To worry about how we'd contact DS's school in an emergency

[cottonwoolbrain]

He started in year 7 this year. I've occasionally needed to contact them as he has SEN and a couple of other minor issues.

If I send an email to general address they send an autoreply saying someone will get back within 2 school days (usually they don't and I have to send a chase)

If I phone it always drops to an answer machine and says someone will call me back - they don't even if I wait a couple of days then leave another message. There is only one phone number.

If I email class teacher or head of year they usually do get back within 2-3 school days...

But short of actually physically turning up there seems to be no way to contact them quickly. If for any reason there was a crisis at home or one of us was urgently admitted to hospital there would be no way to get in touch.

DD's school answer emails within a couple of hours and the phone nearly always gets answered on the first try

I'm probably being over anxious and hopefully we'll never need to get in touch in a rush but I'd like to know that I can if necessary.

In my kids school. Someone always answers the phone. Sometimes I might have to ring a couple of times. There is also the facility to leave a message on the answerphone if they don't pick up. Usually if i ring early before school has opened.
And they get in touch within a couple of hours.

Isn’t there more of an expectation that you’d contact him directly and not via school if there was an emergency because secondary school kids all have phones and they don’t need to be collected by a parent?

If it was me I'd leave the following message in an 'urgent' tone

'Hi I need an urgent call back from a member of the office staff about child x in form x
I need to speak to someone quickly please. '

Be vague

Discuss it with the SENCO.
I presume this is things like a warning that he’s having a specific issue that day?
At my school, you’d have a contact number directly with SENCO team. It’s not answered instantly, but it is monitored for urgent same day needs.

“If for any reason there was a crisis at home or one of us was urgently admitted to hospital there would be no way to get in touch.”

Actually, re-read and so this isn’t to do with needing to pass on same day info regarding your child, but your emergencies.

Is this coming from your own anxiety? If one of you is admitted to hospital, then the other can still be there for your child. Or calls whoever you would call - friend, relative, social services if you haven’t those to call on and the non-hospitalised partner needs to be with the hospitalised one.

Honestly, it’s never crossed my mind to worry about contacting school. I’d message my child directly, and if adult support was needed, a friend or relative. School wouldn’t be involved.

What kind of crisis at home would need to be communicated to a child at school in the moment, and could not be left until the end of the school day?

What sort of emergency requires an immediate conversation?

Instead of phoning their schools asking if my 2 DCs could be collected to be brought home asap, should I have waited until they arrived home after school and extra curricular sports to learn that their dad had died that morning while they were in registration?

Make a complaint to the headteacher and threaten to contact Ofsted. It is a safeguarding issue if they can’t pick up urgent messages.

I think you are being over anxious. I can’t think of a scenario which would be that urgent that it couldn’t wait until end of school day.

It's very unusual for a school not to have someone answering the phone, even if it's to tell you someone will get back to you.

Parents contact schools all the time, to advise of a change at pick-up, a delay on the road and running late, and so many things that are not "urgent" but really need to be addressed that day.

But if you rang and no one answered, then surely whoever was collecting them would have just gone anyways? They could have explained the situation and someone would have called you to check you gave permission. In a circumstance such as this, you wouldn't need the schools permission to be allowed to remove them.

Surely the thing is to make sure they can contact you in an emergency?

These situations you mentioned just wouldn't be relevant at secondary though. Either the secondary age child needs the info (in which case text them), or if its a conversation needed with their teachers about an issue you leave a message and they call back during their Planning time that week/after lessons.

Also their timescale for routine stuff won't be the same as their timescale for stuff marked urgent (unless you routinely mark everything as urgent to cry wolf).

Unlike what a poster said above, I'd advise being SPECIFIC in an emergency. "Please can someone call me, DD2 in Class X's dad has died" is going to get a response. "Please can someone call me urgently [mystery mystery mystery wooo wiggly fingers of mystery]" isn't going to get a response (except an eyeroll).

huh? It's a massive safeguarding issue, no you can't just send anyone to pick up children even if you say you have a good reason!

Some schools might do the pick up in front of the office, so you can nip in and make a phone calls, but most schools do pick up near the gates, often at the other side of the ground.

Parents arrange for friends and family to do unplanned pick-up all the time, for many reasons, no you can't expect the school to call every single parent to check. If nothing else, parent unlikely to pick up the phone for the same reason they sent someone else.

At our secondary, someone always answers the phone during the school day. What if someone needed to contact the school urgently to say that the mains water was being turned off for emergency repairs?

Kids aren't allowed to use their phones at secondary so there'd be no point phoning your child instead as the phone would be switched to silent.

I think I'd be asking the head why they have no one dealing with enquiries, urgent or otherwise. That definitely sounds like a safeguarding issue.

@Hoogieflip so sorry for your loss.

I wouldn't be happy with that either OP. Of course you need to be able to contact the school in real time, not within a couple of days. You must raise your concerns with the headteacher.

thank you I am probably overthinking it We did have an incident a few years ago where I was hospitalised and DP was in another country so i suppose its at the back of my mind as a possibility.

In that occasion school were very helpful when hospital called them and made arrangements for dd and ds to go home with her best friends

They are not allowed phones at school or at least they are but the rule is they must be switched off at all times during school day and must not be seen on site so not much help texting really

“so not much help texting really”

It would be though, in exactly the situation you described. They don’t need to read the text saying, “you’re going home with Max’s mum tonight, I’ll call you and explain later, but it’s nothing to worry about.” until it’s time to turn their phone on.

“If I send an email to general address they send an autoreply saying someone will get back within 2 school days (usually they don't and I have to send a chase)

If I phone it always drops to an answer machine and says someone will call me back - they don't even if I wait a couple of days then leave another message. There is only one phone number.”

You sound like you’re assuming there is no triage happening there.

Perfectly likely that the email saying, “Liam has to be collected by another parent at 15:00” would be actioned same day.

Same with the answering machine. It’s screening calls possibly, so that they can deal with your urgent message instead of you never getting through because Emily’s mum is on the phone again because someone parked outside her house for school drop off.

Do they have mobile phones though?

Give him a mobile phone and tell him to keep it turned off (or on silent and vibrate turned off) in the bottom of his bag.

He can then discreetly check at break, at lunch and at the end of the day.

It doesn't matter what the rules are.

There should be someone talking calls at the reception, though.

As a single parent and a parent to a child with SEN, I am thankful that if I was hospitalised whilst my child was at school, the hospital/friends etc would be able to get that message to my child as the school answers their phone and therefore hopefully help before he turned up back at home with no way to get in and no information. I cannot fathom people saying but why on earth would you need to contact the school in an emergency and its all due to OP's supposed anxiety. Mumsnet is a completely different bizarre world at times

If they saw the message at the end of the day that ‘Grandma is collecting and meet her in the car park’ then would that really be so much of a problem?

But I also wouldn’t assume there’s no triage happening to the answering machine messages. If you explained why something was urgent (not being vague as PP suggested) then I’d hope they’d rightly prioritise it. And of course if Grandma turned up at the school saying someone was seriously ill or had died, and the kids needed to go now, then I’d hope that would be tragic and unusual enough for them to not mind making an extra phone call to verify things.