Son didn't go to school for three days.

[Spopssas]

School rang me on Monday, saying did I know that he hadn't attended that day, and was absent for three days last week.

No I didn't.

I wonder if he's struggling with your routine with your new job OP, perhaps feeling a bit adrift or not as important you as he was? I wonder about leaving him something nice for breakfast/ a nice snack from you to bring? And asking him to drop you a text when he's gone through the school gates? All things you might do with a slightly you her child, but he might need it right now, especially with the pressure of yr 11 Al's round the corner. Just reassurance that you're there for him and that someone notices his needs.

This. That's outrageous and a major safeguarding issue. Complain to the governors. Then Ofsted - this is exactly the sort of thing that schools are graded inadequate for. Major fail in a pretty basic process.

Sorry for the typos...

This is so wrong.

Kid not in reigistration, text gets sent home straight away.

Kid not in P1 text gets sent home.

Ad infinitum until end of day. The school is failing in its safeguarding duties. You should have known by the end of ref on first day that he wasn’t in

Some of these replies are very strange, if your child is in high school and makes their own way then you kind of have to assume they're there. All schools will have a policy of texting/ringing parents if a child is absent. This obviously hasn't happened in this case so I would bring that up with them. That aside it sounds like he's struggling at the moment, could be stress or anxiety. It's a difficult age. School should be able to offer some advice and support with this if you ask for a meeting with the pastoral team to discuss it.

Unless the school are seriously lax, I wonder if your son phoned himself in sick (or used the parent app to send in an absence message)?

The school aren't going to call you if they think you have already notified them of the absence. That would easily explain why you didn't know until Monday when they spotted a high number of sick days. The first question I would have asked the school is who called my child in sick?

I had an email from the school to say that my son had missed two afternoons,and I knew he hadn't as I could see on MCAS that he had been in the actual lessons. When I queried it with the school, it turned out that choir practice had ran overtime and he had missed afternoon registration.

You can't possibly know if your teenage child didn't go into the school unless the school tells you. Most people don't handhold 15 year olds to class. It's not unreasonable in these day of tech to expect the school to have a standard system whereby absent children are noted across the school, and parents texted automatically. If that doesn't exist, it should. It doesn't even require labour.

School would contact me by 9.30 if my child was not in school. I think this might be a safe guarding issue and I'd be asking to speak to the safeguarding lead.

Find my iPhone is useful. Tbh I don't use it but the grandparents love stalking the grandkids 😂

YANBU, the school has a responsibility to your child and they had no idea where they were in comparison to you thinking your child was at school. They absolutely should have called on day 1. I’d complain and anyone saying you’re passing the bat can stop. At 15 they’re at an age where the majority of parents are allowing them some independence and don’t know their whereabouts 24/7 but it is usually safe to assume they turn up at school as expected .

Does his school not do a morning register?

As PPs have said, the school should have messaged you minute they realised he wasn't in and you hadn't phoned the absence line. Not 4 days later. They are in loco parentis and this is not acceptable.

Yes - he may have got a friend to call the line. Or maybe registered then sneaked out (I'm not sure if every lesson takes a register or just morning and afternoon). But otherwise they are responsible and should have contacted you straight away. Don't let this go. Obviously your son is at fault and you need to have conversations about that - probably involving the school - but from a safeguarding angle I think this is very wrong.

Thanks for this.

I'm going to assume some people on her are parents of toddlers

If the school don't inform you your child isn't there than how would you know? Especially as he is 15 and there's been no issues before

What if he'd been ran over or something worse and the op didn't know he was missing until sge got in from work at 6

It’s a safeguarding and ofsted expectation. Used to be my job to chase and find the children who weren’t in and we didn’t know why.

The school should have contacted. You are right to query it.

The attendance officer follows up all absences if parents have not been in touch. I think they are normally done within an hour or two.

Standard safeguarding practise. My school does this for all students regardless of age ... so all the way up to year 13.

As far as I can see, the OP has not said whether there was any kind of notification of the absence (by someone phoning or emailing) so it sounds to me to be a major safeguarding failure. Leaving aside the specifics of this case, a pupil not turning up, especially one who previously had a good attendance record, could have had an accident (perhaps at home in those few minutes between Mum leaving for work and the DC leaving for school) or got into some kind of difficulty on the way. As a PP had said, prompt action could possibly save a life. For an unexplained absence of several days, there would be the possibility of involvement in county lines or sexual exploitation. Again, I would expect a school to raise the alarm.
If the DS is feeling disillusioned with school he’s not the first and he won’t be the last but he needs support from both school and home.

My DGC school ring up if they're not there for registration. Sometimes even if they've been told they won't be in!

My school text before 9am if a pupil isn’t in for registration, obviously they have a number for you but make sure they have the correct contact details and you are receiving the texts.

if they just aren’t sending them then it’s a pretty big issue as schools are usually hot on attendance issues and it’s not unusual for parents to think teenagers have gone to school but they haven’t turned up, so there needs to be communication

I do attendance at a secondary school of similar size. This is very odd - we have an automated truancy system which calls parents if we haven’t been informed of absences. You need to check with them what number or email the automated truancy system is using. It is quite possible if you have changed jobs it may be calling your old job. The system we use will only call one number. They would have a log so it should be easy to find out if calls we made on those days. It is surprising how many students are off for a few days and the parents do not contact the school even though we send numerous truancy calls. Or it possible the Attendance Officer was off ill so the truancy calls weren’t done. Often it is one person in the school who does this - at mine we have a couple so we can cover. Hope you get it sorted 😊.

It really doesn't matter how big the school is, this is why schools have electronic information management systems. They have completely fucked up here and you really need to contact the head, leadership have to look into this and make sure it doesn't happen again. Not just for your sons sake but for the sake of all students. Attendance is a bit of a safeguarding cornerstone, you simply can't safeguard kids if you don't know where they are.

Aside from that, I hope your son is ok and gets the support he needs.

How should she know? What a stupid comment.

Has he been put on report now he is back in school? How are you dealing with it at home? I would be vigilant in case he is getting drawn into undesirable / illegal activities. Do you know about county lines?

Definitely the fault of the school. When I was at school in the late nineties/early 2000s we had form time from 8.15-8.45am when a register would be taken and then handed to the school office who would then phone the parents of absent children if the parents had not phoned in. 5th and 6th year (16-18 years old) was different as we were then responsible for signing in and out ourselves but the desk was always monitored by staff to avoid people signing in pupils who weren’t there.

The school should have phoned on day one unless he pretended to be a parent phoned in sick.