To think the supply teacher, not the child, is wrong?

[CoughLaughFart]

Just been talking to my neighbour and wondered what you thought of this?

Her teenage daughter was ill on Monday night, but felt well enough for school on Tuesday morning. However, on the walk there she felt sick, so turned around and went home.

She went back to school yesterday with an absence note for the two days. It turns out that her form tutor had also been off and a supply teacher covered registration. One of the girl's friends had seen her walking up to school, said she was on her way, and the supply teacher marked her in.

The form tutor told my neighbour's daughter that she should have let someone know she had gone home; what if there had been a fire or emergency and people had been looking for her? The daughter argued that she'd never got to school, so hadn't 'gone home' - she was never there. The teacher apparently said 'But people had seen you here - it was your responsibility to let us know you weren't'.

My neighbour is really annoyed that the teacher blamed her daughter for what she sees as the supply teacher's mistake - and I agree. Surely a teacher, full time or not, should only mark a child present if they've seen them? Otherwise someone could easily get a friend to say 'She's on her way', get registered and then play truant. In my view the teacher is pushing what was obviously the supply teacher's mistake onto the child. Would you agree?

It´s the teacher´s mistake, but really, is it such a big deal? The register is changed to show her off for two days instead of one. That´s all. I wouldn´t even get slightly worked up about this.

Yes it's not like they punished her in some way.

Odd that it wasn't flagged up that she was registered in in the morning but didn't turn up to any lessons.

Normally you would be expected to phone in sick at my school, not bring in a note days later.

"Odd that it wasn't flagged up that she was registered in in the morning but didn't turn up to any lessons."

Why would it be if it was different teachers after registration?

Most schools use electronic registers where these things can be monitored fairly easily. Certainly a class teacher could see that a student had registered in the morning and then not attended their lesson. In my last school we had to do and submit the register in the first 10 minutes of the lesson so that these sorts of things could be checked.

In dd's school they are registered electronically for each lesson and it would show up on the system if someone had been there for morning register but then not arrived at lessons. I imagine most schools are the same.

Oops!

Showing my age there

I wonder if schools could implement the thumb print system for registration. They have it for school dinners so I imagine it would just be a case of having a scan pad in each class at the door and pupils could scan themselves as they walk in. It's not like anyone could fake their mate's thumbprint.

The teacher was wrong here - I only mark a child present if I can physically see them in front of me.

At my school, we register pupils at each lesson so it would have been picked up very quickly that there was an error - sounds like the school need to tighten their registration procedures.