To think the school have my kid mixed up with someone else?

[WhereAreYouuu]

A while ago I got a message from school saying my daughter had a detention for rude behaviour.

My daughter is on SEN pathways at school, extremely timid, extremely quiet, so I was surprised.
I asked DD about it and she said she had no idea what it was about. I rang school and receptionist said that her maths teacher told DD off for being on her phone and as she was being told to put it away she continued texting.

DD denied any of this ever happened and was upset.

Yesterday I get a text saying DD had an after school detention because she didn't attend a lunch time detention she got for being late.

DD was late but only by a minute (they usually let that slide) but said she wasn't told she had a detention. Wasn't given a late slip or a detention slip.

So she had no idea she was supposed to attend a lunchtime detention.

So I phoned school to ask could she still just do a lunchtime detention as she had no idea she was supposed to.

Receptionist asks for DDs name, and says she also missed 6th period today. Why wasn't she in lesson?

I said I don't know. What lesson was it?

Spanish. DD doesn't do Spanish. I said you mean French?

Receptionist carries on convoy about DD not attending her lesson and I say she may have been with SEN teacher (she misses class occasionally)

I talk to DD today and ask why she wasn't in 6th period.

She says she was.
I ask if it was French (thinking the receptionist just got the language mixed up)

Nope, she had MATHS 6th period and ATTENDED her lesson.

Should I ring back again tomorrow and bring this up?!

I feel like this is twice they've given her a detention she didn't know about and seem to have her mixed up with someone else?

@unkownone

I had a call from a teacher yelling at me at DD’s behaviour.

So not only was that teacher wrong, she was unprofessional as well. I hope you/your DD got an apology? 🌹

It could be that your dd looks like the other girl. Apparently ofsted have recently introduced a rule that surnames aren’t logged as a matter of course much in schools due to safeguarding concerns. I’m not sure how it works but this was discussed on another thread so there is a possibility, however unusual, that there is another girl with the same first name, who’s doing x,y,z.

I forgot this part, we even got a phone call from a maths teacher. She said she was concerned about my DD not fulfilling her potential due to behaviour. She's a bright girl that's predicted 7s and 8s according to her flight path. I was like erm...I don't think we're talking about my child here. Then an email from science saying the same thing. This was all happening within about a 2/3 week time period which makes me thing they did some system update and names migrated wrong. It was all fixed but the fact there's another (insert very rare first and last name, and same birth year) girl in the school still weirds me out. Feel a bit sorry for the other girls parents too, she sounds like a pain.

Nope lol just told she has to deal with so many kids. Though hind sight is wonderful - that was the start of a very bad few years at the school which lead to some very dark times, til she moved schools. Should've picked up on it then it probably wasn't the school for her and save thousands on therapy and mental health issues. She's much better now thankfully :)

Def call, they have got her mixed up with someone else, how ridiculous!

Your poor DD must be feeling anxious about it all....

"Along the lines of Ophelia Hayles" is comedy gold.

I had a similar thing happen to me at school, I did about three detentions for a girl of a completely different name. Somehow a teacher had mixed our names up as we look very similar.🙄

When my mother found out she raised hell with the school ( I was a straight A quiet student). The school offered me detention credits, which was ridiculous as I was never going to be given a detention in a million years to be able to use a ‘credit’.

In the end I was given a free place on an extra curricular trip to an outing that was for the year above that I really wanted to go on. ( art gallery trip to the city).

My DS’s award for rugby player of the year group went to someone else because the PE teacher didn’t bother to remember my DS’s name despite being his form tutor the year before and his rugby couch at present. He announced the award goes to ‘this amazing young man, a captain of the rugby B team’, my DS started to get up (he was the captain of the rugby team) and got pats on the back from his friends sitting around him, only for the wrong name to be announced. The other boy got up, received the award, as confused as my DS. The other boy’s name is nothing like my son’s and he doesn’t look anything like my DS. I wanted to question it with the school but DS didn’t want me to. Five years later, I am still bitter about it on his behalf and I wish I had said something.

OP, definitely talk to the school!

Don't just call, follow it up in writing. You may well need a record of all this.

With regard to the 'unusual' name you may be surprised

I remember several years back as a community midwife going to see a new baby called Persephone, there was another Persephone born the same week in the same town

Never come across one before or since, but you can get the odd unusual thing where you get unusual names in the same area (and tbh they will be the ones getting muddled often as other people may not realise there were two of them - so teacher says to the receptionist Ophelia didn't come to Spanish class today - the only Ophelia the receptionist knows if your Ophelia - whereas if it was Ellie she'd probably have asked which one)

Just phone back and be polite and explain about dc being in maths and you think there's been a mistake

I'd be making an appointment with the head and senco tbh and I'd be telling them no further punishments in the meantime until it's sorted out.

Definitely follow up. I work in an education role, visiting several schools, honestly, some are terrible. Not excused by funding, just a poor culture and leadership. Good luck.

Mistakes happen all the time. It could bd someone looks similar, some one has the same inititals, an admin error on the record.

I'd probably email and say what you think has happened, rather than phone though.

Thar doesn't really make any difference - to conform with GDPR many schools just use initials in communication and emails now

You need to speak to her actual teachers.

So find out from your DD the name of her maths teacher and ask to speak to them about it to find out the facts.
If they have no knowledge of it then obviously something is going on.

It’s highly unlikely that every staff member giving the detentions is getting your child’s name wrong.
So either your DD is getting in trouble at school but doesn’t want to admit it to you or there is a fault on the school system somehow.

Definitely give them a ring today and ask for the teachers who have given the detentions to give you a call back asap.

My apologies, I don’t know why there is a GIF above my post.

We had this with DS when he'd just started Junior School, so Yr 3.
Just on bus to work, get a call from the Head (!) to say DS had been part of a group of boys who'd been running around slapping Yr 6 girls on the bum
Now I knew this wasn't DS- I'm not one of those parents who disbelieves the school, but he's a shy, geeky, being-assessed-for-SEN child.

I was totally taken aback, and started to ask HT when this had happened. She, thinking I wasn't getting the point, was getting frustrated.
However, when she said it was morning break, I pointed out it couldn't be DS as I'd just dropped him off at lunchtime as we'd spent the morning in A&E!

It was indeed the wrong child, DS has a common first name but a very rare surname. I got a lot of apologies and was just massively relieved they hadn't yet spoken to the kids about it, as DS would have been a confused and upset mess.

Can completely understand your frustration OP! Definitely needs sorting, and hope the school are receptive...

What are the GDPR issues ? Are you saying teachers communicate about students using only their initials? How bizarre

In writing, yes they do. Most schools have an email for each child that they use internally, which goes to all relevant, head of year, pastoral, office etc something like WM8ST@schoolname child's initials, then their form. If someone has been lazy the email may have auto filled with another child's name.

Say something. Whether or not she was on her phone or whatever before, they've obviously fucked up by thinking she was in a different lesson and got a detention for nothing.

Hope you get it sorted.

Thanks for explaining but what has it got to do with GDPR ?

It can be very confusing. I have first names only in my mark book and on children's work. The only way to find out who the initials refer to is to open the electronic register. That isn't possible at home, and is not always possible at school either.

Sometimes I never do find out who the email was about. I long for the preGDPR days when we simply referred to children by their full names!

I think either they have the wrong child or the wrong number recorded for another parent. Have you asked them to confirm the name and dob of the child concerned?

@VisionsOfSplendour Honestly? I think it's nonsense and a misreading of gdpr. I work for local authority in education and we use full names to AVOID gdpr issues. Imagine sending a personal letter to wrong parent for example.