School not letting my child from the school

[Kutika]

I have read numerous discussions where people mention that schools cannot legally prevent a child from leaving, yet I find myself in this exact situation. The school is refusing to allow my child to leave, despite my clear instructions. I've sent an email, filed a complaint with the trust, and even contacted the police, but to my surprise, none of these actions have resolved the issue. I was told by the head teacher that the law does not apply to them. Any ideas on who to contact?

Have you ever worked with any other timezone? 3-5 is standard meeting time as it allows both continental europe and US East coast to join.

@wombat15 I'm aware that it is not across England completely, but there are regularly threads on here about the same thing. My best friend is a teacher at a first school that never allows pupils to leave on their own.

In my recent experience, Y6 pupils were allowed to leave school and walk home without an adult meeting them but the parent/guardian had to give written permission. The school is in loco parentis for the time they are there so I can understand that they need parental permission.

After all, by Y7 they may have to find their own way to and from senior school, often by public transport.
How will they learn any independence?

Lots of businesses have core hours.

Even if they don't, people can manage picking up their child(ren) however it only works if the child(ren) are then able to entertain themselves at home for up to an hour while the parent can continue working.

So over the years I've worked with people who have had meetings on the phone while they are on the move until about 3 minutes before school kick out time when they can't talk to you about business matters around other parents. They then come back on again about 10-15 minutes later.

I've also worked with people whose children aged 8+ come home alone and shout "Hello" to their parent. If I'm in a meeting with that parent I ask the parent to go and talk to their kid for a few minutes and if they can't get back to message me.

What age is a first school? Under 8 years old?

I think you've missed the irony.

How are they making sure a parent is picking them up? Do they actually hand them over to a parent? If not I bet many parents just ignore the policy and the school don't care. This is about covering themselves and nothing to do with safeguarding the child. I can't see that's in the child's best interest in Y6 given they'll be off to secondary school following year.

Is that the correct way? Is this society that we live in? That a school don't have to follow the Law introduce the rule that is above them and everyone has to obey?

They do literally hand directly to a parent, right up to Y4, they don't have Y5 and Y6 as they are a first school. It seems crazy to me.

This is one of the other reasons why we want our children to walk home. From Year 7 the nearest school will be 30min-45min with the bus.

Several of my siblings, friends and aquaintences schools have had this policy, over the decades. They successfully challenged the policy if they thought their kids were mature enough to walk home without an adult earlier at a younger age. Most of the kids who left alone lived very near the school like the OP's kid, while the few who lived further weren't actually walking home on their own but with a same age or older sibling. (Some kids are twins or have a sibling who is just over a year older.) None of the kids crossed busy roads.

My own DD's school has this policy and parents ignore it if they live right next to the school and their child is 8+. The head complaints but the joke is some of the same children can be found playing on the street within 30 minutes of the school ending without parental supervision right in front of the school. The kids have changed out of uniform.

A blanket policy is dangerous as unfortunately I personally know children in Year 6 who weren't mature enough to walk home alone but were allowed to by their parent and the school couldn't do anything even when they reported to social services and the police had to be involved.

What does your daughter think about this saga?

She raised the question of why the school is not adhering to the law, as I thought we all were required to follow it. During our conversation, we asked her if she preferred to be picked up or if she wanted to walk home alone. She confidently responded, 'If I can go to school by myself, I can come back home the same way.' She even pointed out that she's able to go to the shop, which requires crossing a busier road and is further away, yet somehow isn't allowed to walk home from school. It's completely nonsensical. We never do anything that would upset her or go against her wishes just assisting. School is having her for another 2 years from 9-3 but we will need to make sure she will grow up to make some decisions by herself. So at the moment, the school is giving a message that the Law should not be followed and the parents should be ignored.

Even if there were 10 adults at home that could collect your daughter, I’d still fight this tooth and nail. It’s the principle. They can’t just choose to not abide by the law by placing their own paper thin policies that hold no water.

Keep going OP.

Which specific law is the school not following?

Ultimately if they refuse to let a child leave at the end of the school day against her wishes and her parents' instructions, it's presumably false imprisonment.

Absolutely. I noted some of the keyboard warriors questioning the hubby's work, but missing the point about the child making decisions. It seems others are so fast judging us for trying to fight win or be right. This is not the case, what about the well-being of the child so that she can come home feeling confident.

In the UK, there are no specific laws about the age a child can walk home alone, but parents have a legal duty to ensure their children are safe. The NSPCC suggests that children under 8 shouldn’t be left unsupervised, including walking home alone.
Which could be potentially classed as False imprisonment. I would go that far but ......

Well that’s just it. There isn’t one 🤷🏽‍♀️

"What does your daughter think about this saga?"

She raised the question of why the school is not adhering to the law, as I thought we all were required to follow it.

Heh. Of course she did.

This is a fun thread though. Schools should risk assess every child individually rather than have any policies for all. What if this school did that, for the sake of argument, and then decided that actually - on balance - they thought some kids should be able to walk home alone, but not the OP's?

What, no? The school shouldn't be risk assessing each individual child. It's the parents call, not the schools.

You're not going to win here OP and it's likely causing your child a lot of stress.

I was thinking back to this post, OP. The school feels that kids up to a certain age should not leave unaccompanied at this time of year. In order for them to change that for certain children, but not all, they would need to look at why an individual should not have that rule apply to them. In this situation, that's by nature a risk assessment. I've been a school governor and a parent at a school where kids were not allowed to walk home alone before a specific age and time of year. Like it or not, the school is acting in what they believe to be the best interests of the kids - from a safety perspective.

At my SD's school they brought the children out in a line and then each child had to point out their parent on the playground before the teacher let them go and watched them go to the parent before moving onto the next child in line. If the parent hadn't arrived, the child waited beside the teacher until they did. If your child happened to be at the end of the line (class of 34 children) you were waiting a really long time. This was all the way up until the end of Y5, so SD was nearly 11. I thought it was ridiculous.

Parents should be able to cope with that - and schools should be able to present a reasonable case of why they feel the need to safeguard against the parents wishes.

A lot of this should involve fostering good communication between schools and parents.

By April DS will be well 10 years and 7 months in y5. Some of the kids will be going to high school when they are 11 years and 1 day in y7. The logic of a random day in April would be 'unfair' to him by this measure. It is holding him back considerably though. Should we be holding kids back because of 'unfairness'?

Which is the better logic for the well being of the kids?

Reasonably, kids age 9 and 10 should be learning that not all kids have the same ability and life isn't fair anyway.

It shouldn't be based on what everyone else is doing. It should be about who is ready and who isn't.

It should be about talking about ability levels just like maths or english. I don't understand we have this ridicilous notion that all the kids should be doing things at the same time because of 'fairness'.

Maybe if it was led by this, parents would be more willing to take their part in teaching independence skills.