To be VERY concerned about unattended 7 year olds?!

[Iamthedoctor]

I am actually gobsmacked. For once in my life.

I have just been reading another thread and a couple of people have said that they allow their 7 year olds to walk to school on their own WITHOUT making sure that they go in the gates.

HELLO?!!!

DD is 8. There is NO WAY on this earth would I allow her to walk to school on her own!

Worst case scenario:

DD walks to school by herself. I don't see her go in. Some arsehole snatches her. I don't know about it until AFTER school, because the school don't ring me to say she hasn't arrived. Cue police/newspapers/radio/manhunt.

I feel very strongly about this! It's madness!

Fair enough, allow them to walk HOME from school (then you KNOW that they have arrived!), but PLEASE think about what you are doing!

LOL think I was 9 when I was first allowed to walk the 10 minutes to school with my friends on my own! And have recently just found out that my mum followed me for the fiorst week hiding behind bushes. Thats the truth BTW she admitted it last month! Overly protective I think... Found it hysterical though at the thought iof mad mums ducking and diving like commando through the street...

The first few times ds walked school (in term 1 this year) we followed him on our bikes . He only went once without being followed.

We're about to start letting him walk to school again, now that the mornings are brighter. We'll probabyl follow him again (trying to duck behind cars and taking a slightly different route to him) for the first few times, just to check that he is still as careful - but after that he is on his own!

For the record, from about age 11, I was a latch key kid who walked home from school with my db (2 years younger than me)and let myslef in on some days when Mum was at Uni, so we looked after ourselves for an hour or so. The neighbours knew and we knew who to go to for help if anything happened. It was normal in the 60s/ealry 70s.

"in the UK the school is supposed to phone home/contact parents if a child doesn't turn up at school" Is that the case? ''

Wilywombat - it is many schools' policy to call but there's no law or anything. And TBH it can be a very long winded job; phone home number, phone mobile number, leave message etc and by lunchtime there is still no definitive reason as to why half the children called aren't in school. It's not foolproof.

I wish parents would be more proative in ringing in - to save the school secretary's sanity if nothing else.

That said (and I know this will have been said already) - I don't necessarily have a problem with a 7 year-old going to school alone. Assess the risk - and lets be honest nothing is 100% safe. The likelihood of them been abducted is tiny. And someone mentioned further down about teenagers walking to school - I think statistically they are the group more likely to be involved in a road accident. Ds2 has lost two friends (13 and 14) this way and we aren't advocating walking them to the gates. Maybe this group are more at risk because we aren't giving them the skills earlier in life.

Maybe it makes a difference that there are only 200 kids at ds' school, so the number of unauthorised absences in any one day is very small.

Even at larger primary schools, the hnumbers involved must still be pretty small.