To implement a new rule for lost property at primary?

[HamandCheeseSandwich]

In that, if it's uniform with no name on - goes to the PTA second hand uniform sale.

Bottles/bags/coats/anything else - all taken to charity shop every Friday.

If it has your name in, we will if course hold on to it...but only until half term. Then it's fair game.

I am in the office and have had enough of "have you seen Johnny's jumper?" And when asked if labelled it's 99% "no". Yes, love I've seen his jumper, it's so very different to the 450 others...

Knowing how much the PTA struggle with the lost property at our school YANBU. I once had to go through it to find my son’s jumper (named), and only after one half term the pile was enormous and all unnamed.

We do a version of this but half termly. Bottles and lunch bags wouldn't go to charity shop though (urghh), they go in recycling or general rubbish bins. We think 8 weeks is long enough for child or parents to realize something is missing.

I used to go into school to read so every few weeks after reading I would go through the lost property box and return all the named stuff to the child’s classroom. Crappy job as I had to check every one with reception and then deliver it. Everything else got hung up in lost property . One of us would wash it and then sell it at the various school fayres.

My DCs old primary school do this every half term.

Our school had a rail outside at collection time. If you had something missing they would allow you to look through. It was there every day so it didn’t fill up quite as quickly. It was useful for more distinctive items such as coats

Weekly is not good. Open the school hall for 30mins before the end of the day on the last day of every half term and put all lost property out on tables. Parents can come and look for their lost items or come and pick up free replacements. The PTA could staff it.

Our lost property is put on the playground on a trolley and boxes every Tuesday morning so parents know that if they want to hunt for something that is there opportunity. They are kept in a tiny room just next to a playground door, so no trouble to wheel them outside. We would get very short shrift bothering the office staff with all our queries! Named stuff largely but not always gets returned to the children in question and any leftovers go to the school fair uniform sale. Not sure what they do with the lunchboxes and bottles.

Absolutely not.
Are you aware that some people struggle to buy these supplies, and that school age children often forget or lose things not to irritate you but rather because they are children?

Not that I agree with the OP completely... but isn't that more motivation to name the uniform items?

This is completely true but children need to learn to keep track of their things. It's a life skill.
And, having invested in uniform and equipment, an extra £2 on a sharpie pen so you can label your kids stuff seems like a no-brainier. If you do not label your child's uniform, you can't complain if it goes missing. It's uniform. It all looks the same. That's the point of it.

Even more of a good idea to invest in a Sharpie pen and write the child's name on the label, so the teacher can put the errant jumper back in the right bag. Sorted. Our Primary did a sale of unclaimed every half term, worked a treat.

Parents should name their childrens items (stickers or stamps are not expensive) and take the time to look through lost property should their child lose something.
Its not the schools fault that kids lose stuff and I don't blame the PTA for making some money from it. My DCs primary school did it every half term.

Always baffled at how children manage to misplace single shoes and lunchboxes. If your kid came out wearing one shoe wouldn't you go straight in to find the other?

DD "lost " her winter coat when the "beast from the east" storm came in 2018 (iirc). She was 11, at secondary school, and not in the habit of losing things regularly. It might not have had her name on it. It was quite annoying, as it was fairly new, but as the weather was so cold we had to buy another one straight away.(and we were on a fairly tight budget) Coincidentally the coat turned up in April when the weather warmed up.....🤔(both she and I very regularly checked the lost property box in the meantime)

Named items also go missing.

Absolutely with the lost property. The pile of unnamed lost uniform at the end of every month at our school used to be obscene. Half the stuff was pretty much brand new and not named. Some had had 3 wears at most. As PTA we used to sort it, wash it and put it out on the uniform table every month. We always had stock of pretty much new jumpers and PE clothes.

I agree the selling water bottle idea is a bit grim. I know my own DCs water bottles get grim rather quickly but agree with disposing them after a few weeks.

I like the lost property rail idea, I might suggest we do this with the coats and jumpers on a Friday pick up (our busiest pickup day as there is no after school wrap around that day). We did the lost property sort last week and the amount of unnamed coats was shocking. These were not cheapy coats either, some were mountain warehouse, regatta, frugi, north face ect. Even supermarket coats are not cheap nowadays.

Our PTA teamed up with a label company last summer where if you bought sticky labels from one of the companies they donated a portion of the price to the school. The head has sent numerous messages on parent mail about naming uniform, coats ect even with a normal pen is fine and it still seems to fall on dead ears.

People definitely steal items, and write another name over or even sell. Very hard to prove though. Sorry that happened to you.

Then name them!!

This happens a lot. DSs named winter coat went astray one year. Brand new. I looked on the bloody rail every single day even though by then we had replaced it. It turned up one day in May and was certainly not new anymore

They maybe came out in their other shoes? School children often have wellies, shoes and PE shoes. If the weather changes it's not unreasonable to come out in wellies instead of shoes? Some children are also cruel and hide items.

Our primary used to put tables out in the pick up playground with any lost property that wasn't labelled and basically said help yourself!

Are you ignoring the replies relating to named things also going amiss?

But what is the excuse for not labelling them???

We were so fed up with this in our class, I got a sharpie and wrote each child’s initials on every label in their uniform. In a class of 31, only six children had their names in their stuff!!

Similar to the 'excuse' for you not reading existing replies perhaps?

But that's not what the OP was discussing