To expect my son's junior school to phone parents to warn them of a suspicous person in the area ...

[TeeJaye]

... so that I can go and pick him up instead of letting him walk home alone?

what do you mean by a 'suspicious person'?

How many children are there at the school?

And do you really think they can call 100+ parents? (Guestimate)

Isn't it unusual for a primary aged child to walk unaccompanied in this country ?

If it is a very very small school, ten maybe. If not then impossible for the school to contact all parents IMO.

How old is your DS? Have you done the whole stranger danger stuff with him? If not - now is possibly the time, esp if walking home on his own from school.

TeeJaye - can you give more details - who is this person? why are they suspicious? How do the school know they are hanging around? Are the police involved?

there was an 'incident' outside the local secondary school last monday (the police are out and about today, 10 days later, Doh) but there are 1700 kids at the school.

My son is 10 and yes, he's been warned about stranger danger but more frequently since he's been allowed to walk home alone.

I don't know the exact details but according to my son, there was a man with with a knife hanging around the park which is opposite the school.

Are the school aware of it?
Did your DS see this man?
Where has the story about the man come from?

If from school, and legit, then I would expect a letter home possibly, but not a phone call.

We had a similar situation, and all the children were sent home with a letter, and a notice was put up on the big noticeboard at the school entrance.

Also - a talk was given by the head at assembly.

In the school where I work we pass the info on to the older chn who go home alone and talk about stranger danger before they go home. Thay then sort out that they'll walk home with a friend and another parent rather than on their own. We don't phone parents - most chn who go home alone have parents that can't pick them up anyway.

I wonder anyone in authority at the school knew about it before the children went home?

If they had, I would have thought the easiest thing for the school to do would be to call the police and wait until they arrived before letting the children out. It would have been very difficult to call every parent and organise escorts home at such short notice.

The school probably has about 150 pupils but a great many of those are collected by their parents (as my son used to be) - I'd guess only a proportion of the higher classes actually walk home.

Stranger danger warnings are not going to be of much use if there's a lunatic with a knife - as our local vicar recently discovered.

If the school knew that there was a man acting suspiciously with a knife near the school then, yes, they are being unreasonable not to have done anything to ensure the children were safe walking home.

i feel that if the school was aware then they should have given the children a brief talk about going straight home and trying to stay in pairs if possible.

it is almost never advisable to inform parents of "suspicious persons" as it normally results in big burly men confronting little innocent old men out walking their dogs.