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?

Apart from anything else another student is missing and they don't know who or where she is! You do need to follow this up. Teachers register their students every lesson and it sounds like she might be being mistaken for someone else. Hopefully it's not to do with the bizarre non-identifiers as it's proving the opposite in terms of student safety.

I was thinking that theres more scope for error with initials but wondered if I was missing something

By coincidence I found a breach at my work recently as organisations have identifying codes and sensitive info has been sent to the wrong one due to one character typo in the code, the actuals names were totally different and would never have been mixed up otherwise

Definitely put in writing and phone too. I'd also ask them, if they are wrong about your DD, to ensure the information has all been expunged from her records

I have done this as a teacher I'm afraid. It was a big school where you didn't know or teach quite a lot of the pupils but of course you had to intervene/act if you found them doing stuff on the corridors. I came across a boy I didn't know misbehaving one lunch time and after the usual prevarication he gave me his name as being John Smith. As I didn't teach John Smith either I put him in detention. However, this was resolved by the real John Smith going to his HOY to complain, the HOY bringing him to me to ask why he was in detention and me then confirming that this was not the boy I had caught and apologising to him. Why hasn't this happened?

Did you phone to school to query it? Definitely sounds like she's being mixed up with another pupil

You are not over reacting you need to do something otherwise there is another parent out there who doesnt know that their child is missing classes etc

I get constant alerts saying I'm in arrears with school dinner money payment for DD. She's 7, nearly 8. She last had a school dinner when she was 3 in nursery on her first day. I've called school about 5 times about these alerts and they apologise and say they'll sort it. I had another one yesterday 😂I know DD doesn't have dinner at school as I'd love her to have a hot meal there but she refuses! It isn't for lack of trying. I can only assume she's mixed up with another kid constantly but she's the only one with her name on school!

Put everything in an email and send to the school.

I can't believe the amount of people this has happened to. Is this bigger schools? Genuinely can't imagine this happening at our small school as everyone knows everyone.

One time I got a letter addressed to me at my address from a school neither of my kids had ever attended. I opened it and it was for a case conference for an at risk child and contained some highly sensitive information. Have no idea how they got my details. When I called the school to let them know the headteacher phoned me back to shout at me for opening the letter addressed to me!

Had this with my daughter. My daughter was struggling as she has slow processing but we were being refused help from the school even though they had additional funding for DD because she's a previously looked after child ( adopted from care ) We asked for a meeting with the head and the senco to complain about their refusal to assist.

A 30 minute meeting where they just told us how lovely DD was and that her test results show that she's just fine , average for her age and that she didn't meet the criteria for additional support.

Head teacher then told us she would ask her teacher Mrs A to call us to reassure us further.

When we mentioned that Mrs A was not our DD's teacher she looked completely confused and got very flustered. She had spent the whole meeting taking about a child with the same name in the year below. Instead of apologising and admitting her mistake she tried to cover it up and then sent us an email the next day with a plan to for the funded 1:1 support that DD actually did need.

We also used to get calls about unpaid dinner money even though DD always took a packed lunch and once DD was also told off for refusing to go up in assembly and collect an award that she knew wasn't meant for her ( a reading challenge award that she hadn't even taken part in) In the end she had to go up and accept it and I had to take it back to school and explain their mistake.

Call or go in and make sure they apologise to your daughter too

It certainly happens. Usually by one of those power trippy teachers too. There's on at my two daughter's school and I hear nothing but bad stuff about her from other parents and especially my girls who are the definition of goody two shoes if I'm honest.

My most recent one was when I was asked to see DD (15) year head at the end of my last parents evening. She pursed her lips, kissed her teeth and told me that DD had skipped a class (over 3 weeks previously) and wanted DD in front of me, to "explain herself". DD was confused as she has never missed any lessons and has a near 100% attendance rate every single year.
Luckily DD had a copy of her timetable in her phone, looked it up and got the attention of a nearby classmate/friend and asked if that could have been the lesson where the teacher didn't turn up for over half an hour (not that unusual with the school tbf). After confirming this she told the teacher she had indeed been there and to look up the attendance for a) herself for the other 5 lessons around that one to say she was definitely inside school and b) the attendance of the other pupils in that class that day.

The teacher had never bothered to ask DD why she wasn't registered there that day. She hadn't looked to find that no other pupil had been registered in that class that day either. All she did do was try to get my daughter into shit by essentially grassing her up to me.

Two seconds on the computer and she had her answer. No pupils had been registered in that class. I heard she cancelled a lot of "see me before you leave" appointments that night.

Call them. My Ds has an absolute double in his year at school and had a few close shaves before staff realised it wasn’t him 🙈😂

What did the school say?

Any update? Or has your daughter been naughty and you don't want to say 😉

Tried to speak to HOY who wasn't available.

DD was registered as late, but didn't have a lunchtime detention marked or an after school.

Receptionist said the other receptionist was obviously looking at other wrong childs timetable when she said Spanish.

I'm going to call back Monday to speak to HOY. As something is obviously not right if I got a text about an after school detention but DDs record wasn't showing any detentions.

Bit frustrating but Receptionist really couldn't help so I will call back.

I hope your call to HOY clarifies things today, OP.