School pickup emergency

[MochaMummy]

I had an unusual situation last week. Normally I always pick up my DS, who is in P2, from school. Only yesterday, I had an emergency and had to ask someone else to do it. I tried phoning the school about 5 times, the office is unmanned some afternoons and as luck would have it, I got one of these days. After about 20 rings, I get a message saying the school is unavailable(!) and I could leave a message. I did so, with not much faith as the school handbook states that messages are only checked daily at 9.15am.

Not one person in the whole school was available to answer the phone, it is effectively unreachable on these unmanned afternoons. It's not like you can pre-arrange an emergency.

So, I emailed the school to say that I really didn't find this acceptable, they should really look at their policies here. I was emailed back to say that phonecalls are redirected to the Head's office, but she could not be relied on to be in her office as she was out in the classrooms and often in meetings. Sometimes she checked messages before school end. It was suggested that I ask a fellow parent to pass the message on.

In the end it was fine, my DS knew the person picking him up, but his teacher had no idea of my message, or who the pickup person was. Given the amount of meetings and paperwork produced regarding child safety, am I unreasonable to think their response was pretty unprofessional?

YANBU there should be someone available to answer the phone at all times.

That's pretty rubbish. We have a password system so even if teacher doesn't know person picking up they can effectively verify that the person has permission. I tell the stand-in the password and if they repeat it correctly back to the teacher when challenged they can leave the premises with the child. Maybe suggest this?

On the whole I would say that is pretty poor.

Unless the school only has like 5 children, and you live on an island and the head teacher is also the class teacher, TA, dinner nanny and caretaker. I can imagine then it might be difficult to answer all the calls.

I remember a previous head of mine saying that if ofsted calls, obviously during the day, and nobody answers, it was an automatic fail due to safe guarding. Not sure if it was ever true but she'd thought it was.

Our school has 65 kids, the office is permanently manned, or if for some reason the receptionist is out, there is a handheld phone that one of the teachers takes and is always answered.

YANBU, this is extremely poor

Yeah that’s really not acceptable IMO. Office should be manned while school is open. Having calls redirected to another office where the person isn’t likely to be there is just bonkers! I’m struggling to see how they think that’s any better than the unmanned office.

That’s absolutely piss poor.

That is very worrying. I would be taking this complaint further

Thank you for your replies. I will definitely be taking it further.