To be furious with daughters school.

[Incognitomum11]

Year 6 daughter. I came to pick her up yesterday from after school club to find that they had cancelled the club and my daughter had stood waiting for me for an hour, by the side of the road, all alone.

she walks from school and I pick her up from the small village on her request, to give her some independence in preparation for secondary soon.
I have a new job and have specifically given the school instructions to contact me on my work number because I have zero reception or internet at work.

BUT the school hadn’t even attempted to contact the parents to say the after school club had been cancelled.
they had only sent an email.

When I later looked at the email it clearly says “Please can you reply to this email to confirm you have received it.”
and normally they phone to check if they dont hear back.

but they hadn’t, they had told her I had been made aware and let her leave at usual time.

AIBU to be furious with them?

I know some of you may think that year 6 she should be able to deal with this but she had no phone and no money.

and in future, yea I will make sure she has a phone with her to school.

This. You have given your daughter permission to leave school and be collected by you off premises. It is your responsibility to ensure that she can contact you if there are any issues. Yes, the school should text all parents as well as email, that's not a difficult thing to do, but certainly they cannot be requested to call everyone on a landline, that is for your daughter to do. She is at the end of Year 6, and quite responsible enough to be able to contact you or return to school if there is a problem.

Again, yes, I know, years ago, and things are different now, are they? Are they really? I caught a bus to town from my school, caught another bus across town, and walked home. My mum didn't drive, many didn't back then, so most kids had to make their own way home.

My point isn’t to say that should happen. My point is that an argument could be made. The OP has admitted that she is hard to reach, therefore she should take additional all steps to ensure the all bases are covered. For example, contacting the school to make sure the club is running.

Yes, she has asked school to contact her workplace but in this case it failed to happen. These things do happen. The point is the OP has no other back up plan.

In most circumstances a parent could be reached by mobile. She can’t, therefore additional steps on her side need to be taken. That includes telling the school to contact her workplace, but could also include her contacting the school for confirmation, having another parent who’s child is also part of the club made a contact, making sure her child has a phone, making sure her child understands what to do in the event of something going wrong

They should have phoned. But YABU to be furious about it. The reason your daughter was waiting on her own for an hour was the ridiculous arrangement you seem to have every single day. If she regularly leaves school on her own to walk to the next village, without money or a phone, then this situation is entirely predictable and you should have thought about it before now.

That is normal in a lot of places. The school where I worked and my grandchildren's school both let yr 6s walk home alone. In this instance when a club had been cancelled the parent should have been told though.

Would the school contact parents if that club was cancelled?

Primary schools mine have gone to always have let parents know - by text or phone call.

Everyone keeps mention Y7 - IME it's often easier as -while it changes whether they are allowed phone out in school time - they can at least keep them in their bags as they can money - and most do have phones or very least friends with phone who can ring.

I think primary schools often don't want phones or money held by the children.

I raise it with the head - maybe someone didn't follow procedures or it's a situation they hadn't thought of previously.

I’d let school know but I wouldn’t be furious. I’d look on it as a good learning experience no harm done. Letting DD leave school to stand in a village waiting for you with no means of contacting you or you her was always going to go wrong eg caught up in traffic due to a crash, car breaking down etc.
Give her a Phone and discuss plan B. Does she go back to school. Is there a mum of a school friend in village she could knock on their door etc. If there’s a change to pick up time she rings you before leaving school doesn’t just accept mum knows etc. Explain who to ask for help if you really hadn’t turned up eg ask in shop, ask a mum with a child.

Your dd should have walked back to school. Yes school should have made sure everyone was contacted but you have the arrangement that your dc leave and walk on their own so its not really schools fault. Also its not really the end of the world for a 11 year old to hang around for an hour. Soon enough she will be hanging out after school in bus shelters and Street corners.

I don't think you are being unreasonable at all to be furious.

The reason the daughter was waiting on her own was not because of this 'ridiculous arrangement' but because the school allowed her to leave earlier than was planned and told her that her mother knew. Without actually checking OP DID know.
The situation is not entirely predictable at all. Parents expect their child to leave school at the time they should be leaving school. Not an hour earlier without being informed about it.

I wouldn't have expected more than a text or email. I would, however, have expected my 11 year old daughter to be able to tell a staff member that she needed to get in contact with you to fetch her.

But why would you walk back to school? Surely child would assume Mum was running late/traffic/road closures etc and wait.

Mum knows where to pick child up, if she walked back to school then she wouldn't know where she was and had no phone to communicate. By the time she got there she'd probably have been met by the cleaners with all staff gone home anyway.

And yes, maybe next year she'll be in high school and can deal with walking to and from, but this is this year and the school have a responsibility towards her.

I have a yr 6 Daughter and I would be fuming too. Her School would never let that happen though. It’s a safe guarding issue.
Really bad.

Yes school have absolutely failed int heir duty of care here. That said, going forward if you want to allow some independence for your child you must back it up with contingency plans. Your poor DD was failed by both school and you. Nobody ensured her safety. Nobody made sure she know what to do if something went wrong. Speak to school and put some back up plans in place.

You have given your daughter permission to leave the school by herself though. Unless your daughter said that she needed to call you, they would assume that she could get home. Lots of parents make arrangements outside school, I’m not sure how you can expect the school to keep track of these and remember your specific out of school meeting arrangements. Either get your daughter a phone or tell her what to do if you are not at the meeting point.

You are right to be furious with the school. They didn't even follow their own protocol since the email asked for a response to prove receipt and you didn't provide that. Fwiw when our DC's after school club was cancelled, they called every parent to inform them and left messages saying all the DC would be kept in the school with a teacher until a parent arrived to collect them.

Going forward, you do need a better system with your DD. She needs to know how long to wait for you and what to do if you don't turn up. There could be lots of reasons why you could be delayed and it's not ideal that you haven't taught your DD what to do in those circumstances.

I think you also have to consider if there is another mobile network you can switch to, that does get a signal. Or maybe consider changing the order of your DD's emergency contacts. Since you are now restricted to only one means of communication when you're at work, it might be better if the second contact was moved to first.

It sounds from the OPs post like they usually do check, but for some reason this hasn't happened on this occasion. It says they usually call if no response to the email. I'd just make them aware of what happened and let them sort out why the call didn't happen.

I agree. It isnt about whether or not she is old enough to walk home or not.
It is about you knowing where she is, which at age 10 or 11 you still should. You should know if she is in school, or wandering around outside school alone, or with a friend, or at home. The school left you thinking she was safely in a club, which meant no adult was responsible for her whereabouts.

I had a similar thing once when I specifically asked the school to pass a message to my daughter that I couldnt collect her from school so she walk home and I'd meet her at home. The school failed to pass on the message. My daughter was then confused and upset, worrying why I hadnt come to collect her. Luckily i had previously given her a standing instruction that, if in doubt, she is now old enough to always start walking home and use her phone to call me on the way. She belatedly remembered (after her initial upset calmed down and she realised I was probably detained at work not dead on the motorway) and she set off home and phoned me. No thanks to her school.

I was angry but I didnt complain as her school is generally a bit rubbish about this sort of thing and I want my DD to get out of the habit of thinking schools are administratively effective. When the admin goes wrong, the safeguarding sometimes follows suit.

I agree with this except for the OP not being contactable. She is contactable. it's no harder to call a landline than it is a mobile. The school messed up.

But I agree there should be contingency plans in case the OP can't get to her dd on time or at all (although it's only for a few more weeks).

That's terrible. I'd be catching them out personally.

First I would formally ask them to provide the reason they ask for receipt of the email to be acknowledged.

I would go from there, but likely they say so they know the child is safe to be released from school because otherwise it's a breach of safeguarding policy.

I would then ask them to provide the response they received.

Then I would make a formal safeguarding complaint on that basis with that proof. They breached their own safeguarding policy. I'd contact OFSTED too.

I agree, there is fault on both sides, so raising it with the school to firm up their contact system is a good idea, but your arrangement with your dd had “potential for disaster” written all over it and you should have thought it through better and had a back up plan.

Not good enough, they shouldn't have released any kids until parents confirmed they had received the message.

The school messed up and did not follow its own procedures (make sure parent has read the email). I'd complain about that.

However this is a big growing-up moment, and being livid with the school makes it seem to dd like she isn't ready for independence. She'll be in secondary a couple of months from now.

What can you praise about dd's actions? And what should she have done differently? She's at the very end of Y6, and should have the tools to assess the situation and think of a safe, sensible solution, whether that is going back to school or to a friend.

She is safe and well (no thanks to the school), so she deserves credit for handling herself. Also pointers on what to do better.

Your daughter is going to high school in a few months, she needs to take some responsibility herself. She could have spoken up.

I was about to be furious for you then remembered loads of this kind of stuff happening in year 7. It stems from a lack of maturity or information on your daughters part about what to do if her journey home is disrupted in any way. What to do if her bus is cancelled (if she’ll be getting the bus home from secondary), if she meets someone threatening on the way home, if it’s dark after school and she doesn’t feel safe walking where she is, if someone offers her a lift home that wasn’t planned….. all of this needs to be discussed and it’s her responsibility to act sensibly. If she isn’t sensible, she shouldn’t be making her way home come by herself come September when it’ll be getting darker in the evenings.

This.

If you want to foster some independence then she needs to have and understand contingency plans. That isn't walking to the village and hope her dm has been informed it is giving her means to contact you if you aren't there. Yes you'll now give her a mobile but once they are at an age they are doing stuff alone that is when you give them mobiles, not when problems arise.

Take this as a wake up call. Also if you aren't always contactable she needs the number or address of a family friend or relative to go to in events like this.

Did a year 6 dc really stand waiting for an hour?!

YANBU OP, that she is in year 7 in September is irrelevant, some year 6's are 10 still, my year 7 DD has just turned 11 and I would not be happy about this as at this age I only let her walk to school with a friend at the time everyone is walking to school, so loads of adults and parents of younger ones on route. I would never allow her to stand around fro an hour on her own, it is a completely different scenario. There is proportionate independence for a primary school aged child. Even in year 7 my son walked home on his own but there is an expectation of a regular routine that you know of, one time he didn't return and I didn't sit around thinking wrll he is in year 7, I was ringing around, texting people I thought he might be with and it turns out he decided to go to a friend's house I didn't know. I would say even now I am slightly anxious when DS who is 15 has not returned at the time I expect, or he is not there when I get home from work as it is not in line with expectations. Obviously, he has usually gone to a friend's house or the park but he doesn't always text me or reply to my texts to let me know. It is