To believe that a communication system which relies on children between 7 and 11 to be messengers, is not going to be an effective means of communication?

[GiantSquirrelSpotter]

And indeed, is going to inevitably be a downright inefficient and crap one?

This is the system my DS's school has in place. 7/ 8 year olds are old enough to take responsibility, so the theory goes, therefore they have to put papers, letters etc, in their bags and deliver to their parents. No-one checks that they have put said missives in their bags. I ask every day "have you forgotten anything from your tray?" and the answer is no.

So today I find out he's missed an afternoon club which I'd signed him up for, as he's never brought me back any paperwork about it. Last time it was my parents' evening appointment.

OK I know the theory, and I know it's time consuming and inefficient for the class teacher to check they've got everything and they're supposed to be old enough but er... he's not.

AIBU to expect the school to take communicating with parents a bit more seriously than this? Or should I just expect to be communicated with on an arbitrary ad hoc, inefficient, run by an eight year old basis? Am I being an over-demanding parent?

Lots of homes do have computers, but lots don't. Schools have to be sure that they are even handed in their approach.....for example our school policy is noT8 to assume that a child has access to a computer for homework, for example, because many people don't* have them.

Real world isn't MN

It's a huge task though to split correspondence into those who have e-mails and those who don't. To save waste the teacher would have to have a list of who has e-mail and who has hard copy; it would result in more confusion. We remind parents of important stuff in a weekly newsletter to back up anything that's gone out in the week.

Then you have the parents who despite all this just stick any letters straight in the bin and then come to the office to moan about lack of communication .....

well pointydog my 5 yo is expected to remember to tell me things without the back-up of notes in bags. this is ridiculous and ianbu.

Would that be a newsletter that kids put in bags to take home?

It would pointydog, yes ........

I am replying to op, bossy.

We get one of those.

I must say that for us, notes in the reading bag work. And we are not known for our organisational skills Chez Bishop.

I did say uyou were all whinging, didn't I.

Speak to his teacher.

"You;'re all whinging."

I beg to differ!

ok. So parents and children can be relied upon to take newsletters home effectively but not letters?

Our school teach the children quite early on to be responsible for letters and communication.

I've never seen it as a problem, but a friend whose younger lad is in yr 5 stll dislikes the system - even after 9 years contact with the school.

without boring everyone senseless, my policy is to avoid "speaking" to his teacher for the rest of the school year following the incident where dh and i made an appt to "speak" to said teacher, during which teachers very defensive response to our points was that we weren't returning ds's library books promptly enough and he kept "telling" ds to remind us...

will not be speaking to this teacher again about anything significant - will be going straight to the head and since that is the equivalent of calling in a nuclear strike - we will not be doing it!

teacher's

We get letters, and newsletters, all sent the same way, in the book bag.

Where I work, a secondary, we send routine stuff home with the kids (concert dates etc). More important stuff, like the date for progress day, we send in the post.....some children 'accidentally' forget to take those home

Newletter is used as reinforcement of the original letter. Hopefully the parent will get one or the other and if we're lucky - both!

It seems optional for my DS (year 3)to bring home his reading book and home work. The teacher never checks he has his home work, and never seems to wonder why he hasn't done it. I only found out last week that DS has has no PE kit for most of this term( and only because I had a meeting with the Head during a PE lesson). I sent a kit in after Easter, but it seems to have disappeared. DS didn't'think to tell me he had been missing PE and Games!

Yes, but will they read them Saggars?

DS1 (yr8)has everything posted.
DS2 (yr2)has stuff handed to him as he comes out the door.

Oh who knows rebel lol!

Hmm... Our school use this system for communication, and it works pretty well.

I approve completely with children being given responsibility: it is the only they will learn. And it's much easier to train them at 7 than at 11.

My ds1 (yr5) is very absent-minded, and is often daydreaming on a completely different planet, but he had learned to get himself organised.

Neither of them are great at telling me about letters/forms/homework that they have remembered to put in their bags, but I'm pretty good at checking

batters, are you going to brockwell park on sunday?

Well everyone approves of kids being given appropriate responsibility. But this isn't about responsibility, it's about whether schools want to communicate effectively with parents or not. They say they do. But if that is the case, why do they design a system of communication which is inevitably going to fail? I know of no other organisation, which relies on a network of 7 year olds to communicate with one of its client groups and then claims that this is an effective method of communication.

This isn't about children and responsibility, it's about schools communicating with parents. The two issues are completely separate imo.

I agree it's not an easy problem to solve, you can't just assume everyone has e-mail, you can't assume everyone picks their children up from school, and you can't have separate systems for each little group of parents because it would be a ridiculous waste of time. But it is possible to acknowledge that it's an issue and to try to address it, even imperfectly. As MB says, no system is ever perfect. But one which relies on 7 year olds - surely you couldn't design one less likely to work? There must be better options than that.

Come on now, your challenge is to design one!

But I don't think it is unreasonable for children to learn that letters home are important, that they need to put them straight in their bags when they are given them, and that parents need to have a routine where they check bags daily.

My boys really are not very organised and efficient, and we always get letters and message promptly and reliably.

The OP's poster has missed out on an afterschool club today: as a parent or a teacher I would be talking that through, commenting how disappointing it is, and making that into a learning/motivating experience for him to develop routines for himself to make sure the letters get home.