To flame the school for sending kiddo home with someone else's report & they got hers

[GallopingHeffalumps]

What the title says. It's not ok, right, if the school sends your child home with another kids report & they get your child's report?

We have shared pics of them over messenger & kids will swap them back at school on Monday. But wondering how much of a fuss to make to the school about the mess-up. Thoughts?

i wouldnt be surprised if they stop sending out paper reports soon. GDPR means that the potential repercussions for this are not worth the risk for someone who probably earns £15k a year pro rata with school holidays not included

Even electronic ones still carry a risk. We had a weird glitch in our online parent database and when you clicked a parent's name to write an email, it was sending it to the next parent down on the list (so the writing mail list was out of sync with the sending mail list, I guess). It was caught very quickly thanks to a parent replying very quickly to say they'd got a rogue email but still had be logged and reported. If we'd clicked send on a whole load of electronic reports that day it would have been terrible.

GDPR is very scary.

Also, I can only speak for the school I'm in, but no way would the office staff have time to stuff 350 envelopes; they've got far too much to do. It's our job as teachers to get our own tutor groups reports into envelopes. All the office staff can do is send what we've done. Much more likely to be teacher error than secretary.

Oh good god. What is it with all the school bashing? Have you never made a mistake OP. Human error it is common.
I know organise a public hanging for the mistake in the school yard. Is it any wonder Teacher are finding the job more and more difficult. They are the ones who give your DC the biggest opportunity in life, an education.
FFS seriously, get a grip OP.

They were in envelopes with the wrong names on.

Ah I see, that is different. Teachers don’t print off the reports, the office do all of that after proof reading.

I would actually agree that if they put the wrong report in an envelope addressed to you then it does need to be mentioned. I would be pretty horrified at the office making such an error. As a parent I would be cross. My daughter’s report is her own business and mine.

Yes it is a simple mistake to make but, especially if there is SEN etc, it can be a very sensitive mistake to make.

Also, I can only speak for the school I'm in, but no way would the office staff have time to stuff 350 envelopes;

I’ve worked in 3 schools and teachers have never printed the reports- office staff have. So it could be office error.

I’ve never sent home the wrong report, but the potential for disaster is always there. Especially now that teachers are overloaded, time-poor and some tasks get passed on to other members of staff.
Accidents happen, but this is a serious breech of confidentiality, whatever the report said. So I’d follow it up, not looking for a witch hunt, but so that it didn’t happen again.

emerald I agree. In terms of my appraisal being sent to someone else, well believe me there are far worse crimes a line manager can commit ime. We tend to talk about them and know each others gradings anyway.

I’ve never sent home the wrong report, but the potential for disaster is always there

For me disaster is if a DC is hurt in an avoidable accident not someone else getting their report. Safeguarding is far more important to me as a parent than GDPR.

Let's face it, this is only really going to lead to problems for the staff who made the mistake in cases like edwinbear's where a parent is embarrassed by their child's difficulties/ need for support.

Edwinbear, if I opened my end of year appraisal and it was someone else's I'd stop reading it and pop over to give it to the right person. I'd let the admin person know there was an error. I'd also know it was just a mistake.

At uni my smear test result was sent to the wrong person, we share a name, but she lived in different halls. I found out as this person told a group of people I had to go back to be re-tested, one of whom happened to know me too. I told the gp practice and they apologised. An apology was good enough for me. Humans make mistakes.

It’s clearly a GDPR breach. It applies to all personal data. Saying that people are busy and overworked and can make mistakes is not an excuse. Mistakes shouldn’t be made. If it’s your job to send out reports, you have a duty to pay attention to detail and not make mistakes.

This has to be reported to the school. Their procedures need to change to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Teatea, it depends on what is in the report, and whether it is read by a competitive gossip with no sense of appropriate behaviour.

This mistake is understandable. In many schools it’s the teachers trying to get reports into envelopes near the end of the day whilst in a class of 30 odd pupils trying to teach them whilst doing admin tasks at the same time with constant interruptions. The office staff are too busy and particularly in private schools teaching staff are expected to do all manner of admin tasks that some state school staff do not do. There is always the pressure to get the reports out by the end of the day when they are only being printed and brought to you at the last minute. Spare a thought for overworked teachers and school admin staff honestly trying their best to please parents and occasionally making errors in their rush to do so.

have sent email to head to make them aware

What a big bloody fuss about nothing.

does it make a difference if the human in the office or the human in the teacher made an error.

I think its worth pointing out that an error was made and that many parents would have been upset if personal academic details were shared with strangers and that you appreciate it was probably just human error, but could they look to see if there was anything that could be done to make an error less likely - eg working in pairs and saying the name on the report out loud and envelope out loud.

No need to flame - but its not something I wouldn't mention at all.

GallopingHeffalumps please can I ask - do you use kiddo because you're being gender neutral or is it just a word you picked up?

I'm asking as the only people I know who use it are a young bunch of mums who use kiddo instead of girl or boy and are keen on the idea that their young children will tell them what gender they are when they're older and I wondered if I can assume people who use kiddo probably are unconsciously being gender neutral?

YANBU, Op.

Why wouldn't you say something?

Are the names very similar??

Sorry phone corrected consciously to unconsciously!

When I was at primary school, reports didn't have envelopes, and we had all read each others before the parents saw them.

With the maximum fines for GDPR breaches being into the millions (far more than fines under the old Data Protection Act, yes, breaches could be potentially disastrous for schools. Even a 2% lower level fine would equate to £20,000 per £1m of budget. That's at least one whole staff member. I doubt these days that there are many schools who can soak up this financial hit. In the borough in which I live they're cutting nearly a million quid from the overall school budget -this equates to about 15k per school.
So yes, it could be disastrous...for outcomes in general, for staffing levels, for SEN provision, if admin staff make these clerical errors. Because a lack of money within a school, however that lack of money was caused, will always have a detrimental effect on the students.

Yes it’s a data breach but it’s also just a human error. Let it go ffs.

The ico has indicated in very strong terms that they wouldn't be looking to fine schools for GDPR breaches (particularly something like this) but work with them to improve their practice - so I think that quite unlikely.

What a shame it’s all come to this. I once received my child’s report and another child’s in the same envelope. I quietly told the teacher (was one office person putting hundred of reports into envelopes) who just disposed of the extra report. No more done. The report for the other child had already been printed out for him again, they couldn’t figure out what had happened to the original report. I can’t imagine kicking up a fuss about it and going to the head. Gdpr might have its benefits but it means that now, teachers can’t give out lists to parents of names for writing Christmas cards or party invitations and minor things like this. What a shame!

I got DS report a few years back which was all about him apart from PE where it was about a girl who wasn’t very good at swimming but has tried really hard. I mentioned it to the teacher, she was horrified but we saw the funny side. Especially as at the time my son was pre-squad in his swimming club

Are there any cases of that actually happening to a school why? It seems a theoretical scenario to me.