To expect School to know where my child is?

[leomum13]

This morning I had a call from school asking me to make payment for an after school club my DS has been attending for the last 3 weeks. I had no idea he had been going and when I questioned this I was told the after school club allows all children in yr4 and above to just tell them where they are going. They said they did check on him by looking through a window but nothing has been mentioned to me until now. There is a register for this club (which he was not on) as well as after school club (which he was on) and it seems strange to me that it was just accepted for him to go where he wants without any form of documentation giving my consent. Unsure whether to push this further?

The 8 year old has told both the ASC and the hobby club that he is meant to be at hobby club, despite this not being the case. And then he's not told his parent that he's been going to hobby club either .

In a school where they trust the 8 year old to know where they are meant to be, the 8 year old is not blameless here.

redsky OPs DS didn’t lie. He told her he’d been to drawing club. She assumed it was a daytime club

Her OP says "I had no idea he had been going" ...

Sounds like it's part of the after school club though, right? A paid part, but nevertheless. So given he's already got consent for after school, the important part is that he's still on premises and witnessed. So they know where he is.

Now, separate from that is the pay-for question. There's no way they should be putting him into a pay-for activity without a signed consent form. And there's no excuse for not having him on the register for that.

Unless... by "not on" does OP mean "wasn't listed"? That would seem appropriate, given he wasn't enrolled.

So kid appears to have decide to go drawing, and gone drawing. Kid could easily not have been aware that drawing club is pay for - why would he? That's above his pay grade. He told OP and some staff or other that he was going, and as far as he knows discharged his responsibility.

Comedy of errors. No safeguarding issue as kid is onsite and supervised.

Whoever on staff that has tagged this for payment without checking back is in error though - how did that happen without kid being on the register, and without staff checking back for consent/joining form?

@RedSkyLastNight do read the OP's posts before arguing.
"He had mentioned a drawing club but just assumed it was something free during school time"

So he's at the drawing club, but not on the register. The ASC won't have marked him present on their register, because he's not there. What if there's a fire?

This isn’t proper safeguarding, no. Registers should be accurate and they weren’t. Op, I’m confused as to how come after school club had never ever mentioned your DS going to the hobby club to you when you picked him up from after achool clib those different times. When you signed him out wasn’t there a note by his name to say he was at the hobby club that day?

It is just all a bit haphazard and amateur-sounding. When my ds’s were in primary any paid-for clubs were booked and paid for in advance by parents. They just wouldn’t have let kids wander in and take part without checking with a parent first. I would be annoyed that they had allowed him to go for weeks and then billed you afterwards. Quite unprofessional.

After school club woukd have phoned me to discuss exactly where DS should be if he hadn’t turned up at after school club as expected. On some really busy days I just forgot to let them know he was off sick and without fail they rang me to check his whereabouts even if another kid told them he’d been off sick that day.

Any kids registering at after school club and then moving to a hobby club shortly afterwards would have been taken to hobby club by a member of after school club or picked up by hobby club person, they certainly wouldn’t have been allowed to just wander off out of after school club especially if they had not been informed by a parent that they would be attending hobby club.

Imagine if that child had just taken it upon themselves to walk out of school. After school club assume he arrived each time at hobby club (looking through a window isn’t great safeguarding, new staff can make ID mistakes from a distance), hobby club assumed parent knew child was there (HOW woukd they know if they hadn’t filled in consent form??). Parent thought child was in after school club as that was the agreed arrangements between the adults. Meanwhile chikd has wandered out of school to go to corner shop/see a friend/whatever a silly 8 year old may take it upon themselves to do. Anything could then happen to them and no-one woukd have a clue till the parent turns up at after school to find them not there.

Very lackadaisical arrangements and I certainly wouldn’t be paying the hobby club money unless my child had forged my signature and THEN my child would get a massive bollocking and not be allowed to go until the next half term started.

Was he going back to asc after drawing club? If so I can't see a safeguarding issue as they know he's at drawing club and he returns to them when it ends.

It seems bizarre that the drawing club let children turn up and take part without parental consent, given it's a paid activity rather than a free one. I wouldn't expect a child to consider that the ASC has been paid for already and the other club needs paying for too - kids don't have to pay for stuff like that out of their own money, so it's not on their radar - but surely the club would have said "Here's a consent form for your parent to sign first, see you next time"?

I would also expect ASC staff to look for him and ask if he has consent to be elsewhere, since his parent is paying for the after school club and presumably then expects the child to be there...