What happens to children starting school with chaotic parents?

[jennymanara]

In England and Wales, what happens to kids whose parents have too chaotic a life to make a school application for their kids starting school, or do not have the level of literacy required to make a school application? Are children just automatically allocated any school?

@myself2020 it must depend where you live.

@ooooohbetty definitely! but its completely possible to never get any reminders

If children are known to the LA and no application is received they are automatically allocated the nearest school with a place

That doesn’t happen here. That must depend entirely on your LA

Interesting thread. Those who know - how often does it actually happen? As in, children don't start school at the usual point (and not because they're being home schooled or educated some other way)? Or is it a total unknown

@BackforGood do you work in social care?

In my personal experience it's not that they never come to school it's that they turn up without having applied and there is no place for them.

@ASauvignonADay in my experience of working in education it happens very very rarely. But children who are in Reception class aren't statutory school age until the term after their 5th birthday. So if children don't start in Reception the parents don't necessarily have to be educating them in any way until they become Statutory school age which I some cases could be the start of year one.

I work in a nursery school and we chase all our parents to make sure they apply before the deadlines. We do have to sit down with some parents and assist them as some have very poor levels of literacy or understanding.

The council wrote to us, but I don't know if it's because we are registered with a GP or because we took up a funded preschool place. After preschool reminded us and the LA nagged several times we wrote back saying we were home educating and have heard nothing since (now Y2).

@MissMarks that's illegal data sharing schools should not be telling HV who they have registered. HV can ask where you are sending your child but the schools can't tell them.

@ASauvignonADay No, not social care. The numbers are unknown.

The cynical side of me would say not "looked for" as it would look bad. Our authority doesn't count children as being "missing from education" until they reach the term after they turn 5, despite the fact all children are expected to start Reception the September after they are 4. This makes the figures they report look a lot less bad.

This is something I generally don't get - how the deeply chaotic (say, drug addicts, alcoholics) manage to do the very basics of keeping a child alive, let alone this kind of admin. I remember when DS was a newborn thinking 'but surely if you were on heroin or whatever you'd just not manage to keep this all going?'. It's a horrible thing to say, but I thought then that it's surprising that there aren't more Trainspotting style deaths of newborns through neglect. And the really terrifying thing is that no one's checking - again, I remember that freaking me out a lot when DS was tiny.

I know of a 11 year old girl whose career didn't apply for a place for her from primary to comprehensive this year, my Dd is 11 and after her first day of the school year she got a text of another girl her age asking how was school today, Her and Dd passed afew messages back and for and it turned out she hadn't applied for a place and she had to wait to sort all that out before she could start and she wasn't guaranteed a place in the school she wanted, she also asked Dd how she was getting to and from school she didn't have anything arranged, a week later she messaged she could finally start but then she said she couldn't as her career hadn't picked up her school grant for uniform yet and HT wouldn't let her attend without it, a family member had kindly given me their child's uniform from the year before who is a year older than my DD and went to same school even though id bought DD her own I thought it be good for spare and asked Dd to ask her friend did she want to borrow the uniform given to us until she can get hers Dd asked she replied no thank you I really felt like taking the uniform to her house as I can imagine she may of been saying no not to be embarrassed by it but I didn't want to offend either.
the child started 4 weeks later than everyone else this year and generally struggles with fitting in with other children as it is and my Dd is one of the few who talk to her and she is such a lovely girl just doesn't follow the trends etc, highly doubt starting this much later will help with this and all she had missed of lessons.
I don't know the reasons to why it was all left until the term started for her career to get around to arranging it but I just hope it wasn't due to career being lazy or not caring as some have said on here, I know her career has health issues and LD's so this is what I assumed was most likely the reason.
The system needs to be set up better so children like this friend of DD's don't miss out in some of they Education through no fault of they own

@BackforGood our LA does record them as being missing from education when they aren't statutory school age even though nothing can be enforced. This way they can do home visits to help parents get them into school if that's what they want. It's a good system that works well.

I grew up in a small village on the outskirts of a very industrial area. There was a lot of deprivation and ignorance. The local school used to put up posters every year saying "Have you got a child aged X? You need to apply for school so they can attend in September" and some instructions.

That told me that plenty had no idea what to do.

MrsFrumble how on earth did your DC miss their immunisations just because you moved abroad? When I moved abroad with DD1, she was 3 months old....I spoke to both the GP and HV in England and told them we were moving and they suggested giving the doctors in Australia her red book when we arrived. We did that...as soon as we got to Oz...and they told me which immunisations she needed and when.

I would guess, if you had a learning difficulty or disability that profound, you would almost certainly be known to SS. They would help in these circumstances.

I can't imagine the application process being that difficult for the average person. The thing is, you can choose a school that is outstanding, with a good reputation and it can be crap. As with one local school, once they achieved outstanding, OFSTED visits were very brief. After a few parents complaining, the school got reinspected, it went from outstanding to special measures.

It would be hard really to claim filling the form was too taxing, when most adults with school age children, easily use social media. You can add onto the comments if that's still a thing, why such a school is first choice. I don't think the allocation take much notice of comments, as for a good school they must get a variety of justifications, why Said child NEEDS to go there.

If choosing a faith school, you have to provide a baptismal certificate. If there's a genuine reason for a certain school, support should be on hand in one form or another.

Even organised parents can be affected by changes. My DD3 is the fifth child DH and I have put through school between us. We were both expecting the letter with the dates to come in and didn’t realise that the LA no longer send letters. Someone asked me to help with their application for literacy reasons and that’s how I learned applications were open online.

Same with DD4s vaccinations. First few you got a letter for, including quite a telling off second and third letter (it only stopped sending after had the vaccination and still sent letters even though she had an appointment booked). For her next vacs it was only because it randomly occurred to me one day that she hadn’t had her letter yet that I discovered they had stopped sending them. Same with the 2 year assessment- you used to get a letter and there was no announcement that you just have to make an appointment so I’d bet several kids fell through gaps there quite easily.

I knew someone who missed the application window- not from U.K. - didn’t know process.

She just sent her dc to school a year later- she’s now by far the oldest in the year.

@LisaSimpsonsbff
This is something I generally don't get - how the deeply chaotic (say, drug addicts, alcoholics) manage to do the very basics of keeping a child alive, let alone this kind of admin.
I wonder if a lot of users are known by drug services and then they are picked up by social care.
Many of our children at school have heroin addict parents but nearly all are in the care of grandparents, other family or are in care. Some have been seriously neglected though st some point.
I also wonder if heroin users have a higher rate of miscarriage and SIDS? Am sure I've read that before but don't quote me!

I would imagine higher levels of infant suffocation whilst sleeping (from being left in inappropriate sleeping places) but what we’d describe as SIDS now is unexplained and not thought to be behaviour linked. Although I guess addicts might be more likely to live in a smoking house.

I think most addicts have moments of lucidity when they try and sort things out. As others have said a child would be 4 by this point so a serious addict is likely to have authority involvement by this stage if they’re neglecting the children. More than likely “something” would’ve happened to draw attention to them

HennyPennyHorror they had the immunisations and check ups in the US, where we were living, but my point was that the NHS didn’t know that as they didn’t get the message that we were leaving! (Which I accept was because I probably didn’t call the surgery even though I thought I had. Things were pretty chaotic at the time).

Primary schools where I work give all children a leaflet with dates and instructions on how and when to apply for high school. Sometimes that doesn't reach parents though. Names of children who haven't applied are sent before the closing date to primary schools and they are asked to remind the parent. Some of the schools will ask the parents to come into school and they help them apply online or fill in a paper form if they have literacy difficulties. All of the above happens in school nurseries too.

Once children are beyond being babies, keeping a child alive is not that difficult. You can serve up cereal, sandwiches, chips from the chip shop. Being a good parent is hard work, just keeping them alive is not.

I'd think health visitors pick up on parents with issues well before school age. Well I'd hope so anyway.

i am shock to read so many threads saying it would be flag to ss just because some parents not able to right proper english or illiterate or not know about vaccinations. Not everyone are ss issues just because of the above. They can be decent parents, just not aware of the law or rules or vaccinations. A simple letter of reminder by hv or nurses would suffice and to ring up to remind people if they are illiterate would help. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to read and get good jobs to pay for all. Not sure what you meant by chaotic tho. Busy ? yes. arent all of us. Just be careful with choice of words