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?

Actually, school are in breech of data protection. Im a teacher, so usually defensive of schools, but this us a no no.

Well of course it is a 'no no' they didn't do it on purpose did they? Its not ideal but people make mistakes.

In my school no way would the office stuff all the envelopes, it's done by the TAs normally, at the back of class on deadline day!

I would mention it to the teacher though just to make them aware it happened so the staff can ensure they are more vigilant.

‘Flame’ the school. Really?!

It is going to cause huge drama. You and the other parent opened and swapped the reports without issue.
The poor teacher or administration staff walking in a shit storm on Monday.
You could have had a word with the Teacher herself, it seems spiteful.

It may have been the admin staff in a hurry and not just the teacher. I write reports but do not write envelopes for them and in my school each child is given theirs without envelopes and their name is called and they are given there and then. This is secondary school though.

It is not going to cause a huge Drama! Im a leader in a secondary school. The head will look into the issue and have a word with the member of staff. Then, they will write a short report identifying how the issue occured and how they will ensure it doesnt happen again. As ive said, many times now, this needs to happen as there will be pupils who are vulnerable.

It is NOT spiteful or making a drama to report to the school that they have broken the law

Now they can improve their procedures to prevent it happening again
Next time the breach could have been more serious

I'm shocked how many just want to ignore when a school breaks the law

I agree OP needs to bring it to their attention. It is the flaming attitude I disagree with.

I wouldn't flame them, but I would mention it, just to remind the staff to be extra careful, because if that happened in the future and one of the kids had SEN, their parents might not want another parent to open their kids school report and see information related to their disability.

And for the MNetter who referred to the OP as a prat for her use of words, sounds like you need to go back to school you're so childish.

Reeducator my son has SEN and I'm not ashamed of them. But I don't want other judgemental wankers reading stuff about him and gossiping in the playground. My DS's life has been hard enough without other people gossiping about his condition, which happened a lot in primary. There's a big difference! If you can't see that, have a think about if you'd want your medical notes being sent to the wrong person, that had some sensitive information about a problem you had.

The op has updated saying her email to the head was polite. She was clearly angry in her op but seems to have moved on since then. One of my tutors wrote a report for a pupil stating how much more confidence they had and how they rarely needed to use their 'time out card'. The issue of such cards are private and the system is designed to ensure an anxious pupil can leave a lesson without the other pupils knowing why. Most dont even realise the pupil has a card. They bring the card to the teacher along with a piece of work the teacher sees it and 'asks' that pupil to do a job and they leave. I'd be angry if a report went home to another parent sharing that information. I'd be annoyed as a teacher, as it could undermine the procedures we have in place. Clearly, flaming was ott. But i think the op gets that.

You've sent an email to the head which is absolutely fine & I'm sure they'd want to know with all the new regulations.

I really seem to be missing something surrounding OP's use of kiddo. I've grown up with the word & use it myself, it's affectionate for me. I use it often along with sweetheart, poppet, half pint, pumpkin.

I spend lots of my time advising on data protection. There’s quite a bit of misinformation on this thread

Putting the wrong report in the envelope is a data breach and would have been before GDPR. To suggest that GDPR is causing new problems doesn’t take into account the fact that there were data protection laws before.

The breach might not be reportable to the ICO:that depends on how serious the actual breach is in terms of potential harm to the individuals involved. I would imagine that it’s not that serious - but people minimising this are wrong to suggest this is not a breach

OP was absolutely right to mention it to school. The school should consider whether it could do anything to prevent this happening. That doesn’t mean making more work, it just means potentially doing things differently to try to avoid this happening

I’ve reported a data breach to a small specialist holiday provider who mixed up an online record of my trips with someone else’s. I was perfectly nice about it but I don’t need or want to know loads of data about Fred from Basingstoke or vice versa and albeit unlikely there was a security risk with the amount of identifying information there. But according to some on this thread I would have been being a drama llama

But of course you can’t completely eliminate human error and it’s not a moral failing to make a mistake. However like others on this thread I would get into trouble if I sent the wrong advice to the wrong client: so I really try no to!

Kiddo is commonly used in English speaking Indian culture.

OP it's technically a data protection breach and you could report it. However if this is the first issue you have and are generally happy with the school otherwise, I'd keep the evidence but let it go. My experience of school is that unfortunately it's the tip of the iceberg and you'll probably have bigger fish to fry in the future.

@tempester28 the other kid, clearly. 😂

Waxof
This may be the first issue that the op had had but for all she knows it’s the tenth time it’s happened. It gets reported and then something can be looked at to see if doesn’t happen again. Either a different system or more diligent checking. That way it can prevent harm in the future. It’s nit just physically that children can be harmed but mentally as well and if the wrong report gets into the wrong hands this could lead to great distress. It’s not ott to try to prevent that happening, it’s foresight

*TigerDroveAgain" - I implemented GDPR for my company and was fizzing at some of the incorrect info here, and your post soothed the data protection geek in me!

The ICO would fall over if they had to investigate every incident as tiny as this, but yes, still a breach.

True ivy, I guess my experience has been poor over the years, so a wrong report for a young child would, in retrospect, not worry me in itself. It can as you say be symptomatic of a bigger issue though.

I made a mistake at work once. Put the wrong persons letter in the wrong envelope.

It's called a human mistake.

How unpleasant many posters are. The OP didn't mention flaming anyway. She was quite measured. Quite a lot of defensiveness on this thread and definitely too much wine taken.

@Ceilingrose How unpleasant many posters are. The OP didn't mention flaming anyway. She was quite measured.

Um.... the actual title of the thread asks if she should flame the school. 🙄

Just noticed that flaming was in the title. Still , an over-reaction. And it isn't necessary for 50 people to repeat the same thing.

The school only made a mistake. At the same time, it was a confidentiality breach. It needs mentioning, therefore.

A human mistake with potential legal consequences, Oblomov. To everyone downplaying this, wake up! Yes, it may have been a simple mix up. Yes, it is easy to put the wrong piece of paper in the wrong envelope. However, teacher or not, receptionist at the Dr’s or not, we live in a society where there are serious ramifications for making this kind of error.

To minimize the OP’s upset because you think a rule is petty is ridiculous. It’s the law. You’re not above it, and being a teacher doesn’t make you above it, either (though you’d think so according to some of the responses here). The OP was right to go to the head as it’s the head who will be in trouble if the correct reporting channels are not followed now the error has been identified. If I was that head, I’d want to know so I could do my utmost to improve procedure!

Calm down, no one has been flamed.

Well don’t put that in your thread title then!

This happened to us last year. Both children had the same first name and then report was so generic I didn’t even realise until I read the last section although I was surpised how well my dc had done in maths!
I don’t remember telling the school but they got wind of it and were incredibly apologetic.
Easy mistake