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.

Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, so yes the school need to be more proactive.

I think you are focusing on the wrong thing. Your son bunked off school for 3 days. What are his consequences? New xbox?

So your son is skipping school and all your posts so far have been who can I blame - I know school!

I thought this list was going to be why, what can I do, I’m worried. Nope - just passing blame.

If they know he missed four days, they took a register and knew he was missing. The next step, on the first morning, should have been calling you.

Our school send an automated text after an hour and ring you before midday if you don't contact them to say they are ill or whatever.

They should have contacted you on the first day.

Are you saying the head of house said they didn't know where he was for three days?

Is there someone in charge of attendance? There must be. My dd goes to a relatively small secondary and there is a full time attendance person.

That's where I would start.

Phone up, not early in the day when they are busy and ask to speak to whoever is in charge of attendance.

Find out what happened.

It seems so unlikely that they didn't know where he was that it makes me wonder if he called in the absence himself.

OFSTED would (quite rightly!) pick up on them not having a policy to check up on absent children within an hour of registration closing.

our school - registration happens in form time that starts at 8:45, at 9:10 the registrations close. The attendance team have been adding “medical” “illness” “other explained” notes to the children not in from all the parent messages left/emails, and then if not marked in P1, a text goes to the parent number. That usually gets a load of “sorry, they’ve been throwing up and I forgot to email” phone calls/emails, then from around 10am they get on the phone to call the parents of those they’ve got no explanation for.

him missing one day and it not being picked up could be human error of a teacher marking him in when he wasn’t in, but 3 days is a safeguarding failure for the school.

a polite enquiry about why you weren’t notified on the first day he wasn’t in would be in order. He could have been faking a message in, or it could be they need to improve their systems.

I previously worked on a school reception for a while, and was working on the day the automated system for attendance went wrong and sent lots of “your child isn’t in school” text messages out to parents of children who were in the building.

the phone basically exploded with stressed out parents and we had to have SLT members running round to look in classrooms to confirm children were in school. What was surprising was that over 200 parents whose child was in school got a message saying they hadn’t turned up. We didn’t get anywhere near like 200 parents calling to find out what was going on. (I am very glad I don’t do that job anymore)

@LimeCheesecake you probably did have 200 very worried parents, all trying to get through on the phone. For everyone who got through they'd have been loads getting the engaged tone.
And news would spread by word of mouth/social media that it was an error. School WhatsApp/ Facebook pages are very common.

That's really unusual and schools do normally send a text if a child doesn't show up

The Op is rightly picking up the Safeguarding aspect. The child didn't turn up and Op wasn't informed.

A little boy, Rory was abducted and murdered on his way to school. Nobody knew until his Granddad went to collect him and school said he hadn't been there all day. Hours of search time was lost.

While the most likely answer is he called in sick himself. Its a serious concern if he didn't.

Major safeguarding failure. Not just in case of something like an accident happening, but at this stage gangs, county lines, CSE and grooming are a real concern as well. Not notifying a parent that their child wasn't in for 3 days in a row is not acceptable.

My teenagers have never played truant, but I'm realistic that they're ALL capable of it, even those with a absolute perfect parents!

Op the school.should have informed you on day 1. My daughter's secondary school count being late to any lesson as truancy and the parents get a notification that their child had a negative point

No idea why I quoted you there! Sorry! It was supposed to be in answer to those blaming the op

@RightWhereINeedToBe oh dear lord! Firstly I quoted you by accident, then I tried to say oops, didn't mean to quote you, THEN I quoted myself - I give up!

This is a major fail and could result in an inadequate ofsted regardless of everything else is outstanding, as he is yr11. Were he yr12 it'd be different. Legally the school are in loco parentis so must do am and pm reg and chase up any missing preferably within 10 mins. What if he'd been hit by a car etc.

I leave the house before school time and come back after, short of real time video surveillance maybe you could explain how I know my child has gone to school

Yes, this

The school should have told you about this on day one

Check the absence policy

Massive safeguarding fail on schools part. If something happened to your son on the way to school the earliest you would know would be about 8 hours later when he didn't come home. School should be doing a morning register and main entrance/doors should be locked. I'd complain because this needs to change.

The truanting and safeguarding and separate issues. The OP hasn’t said she hasn’t dealt with the truanting side but regardless of if he was in the wrong to truant and if he’s been adequately punished, spoken to etc. This is still a huge safeguarding failing on the schools side and needs to be raised and dealt with. Raising this isn’t blaming the school for the truanting but failure to report it needs investigating. The child and the school can be in the wrong and both issues need to be dealt with.

In this case he was wilfully absent and safe. What if the next time school don’t report an absentee and something has happened? Should OP not report this incident because her son has been punished?

Surely this is a safeguarding issue in both directions? This young man could have been injured/abducted on the way to school and his mum should have been made aware of his absence first thing.

Equally the young man might have been harmed in his home environment and the school did not flag an issue for 4 days.

I agree @SirSidneyRuffDiamond but I think the PP's main point was that the safeguarding element is vitally important irrespective of what rules the child has broken.

It's actually quite scary that there seem to be so many posters on this thread who don't understand this. School has a responsibility to know where our children are in school hours because they are acting "in loco parentis" for a minor. The rest of the time, that same responsibility to keep them safe is on us as parents. It doesn't go away just because a child decides to disobey.

It's really weird that they didn't notify you on day one. We get a text by 9.10 if they are off. I've had it a few times where they have been missed off the register.

They’re not proactive. Hell I know about it if mine is 10 minutes late. From a basic safeguarding standpoint they need to let you know on the first day.

This. Major safeguarding failure by the school.

There are several very awful scenarios that could happen if the school does not have systems - which should be in place - to establish whether all children are in school or not every morning.

Say a child was injured or harmed on the way to school. If the school don't notice they're absent at registration the first the parent will know is when they don't return from school several hours later. Children as young as 11. All that time lost.

Safeguarding failure.

There's no debate to be had here, despite the ignorance of the perfect parent brigade. Those who quite obviously do not have teenagers yet. It is categorically a massive safeguarding failure by the school. You should be complaining about it via the complaints procedure, and it should be highlighted to the governing body.