DD no longer allowed to walk from school.

[TheWonderhorse]

DD is 9 and has been walking from school to a car park just off the grounds (not the official school car park but closer). She's been really wanting to walk home but we compromised at this for now and would work up to that gradually. I signed a consent form to permit them to release her.

So this morning the school sent a letter out saying that they've had a rethink to all parents, and from Monday only Year 6 children are to be allowed to leave the classroom without a parent.

DD is Year 4 but the oldest in her class, meaning we won't be allowed to start this again for 17 months. AIBU to ask the head to reconsider? I know they can't really refuse to let her out, but I don't want to be a dick. I just feel like DD is being held back for no good reason at all. We have this covered and didn't need the school to intervene.

IABU, school know best.
IANBU it's up to the parent to judge what's safe for the child.

I'm not suggesting they are doing it for any other reason other than safety, but I don't think it's in the best interests of the children and causes them problems later in life if they aren't given freedom and independence which they can handle and dearly want.

I also find it frustrating and patronising and feel strongly that school should support families in this sort of thing. If we want capable and competent people, then children need to gain the skills to become them as and when they are ready.

And they will when they walk to and from school for the whole of year 6 & then for Secondary too.
This is very much a mountain out of a molehill kind of situation.

I hardly think walking 50 yards from the school gate to your safe, warm car is ground breaking in terms of independence anyway.

Do you think Wales has no bad people? I just don't see why parents are so quick to push their kids to be more grown up. If something happened to her in those 2 minutes you'd never forgive yourself. She's still a young child.

@Bellsandthistle

"Typically parents are called and they are sent to after school club if available and parents are made to pay."

I can't believe that parents would actually be deprived of the right to parenting their own children and then MADE TO PAY FOR CHILDCARE THEY HAVE NOT CONSENTED TO.
That is absolutely insane and overstepping so many legalities I don't know where to start.
As a teacher in Scotland I'm pretty sure I would have been sacked for proposing this.
Primary kids still regularly walk home unaccompanied for lunch here. Although fewer since free school meals.

I am going from this thread but I have to comment on this - most schools (if I say all someone will shout but I bet it is all) ask parents to sign an agreement/contract to abide by the various rules the school imposes when they join the school. This will be one of those kind of rules.

It's part and parcel of being part of that school. If we go down the route of legality you could argue all sorts of things schools can't actually impose on parents - the wearing of uniform for example - but it's a rule set for their school. Parents can move their children if they don't like the way a school is run.

I don't why Scottish teachers keep coming on here with comments like this - you have an entirely different education system in Scotland so it's irrelevant what you do or don't do.

Wait till they hear about the 5yo Japanese children who take themselves to pre-school.

Are you choosing to ignore the many times I've said it was a process which we had begun to enable her to walk home?

Of course it's not groundbreaking, that's the point.

This was in response to people talking about the rules in English and Scottish schools. Education is devolved here in Wales so it's not the same as either. Nothing to do with the presence of bad people.

That rule wasn't in place when I signed up. It's a sudden change of policy. Obviously I'm not going to move schools over it, but feel perfectly entitled to question it.

You're right OP

Its really important small steps are built up to empower children.

All the "but safety" moaning Minnies are not thinking ahead. A tiny risk now makes a future risk much smaller.

I saw a thread on FB about "what if a 4 year old gets up and runs a bath in the middle of the night" with people who take the bath plugs to bed with them.

Do you know if any particular situation has brought on the change?

@TheWonderhorse @Orangesinthebag it depresses me that people think a behaviour contract signed with a school is legally binding and somehow overrides parents' legal right to determine what is best for their child. Schools certainly should not be putting children into after school activities without going through proper process and doing it directly against parental consent.

OP this whole situation smacks of senior management getting a bit power mad in response to fuss made by one or two parents. It can't be a specific threat or yr 6 would also be restricted and tbh the school has no jurisdiction over ANY child after classes are finished, but most would reasonably say children under 6 are not developmentally ready to walk home alone. Your child is 9 and has already been walking independently so what are the grounds for restrictions half way through the year? If they truly want to do this I would say wait till next session to start, but the conversation should be about increasing responsibility and independence for younger children rather than restricting them. If you want to insist you are perfectly within your rights and the school should back down. I don't know whether schools in Wales are overseen by Local Authorities but might be worth considering contacting yours for advice.

No. The head likes to send letters like this on a Friday afternoon so we all have a weekend to process before we get any communication. I'll hopefully get a reply to my email tomorrow.

If you want to avoid the conversation with school - could you just do the 'developing independence' walk at the start of the day rather than the end? So she gets dropped off there and walks in to school on her own, rather than walking from school to the car park alone?

I'm wondering if there's been an issue of a child walking home after school and no one being home/child being left outside alone - leading to some form of safeguarding issue - hence the new changes.

I assume OP is doing it at both ends of the day?

Not really, I've explained already that I take my older children to secondary school in the morning so while I can drop her a little further away from the gate, we don't have time to have her walk the whole way, so building up was planned to happen on the way home.

Also, I am concerned that should something happen on the way to school I won't know, because school are normally slow to send the "where's your child?" texts.

Just coming back to this as I have been thinking about the ‘school overstepping’ and ‘if there is a real problem then that’s Social Services’ role to deal with nit the school’s’

The issue schools face is that - driven by the overloading and in many cases disappearance of the external support services they once routinely referred to - they are forced to take on much more responsibility themselves in a huge number of areas. The threshold for services to take on referrals is hugely higher, and the time frame for action enormously longer, and schools (caring about the children and seeing them every day, and also bring the one service directly accessible to parents) end up ‘filling the gap’.

The problem is that schools are not as expert, may not have the full training, and may this make less nuanced decisions than the ‘proper’ service that is no longer accessible.

In some areas - eg mental health support once provided by CAMHS but now with a 2 year waiting list so now delivered by a ‘nurture TA’, or speech therapy once provided in person by SaLT but now delivered via photocopied resources by class support staff - the impact us perhaps only on a few children. In others, like safeguarding concerns that would once have met threshold for SS action but they are now too overloaded to address, schools may be pressed into taking clumsy school-wide action as they lack specific expertise but know only too well where the blame will lie if an incident occurs ‘on their watch’.

Those of you who are saying ‘if there is a real issue, SS will pick it up so schools should not be doing anything’ are sadly naive about the state of these services, and in that yawning gap between ‘where threshold for action would once have been’ and ‘where threshold for action now is’, schools find themselves stepping in.

And where schools feel less confident, they are likely to be more risk-averse.

@cantkeepawayforever it is not and will never be safeguarding to use "collective punishment/ solutions" where there is no justification and the parent has made an explicit decision that is outwith the schools' control.
So many of the decisions seen on here made by individual schools without proper legal advice would NEVER happen in Scotland because management would get their backsides kicked by Local Authority legal departments. That's why Scottish teachers are coming in to say this. It does work both ways, as teachers then feel unsupported against parent complaints, but generally makes sure that teachers have time to plan and teach after school and not mess about interfering judgementally in normal family decisions. So many children use very lightly supervised school buses here from the age of 5 that these bans would be ludicrous.

It is very difficult to compare places with different z’cultural norms’ - in this case, England and Scotland. As it happens, English schools do have a culture of setting minimum ages for walking home unaccompanied - and English towns, villages snd cities will therefore be unused to seeing young children walking hone alone and may query safety. Equally, LAs (where involved - most schools are now academies) are likely to agree that schools are allowed to set their own rules in this area - as in others like uniform, or lunchtime, or which side of the corridor they walk - in home-school agreements.

As I have said before, if schools are held responsible for safe dismissal of children until they reach their parents’ care (which in England ime they tend to be, regardless of strict legality), it seems reasonable that they should be able to make rules around it. If in Scotland, schools are culturally NOT held responsible for children as soon as they leave the building, then obviously rules can reflect that.

So something might happen on the way to school, but coming home is perfectly fine with no anticipated issues?

I am also not sure whether the change of age for leaving school unaccompanied is reasonably represented as ‘collective punishment’. It’s a change to established custom and practice - in the same way as ‘I know that Y5 have usually been able to use the running track at lunchtime, but we have reviewed it and now that won’t be allowed’ [whether for reasons of surface wear / weather / supervision / behaviour, that custom and practice has changed].

An example of the gap schools may find themselves clumsily filling - and I am not in any way arguing that the school’s response would be right, just that it would be understandable - ‘We know that x goes home to an empty house and looks after their younger siblings. We have reported it to SS but they say it does not meet threshold. We have also had complaints from y member of the public about behaviour of and shoplifting by a small group of boys on their way home, while wearing uniform, and while we’ve spoken to the PCSO they only have 1 day a fortnight in this area and can’t increase observation patrols. And there was that horrible incident last term where there was a muddle between z’s dad and mum and they were ‘lost’ for a bit and poor Mrs C came in for a lot of abuse on the parent WhatsApp as well as that nasty shouting incident in the playground. Overall, would it be easier and safer for everyone if we raised the ‘walking home alone’ permission age to Y6?’

It would obviously be better for a discussion to be held between the school and the parent body before the school unilaterally changed policy -perhaps a way forward for the OP to suggest would be a consultation?

If schools have an epidemic of mental health issues the very LAST thing they should be doing is stopping parents from encouraging independence.

I am rather tired of saying the same thing over and over again. Where I pick her up currently is not far at all from the school grounds, and crucially, she has someone waiting for her. If she didn't arrive then I would be aware immediately. This is where we are starting from in a process of working up to more responsibility.

On the way to school I do feel like she would be safe, but it's more difficult because if she fell over or something there's nobody looking out for her, school would assume she was home ill. By the time she walks to school on her own I will probably give her a phone for emergency use, because the school would probably not inform us she was absent until about 11am, which is too late for my liking.