School coming to home to view sick child - Normal?

[CandlelightGlow]

I'm feeling really sensitive right now due to work stress so please be kind.

My 5 year old is off with chicken pox right now. He got the spots on Sunday, he's been quite poorly with it Monday - Tuesday, very sleepy, then very uncomfortable Weds waiting for the scabs to form. He's just started to feel better today but the school have an INSET day tomorrow anyway.

We just had a knock at the door, and it was a teacher from DS's school! He was very reluctant to come downstairs because he's only in his pants and thought the teacher was there to take him to school. She was very nice and said it's sad that they have to do this in this day and age but it's completely normal and they do it for everyone who's been off this length of time.

He's been off for 4 days? His older sister is at school so we've still done the school run every day. To be fair as it's an inset day tomorrow it will be over a week by the time he goes back on Monday. But I've never had a teacher come unannounced to our house to check on our child. Can someone reassure me it is actually normal and they don't think something bad of us! My poor boy is just ill. I've called him in and updated, updated again this morning saying he would be back on Monday!

If the OP is regularly late then their attendance may not be as good as she thinks it is

Far from normal. I've got 5 kids and been through countless schools over the years and never once had this happen.

I would ask for a meeting at the school to clarify.

This would stress me out a lot.

This

and *and we live out of catchment so sometimes since DS started we are sometimes slightly late*how did you get a place if out of catchment?

and how far are you from the school to warrant being regularly late?

Tell me you don’t know anything about GDPR without telling me you don’t know anything about GDPR

Laughable isn’t it @ChocSaltyBalls ?! Toe curlingly so

I would have asked about their medical qualifications to assess him. They have none. How are they meant to assess whether a child is fit to be at school or not in a medical capacity, which is the case with chicken pox?

Fine for you to do that so long it’s also fine for the person answering phone when you call to tell them you’re child is sick to ask for YOUR medical qualification too then? Parents make decisions everyday as to whether or not their child is well enough for school. Do all parents have medical qualifications in order to make these assumptions?

@HoppingPavlova they are more likely wanting ‘eyes on a child’ not assessing whether they have chicken pox or some other illness

Sounds like they were doing a welfare check, which is probably a good thing in a lot of ways. More vulnerable children might get the help they need if issues are picked up this way.

Sorry this happened to you. Hopefully they were satisfied once they saw him.

They knew he was in hospital! Yet they still came round. What in God's name was the point in that? They knew about his medical conditions (lifelong), and they knew the reason why he had been off school. They still managed to give his parents a letter demanding that his attendance needed to improve.

I agree it's ridiculous, it's also offensive to the parents as sounds like they didn't believe them about their child being in hospital.

What's with all the melodramatic "eyes on" nonsense? Do some in the teaching profession think they're in MI5 or something? When did you decide that words like "see" were no longer sufficient?

As an aside, those of you who think it's perfectly fine for a member of school staff to turn up unannounced at your door when you've reported your child off sick, I can imagine how you would feel if your employer did that to you. You wouldn't like it, because it's an intrusive invasion of privacy and potentially bullying. If you have genuine concerns about a child's safety or welfare then you should report it to the police or social services. Otherwise, stay in your lane. Your authority beyond the school gates is no more than any other ordinary member of the public.

Absolutely nailed it there @WalkingThroughTreacle .

Op has said it wasn’t the teacher and many teachers / teaching ass have access to your address. They also have my work address and phone number. We had a visit when Ds started reception from both his teachers ,so they could meet and greet before he started .

“You are not a pupil at the school so you don't need to be doing as the teacher says.”

yep that’s a great attitude to have , honestly I see why communication between some schools and parents is so poor .

And not every home is a child’s safe place unfortunately!

Many schools have pastoral workers to help with pupil welfare. Schools are very involved with pupil welfare, it goes beyond school gates, has to. Many children have awful family lives for a variety of reasons. Schools have to take on this role due to lack of funding for other services (not that there is any funding in education either)

As an aside, those of you who think it's perfectly fine for a member of school staff to turn up unannounced at your door when you've reported your child off sick, I can imagine how you would feel if your employer did that to you. You wouldn't like it, because it's an intrusive invasion of privacy and potentially bullying. If you have genuine concerns about a child's safety or welfare then you should report it to the police or social services.
Otherwise, stay in your lane. Your authority beyond the school gates is no more than any other ordinary member of the public.
False comparison.
My employer doesn't have a statutory safeguarding duty towards me.

The fact you think safeguarding concerns should go straight to police and social services shows you don't have much awareness of schools' safeguarding duties.

All during lockdown it was why aren’t teachers thinking of the vulnerable children. Now it’s nosey old teachers, why are they thinking about vulnerable children, it’s nothing to do with them

I completely agree. I am shocked to see 93% of voters think it’s ok to tell a school official to fuck off instead of letting them in to check on your child’s welfare. That is so depressing. It’s one small thing we can all do that will save the lives of dozens of children.

We are perfectly ok with being scanned and our bags being searched in order to save the lives of travellers every year from terrorist bombs and hijackings. If we get selected for extra searches or being swabbed for explosive residue, we go along with it as we know it’s important to keep everyone safe. We don’t get all offended and how dare they suspect me of being a terrorist! How dare they scan or search my bag and shudder at the thoughts of strangers seeing our knickers and prescription drug labels.

But apparently random spot welfare and safeguarding checks by schools doing home visits in order to save children’s lives- the response is all how dare the government violate my privacy as if I were a child abuser, how dare they not believe me, how dare they even want to do a check on my child.

Try doing that at an airport. How dare you ask me if I packed my bag. No, fuck off you’re not scanning me or my carry on, how dare you even think you can treat me like a potential terrorist.

I suppose a bit of privacy invasion for the greater good is ok when it’s your holiday at stake, but not ok when the lives of innocent children are at stake.

Really depressing. No wonder we can’t make progress on why we don’t catch child killing parents before there’s a dead body. People keep defending such behaviours that will continue block the wider social insight needed to save these children.

I think every school in the local authority I worked for, had a family worker whose role it is (among other things) to make visits to parents for non academic concerns and support. So it seems as though this visit was from someone like that.

Spoken by someone who has no idea how even the worst of abuse and neglect is often very well hidden behind closed doors. More often than not, there are no visible signs of abuse or neglect outside the home. More often than not, abused/neglected children appear to be very happy when outside the home..this is literally because they know they are safer in public or at school than at home.

It’s utter naivety to think you will spot anything concerning based on behaviour or appearance outside the closed doors of home.

@Onnabugeisha has it. If you aren't involved in education, you would be shocked at how much time can be taken up by serious safeguarding matters. I don't mean knocking on doors, either. If there's a whole school policy of sending pastoral staff out to check absentees, there will be a reason for it.

Teacher here- not unusual in some areas-
if the school is trying to improve attendance they may make a policy of it (ask around at school gate to see if it is unusual in your school),
if the school has significant safeguarding issues with particular families, they may make a policy of it across the year group in order to avoid tricky conversations with the family at risk who will already be defensive about being singled out
generally schools avoid, bc it is labour intensive, but if they do have staff available for it(sometimes support staff become unexpectedly available through the year to cover a teacher) they will do it, as it is v effective with certain issues (ie attendance)
covid has made it much more commonplace as a way to get a handle on attendance problems across the whole school
it makes parents very uncomfortable if they think it can happen, and so can change a culture of poor attendance across the school,
in partOcular if this is what a school is doing they will focus on absences that tag onto a holiday (you mentioned the inset day) as commonly people take holidays like this to avoid costs, and phonevthe child in sick.
unlikely to be a first step in a safeguarding issue though- so unless you have had some previous safeguarding chat with them I would be worried about this.
no teacher will be worried about him sitting in his pants, I promise!

Did the op ever come back and explain how her son got a place at the school despite being out of catchment and…. Regularly late “because outside of catchment area”

what? 30 miles out of catchment?

This wasn’t a teacher

This was a pastoral safeguarding member of the school staff

I am guessing she knows the law and school policy

i assumed they'd moved after the child started at the school.