To expect school to consider call lists?

[Totallydisrespected]

If you give school a list of contacts, do you expect them to follow them in order?
Example: : I am first contact, my DP is second, my DF is 3rd and exh is 4th..
The order is there for a reason, ease of getting to school, working hours, knowledge of school timetable, rules etc.
Today school attempted to contact me, got no reply and went straight to exh. (For relevance this was not a life or death situation but one that required knowledge of our home routine)
I called school back with no knowledge of call to exh. Clarified issue, all good.
Until DC came home from exh house tonight to say they’d been told by dad to do something different to what I had told school.
Luckily I have a good relationship with exh, called him and sorted DCs confusion but I’m really angry with the school. DC has anxiety issues do being told 2 different things has stressed them out. Can’t help wondering how a child whose parents aren’t amicable would have dealt with this situation.
Aibu to raise it with the school (exh agrees before I get flamed by the ‘he’s their dad brigade’

I work imwith children. To be honest I would of done the same, call mum and dad first. Unless I was aware of specific reasons not to.

Depends on the issue I suppose?

PE kit/packed lunch needed to be brought in from home you'd probably call the household contacts, but for something that needed a decision you'd call people with PR.

I work in a secondary school and have to phone parents/carers most days (usually to ask them to collect an pupil who is unwell).

The contacts for each pupil are numbered in order on the database. However, I also take into account what the pupil says. So if she tells me that contact 1 is abroad at the moment but contact 2 (who also has parental responsibility) is working from home today, then I will phone contact 2 first.

Tbh I'd think it's normal that they'd call the child's actual parents first.

surely calling the parents would be the normal thing to do! yabu!

The question was irrelevant to dad. He was trying to help by answering but, due to commitments, didn’t work for me. DP and DF would both have been able to answer appropriately

In your situation OP, you could ask them to include a brief note on the pupil homescreen to only contact ExH if nobody else is contactable. Our database has a box for quick notes like this.

Well they called the people with parental responsibility. I'm not sure they can be criticised for doing that.

How would the school know that the question was irrelevant to their dad though? It's hard to know as you haven't said what it was about and how often the kids stay with their dad etc.

That'd annoy me.

As a test we inverted the contact numbers for our DDs.

So for one, im the contact.
For the other DH is.

Guess who gets ALL the contact for both of them? Me. He never gets any. It's infuriating.

Just ask the secretary to put a note on the contact sheet so they know what to do if it happens again. Sorted.

If school is using SIMS then contacts should be called in the order they were told to put them in the system 1-4. If that's what you've told the school, then the school is at fault, regardless of PR.

The contact sheets are very specific. ‘Who lives at DC address’
‘Who has day to day contact with DC’
First contact is.....
If first contact is unavailable contact.....
If second contact is unavailable..... etc

It’s obvious mum and dad don’t live together from the contact sheets.
When DP was seriously ill in hospital they called me, I explained situation and 30 seconds later DPs phone rang. Do it’s obviously a case of ‘russian roulette with phone numbers’ and forms are irrelevant

It's hard to judge without knowing exactly what the call was about

I'm struggling to think of a scenario which is 'irrelevant to the child's father', and how the school could be reasonably expected to know it was

Unless your DC's dad is completely uninvolved in his life then attempting to contact him if you weren't available is the natural thing for the school to do

I think you expect too much. If a parent isn't available I would call the other parent. Parents need to communicate and work together which you have done so no problem.

I would expect ringing both parents first would be normal.

The query was relating to DC attending school early for a theatre practice. PR is irrelevant as it concerned my household routine which exh echoed to school.
He is last contact as he only spends 2 hours a week with DCs and does not live in same area

But the school needed permission for the DC to take part, which means they have to ask someone with PR. They can’t ask your DP or DF to take this decision.

Couldn't your ExH on getting the call simply say that he wasn't sure as your DD doesn't live with him and that they would have to wait until you or your partner got back to them?

That seems like the sensible thing to do.

Of course PR are relevant if they're asking children to attend something outside school hours

PR is irrelevant

Not to the school, or from a legal pov.

I see where you're coming from though so would suggest you have a chat to the school. There's no reason they can't put something in writing on your childs file to say that you DH should always be contacted in preference to XH.

I think most school staff would default to the second biological parent, assuming they have PR.

In this case, it does sound like a permission matter though, with an earlier start. It is really unfortunate that your son has been stressed by this but it does sound like a parental matter. Is it for tomorrow morning?

I think you're expecting the school to put a level of thought into it which is not feasible. It's a pretty routine query and the school probably makes tons of these every day. If they're doing it for 30 kids, it would take forever to go through four contacts to see who has day to day contact and lives at the same address to work out who they should call. Calling Mum and Dad and expecting that, unless warned otherwise, they have a civil enough relationship to sort out a minor query between them.

@Ginger the whole point is that the contacts are listed 1-4 . It’s not difficult and, as I’ve said, it’s been followed previously despite extenuating circumstances

Why couldn't the father/parent actually find out the answer and get back to the school? was he incapable of using a phone? Isn't that a parents job!