool club and we've no idea where he is" would do much worse things to my blood pressure.

I was tempted to go down to school and pretend I was there to pick him up, and see what the reaction was. However I didn't. I went in and saw the head instead, and he was quite horrified, so I don't think that'll happen again.

But as another thing I would have been very unimpressed to find him in the afterschool club and me not given the option of picking him up simply because they will have charged everyone for it!

6 and half a dozen for me. Your DS has a tongue in his head and could have said he's not allowed to walk home on his own and he wasn't sure if his dad was in. School could have asked DS this also.

They did try to contact your DH and to be fair they should maybe questioned your DS further at that point. Did they then try to contact you, surely there is a cascade system if they get no joy from the primary number?

Finally, if your DH has sole responsibility for your DS, he should be reasonably available even when he is supposed to be in school or club.

Good to hear that the school are looking into this, but after your update I am wondering why your son left on his own if he knew he was not supposed to do that.

Wankers. Read the thread. Perhaps you could define 'reasonably available'? DH was out on errands and had his phone with him, fully charged and switched on. One of life's inconvenient truths is that a phone signal is not 100% guaranteed. Not sure what else DH could have done really

The school told him to go home and recognise now they should not have done that.

I agree with OP. I am a lone mum, and always try to be 'available' for calls about my DC, but does that mean I must never go out of reception, at any point, even when I have every reason to believe children are supervised at school?? I guess I should let my work know I can't risk any trips to clients, ever again, just in case the receptions poor!

If he had 4 missed calls presumably he was out of signal for a while. Are you 2nd on the list for calls? Why would they phone him 4 times and not try you?

The school were definitely wrong, but do you know who it was who sent DS home? Was it a school teacher (who should know the school policy) or someone from an external company (who also should know the policy but might not, especially if they normally work with secondary).

As other PP have said, you can turn this into a learning experience for DS: praise him for going to a friend's house and for putting a note through for his dad. Also, make sure he knows that he can say "no" to teachers & authority figures if they tell him to do something he's uncomfortable with, like walking home alone.

There always has to be a 2nd contact. My DH isn't contactable but my sister is 2nd contact. She lives an hour away but can at least give a parental decision 5the school which in this case would be to ask him to stay at school.

yanbu the school are knobs

They didn't try and call me. I was at my desk and they have mobile, landline and email details - work and personal. I knew where DH was as we were conversing over gift options (before he went into the black hole of no signal). So if they had contacted me I could have let them know.

It was a member of office staff, who we've known for a while and has worked at the school forever
DS would not have know if DH was in. It wouldn't have crossed his mind to think that his DH might be out the house doing something!! Another learning point

I would be livid and I would be rising my concerns with the school. A similar incident happened to my brother when we were children and on his way home he was physically attacked.

For all after school clubs we have to fill in a form about who is collecting or if we give authority for our child to walk home alone. No way would our school just let them walk home particularly earlier or later than the agreed time. A message is not satisfactory particularly given that the club finished shortly after anyway. My daughter couldn't go to her club yesterday due to an injury and when I went to pick her up early she was sat in the office with the office staff doing some reading!

I would definitely raise this with the school.

The crux of its that having not reached your DH and having not tried you, any reasonable person would assume that there was no one home and then work out a strategy accordingly.

The walking home thing is a bit of a red herring. he usually walks home and he shouldn't be relying on another 10 year old to tell him when it's safe to cross the road. he needs to know that he is able to cross it safely himself.

He needs to know what to do if there is no-one home - which he actually did and kept himself safe, but didn't have the knowledge of what he was expected to do. In my case I used to arrive home just as school was letting out. They knew if I wasn't already home, they were to wait a few minutes and then go to ndn. if they weren't in then they had a couple of options one of which was returning to school. Luckily they never needed any of those and they are High School now and have their own keys etc.

The school was wrong to send your son home knowing that they were unable (or unwilling) to contact anyone and presumably not having asked him if he was able to get into the house or had somewhere else to go. They were not wrong per se in allowing him to walk home alone.

They were not wrong per se in allowing him to walk home alone.

Except of course if your form explicitly said he wasn't to, in that case they are wrong for that too.

At our school children are either allowed to walk home alone or they aren't. I think this halfway house of 'ok with friends' is a bit of a cop-out on your part tbh. What if they fall out on the way and they leave him? And are you really expecting them to take responsibility for his safety?

They sent an injured child to walk home alone?

Barbarian - when he is in after school care - yes!! Why wouldn't I expect them to keep him safe? The school accepted they breached their own policy and will revisit it to ensure he doesn't happen again.

Do read the thread. The school office staff confused permission to walk home after school with inappropriately releasing him when he was injured and unable to participate in the after school activity. The school accept that he should have been kept at school until 4pm or until DH arrived (whichever was sooner).

I think Barbarian was making the same point as I was about the other children he was walking with rather than the school. As in, he isn't allowed to walk home alone 'cos it's a busy road but he can walk with his friends, so are you expecting that the other 10 year old take responsibility for your DSs safety and telling him when it's okay to cross?

I think the OP mentioned the busy road as a factor, when he was sent home in the dark, u expectedly. I don't think it was actually stated that he was to walk with other kids because of the road - I interpreted the OPs posts to say that it was because of the man who exposed himself to the child earlier in The year. And I think that is a very sensible idea to reassure the child, and likely to lower the risk of him seeing anything else disturbing. Do people really think a 10 yo needs to learn to deal with that kind of thing alone???

I think that perhaps you should give him a key in case it happens again and consider letting him walk alone. He is 10 and should be capable of this.

Yanbu. When I taught secondary (10 years ago now) parents had to come to school to collect sick/ injured kids. Unless they absolutely insisted that it was OK and sent a taxi to collect.