To tell you the school does not decide when your child can walk home alone

[Itisuptoyou]

I keep seeing this on threads and I don’t want to derail what the thread is about.

But the school cannot decide this. You do as parent. It may be you are broadly in agreement with the school and I am but this is your choice and not the schools.

It irrationally annoys me when people claim ‘the schools don’t allow …’ Not up to the school!

@wildfirewonder is uniform really unenforceable in primary?
Surely the school would say "you chose this school".
Why do parents dress their kids in such shitty impractical clothes (ie a uniform) every day?
Let's rebel - stop sending them in wearing that crap.
Anyway.... I'm not actually sure what the point of this thread was or is.
9 pages in and I am totally lost.

The point was just to say that while schools might have preferences they don’t actually get to say whether or not your child can leave unaccompanied or not.

Fair enough, Jellycat, that's your opinion, but I stand by mine of annoying parents getting overly-involved instead of supporting schools, but it's not my problem any more, thank fuck! 😆
FAR harder dealing with parents than any children in my opinion.

And yet it's not "basic safeguarding" most 8/9/10 year old brownies should be able to walk home locally from brownies during the lighter evenings.
Thankfully our brownie leaders realise they are respected volunteers without PR and use common sense.

I never mentioned false imprisonment, but referencing ‘safeguarding’ does not allow the school carte Blanche in how they act.

Well it’s basic safeguarding according to the safeguarding courses we all do.
if parents don’t like it they’re welcome to send their children elsewhere rather than putting me, as a volunteer, who gives up a lot of time to run brownies at risk.

Most schools require the parent to sign a Home School Agreement when their child joins a school (any school I’ve worked in or had a child attend has done), this agreement will usually state that the parent and child agree to abide by the school rules. If the school rule is that children in years 4 and under must be collected by a responsible adult then the parent has accepted that and should follow that rule. If they don’t want to follow the rules of that school they can find another school which cares slightly less about child safety.

It isn’t against the law for me to wear a spaghetti strapped top BUT the school where I work does not allow staff to wear them in school - so we follow the rules or look for another job.

Can you really not see that its ludicrous but to let a 9 year old walk 1/2 mile home at 7pm in the spring summer? What do you think safeguarding means?

*not

I'm just here waiting for Godwin's Law tbh

At my son's primary the parental agreement we signed committed to collecting in person at the end of the school day. "In person" could be parent, carer, child minder, other authorised adult (e.g. grandparent) or after school club. This is standard for all primary schools in our borough.

At Year 4 children are allowed to walk home alone with written permission from the parent/s with PR.

False imprisonment? Jesus, have a day off.

There is a massive difference between what can be demanded in an employment context and a parental one.

I am honestly surprised some have got so annoyed about it, or haven’t understood at all and just reply saying no, at our school the rule is … 😂

What a load of utter bollocks.

Yes, of course it fucking is up to the school as they are responsible for your child's safety until they hand them over to your care.

Just do what other parents have been doing for years and make proper arrangements for your child to be collected, instead of winding yourself up on a ridiculous crusade against a perfectly reasonable school rule!!

Does that include my 14 year old son?

The Reception teacher was right to check with the Head to cover her own back. Presumably, as you have not said otherwise, the school complied with your wishes.

It is up to the school whether they will release a child to walk home alone. Our school absolutely will not simply release a child under a certain year group if the parent says so.

This isn’t a new thing my brother is 24 and I remember his primary school refusing to let him walk home alone. My mum argued and argued with them about it saying the same thing that it’s her child so her choice but they wouldn’t allow it and refused to let him go unless an adult came to pick him up, he was not allowed to leave the school. In the end my mum use to make me walk round to collect him then once out of the school I could go and he could walk home, it was just so the school could see me.

Same here (assuming like me you're in Scotland). There is literally no universe where I'd accept the school telling me what I can and can't do with my child. The fact we (as a society) have got ourselves to the stage where (like pp said) we have to ask permission to take them out for a funeral is insane. But then again we let "the state" ban us from hugging our family and seeing our partners and walking down a street without a good excuse for months on end just a couple of years ago...

Whenever people bring up "safeguarding" and "social worker" I always think... what are they going to do? They barely have the resources to remove children who're living in crack dens ffs. They are fed, clothed, clean, happy, loved and thriving, and if I want them to walk home themselves after school or stay home for a couple of hours without me or take them to fucking disneyland for the week I'll be doing it. I'm the parent.

Schools are legally responsible for your children. If the parents are willing to sign a legal waiver accepting that they are responsible for their children and everything that happens to them until the cross the school gates in the morning and after they leave them at the end of the school day, then that's fine - parents can decide. But "in loco parentis" means that the school is the parent whilst the children are with them, and are responsible for any decisions, including whether a child can walk home on their own or not. If some parents weren't so keen to blame schools for everything that goes wrong, perhaps they wouldn't be so cautious, buit if you are a headteacher responsible for that 10 year old child, are you going to carry the can when they are grabbed off the street by a predator? It may not be something that happens often, but it happens. If it's your child it happens to you will be screaming for blood - someone else's blood.

Schools are legally responsible for your children. If the parents are willing to sign a legal waiver accepting that they are responsible for their children and everything that happens to them until the cross the school gates in the morning and after they leave them at the end of the school day, then that's fine - parents can decide.

Schools are not legally responsible for children outside school hours. There is no way my primary school would think of themselves as responsible for what happens to a child in the normal course, until the child is both on the school premises AND within school hours. And why should they? Do you think school should be responsible if they took their dog for a walk on their own before school? Or while they are attending cubs? Or on holiday?

if a school is concerned that there may be abuse or neglect outside school then they flag this up with social services who take responsibility to checking on the child outwith school hours.

Safe guarding in the context of me as a brownie leader means keeping a child safe from harm and also protecting me as a volunteer again claims of neglect or abuse. Neglect and abuse can take many forms, including benign neglect from parents.

No, I wouldn't let any of my 3 children walk 1/2 mile home from an activity alone at the age of 9. Nor will I let any of my 9 year old brownies leave without being collected and this is completely in line with the training and advice we are given.

It’s actually relatively new that parents of perfectly able children have had to collect them. It wasn’t the case when my elder children were at school, nor when I started working in schools.

And it’s not up to the school. Hence why schools have to change their position 99.9% of the time when a parent states they wish their child to walk home alone.

the problem comes when people think ‘something I wouldn’t do personally’ is ‘safeguarding.’

I have no issue personally with guidance being year 5/6. In any case, when my children start school they will have to be taken and collected by car so they clearly can’t drive themselves 😅 but that’s not what I’m about here. I’m simply explaining the school does not decide, the parent does.

You really aren’t getting it. School are permitted to decide when they will permit children to leave school grounds unsupervised. Because that’s ultimately what this is. You aren’t consenting to them walking home. You’re consenting to them leaving the grounds without an adult. That’s an agreement between parent and school. School are within their rights to refuse to allow a child to leave unsupervised.