AIBU to want to complain to school?

[smallchanceofrain]

DS2 (11) has just started secondary school. He has an ASD diagnosis and social communication, or in fact any communication, is an issue for him.

Yesterday he arrived home at 12.50. Just as I got home from dentist, shopping etc. He said they were all sent home at 12.30 because the teachers needed to prepare for the Year 6 open evening. Usually I would have been at work. He does have a back up plan and knows who he can go to if I'm not at home but they might not have been in either.

He can't remember anyone telling him about this in advance but I checked with another parent and her son had told her about it the day before. DS2's listening skills aren't great and his memory is shocking (unless he's being told something about dinosaurs or trains). Either he didn't hear or he forgot to tell me.

It just doesn't seem reasonable to expect every child (and particularly one with his needs) to be reliable enough to pass on a message to parents. AIBU to think that school should have let parents know?

Thanks all. There was no email. I did check the school website. It wasn't on there. It just has the open evening in the calendar. They also have twitter and facebook accounts as well. Nothing on there either, just some photos of what seems to have been a very successful open evening. The irony is that I was at a Year 7 parent's evening on Wednesday - the perfect opportunity to make sure that his form tutor and the SENCo had his provision map in hand and had seen his "school passport", which explains his communication issues, but still no one told me. Perhaps I won't "complain" but clearly I do need to have words with them.

In general, I don't see anything wrong with expecting senior school age children to remember to deliver messages from school - and I suspect that a message about extra time off school is one that most children would happily remember and pass on - but if a child can't remember to pass on messages, or has some additional needs, there should be a system whereby the messages are sent directly to the parents. Maybe it could be an opt-in system, to keep down the numbers involved.

Our school tells parents, but also says that the kids can stay at school if necessary.

Half days don't happen often, sometimes the last day of term but not all the time.

I would always expect a school to tell parents directly, parents want to know where their kids are (or aren't). We live in an era of texts and emails, you don't need pupil post anymore.

Doesn't sound like they did enough to inform you op. We get a letter with the school calendar on and it's on there, plus on the website. It was also on fb/twitter and a notice on the website too. Mind you, exactly the same methods were used to inform people that a council school bus had been cut and people still complained that their child had been stood at the bus stop waiting for a non existent bus as no one had told them.
Could you contact them and ask how they inform people of half days and go from there?

Sorry the school bus being cut was on fb/twitter/website notice and newsletter, not on the calendar

That's really poor.

If one of mine appeared home at lunchtime and declared that the school was shut for the afternoon with no letter, no text and nothing on the website I'd be suspicious they were skiving!