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...

Oh well, yes, sorry for not clarifying.

This would be solved if we didn't make children dress identically. I got so fed up of my DC going to school in new labelled clothes from M&S or JL and coming home in a worn out jumper from Sainsburys. And stuff took forever to appear in the lost property box and never (however labelled) made it back to the classroom like it was suppose to.

I don't think you understand quite how much lost unamed property we've got... Seriously 30-40+ items EVERY SINGLE DAY.

I think keep them a week or two and then unnamed to PTA is absolutely reasonable,

My middle son could do this too! It was amazing! And a little creepy…

But that is irrelevant

I have no idea if parents are too lazy to name their children’s things, don’t have time, forget, or just don’t know how to. For example when my son started school many years ago he was the only child who didn’t have a named peg with an animal picture on. After a week of the teacher not getting to it, we made a little sign and stuck it on his peg. I didn’t think she was lazy or needed to feel bad about it. I thought “I can help here, it’s two minutes of my time”. His “proper” label arrived a week later and no one needs to think about it at all. My point is that there’s a solution that is easy for everyone and nobody has to feel bad about it.

Myself I think filling your own water bottle, labelling your own stuff, tidying and cleaning your own environment are good things for school and home.

My daughter's school has uniform monitors from Year 6. They'll hang up all the unnamed / illegibly named stuff on a rail(s), so it's accessible to anyone popping in around pick ups to have a hunt and every half term it's put out for parents to look through in the final week of school. After that it goes into the PTA sale on a tough luck, buy it back basis.

The trays of unnamed water bottles is simply staggering in volume.

I may have sewn name labels across the knuckles of my daughter's gloves in an attempt to hang onto them....

I used to be able to do that! Really useful for sorting clean laundry. Sadly I lost the skill in my mid 20s.

Course it’s laziness on the parents part. It takes two minutes to write their names several times (could do it when they’re ironing their uniform maybe?) and it’s nonsense that they don’t know how to. Many uniform items have a dedicated label with “name” and “class” written on them. It couldn’t be more simple.

Your example of you putting one label on one child’s peg isn't comparable to a teacher having to arse about with 30 kids (with maybe 3-4 clothing items plus all the other lunchbox/water bottle) stuff.

People outsourcing basic parenting is ridiculous.

I feel lucky my daughter goes to a really small school, as far as I know they don't even have a lost property box, she's never lost a single item

When I was responsible for lost property I kept everything for a month before charity shop donation.
It was a large secondary school. On the first day of each month I would take, usually a black bag full, to the charity shop and start again. Occasionally, if it were a particularly expensive item I would hang onto it a bit longer. I couldn’t believe the number of watches that were never claimed.

Oh come on now you're being silly.

"Don't know how to label"

And if you genuinely think the teachers should spend 20-30 minutes EVERY SINGLE DAY making sure kids have got labels on everything, getting them to write it on their stuff if needed, and the school spending money and resources on this, you're mad.

This is a basic parent responsibility of they want their child's property back.

Our school does this too, there are lost property bins in the school and then donated to the PTA every term.

however our PTA run uniform exchanges where you can pick up uniform for free - they just ask for a donation but it’s not compulsory.

it works well!

I never understand why lost property gets sent to the office in schools, it doesn’t make any sense to jumble it all together and make parents go through a gatekeeper who is busy doing other things in order to check it.

If it’s named, stick it in a box, add the name to a list, read them out weekly and hand it back during assembly.
Or if it’s named and found in the classroom, just hand it back.

If it’s unnamed:
If lost in the playground or lunch hall, just stick it in a tub in the playground that parents can rummage through at pick up/drop off.

If lost in the classroom, have a lost property box there, remind everyone on leaving to make sure they have their jumpers etc etc. If they don’t have them, they can check the box on their way out.

At half term anything left over can be sold by the PTA.

Our primary has got quite strict. There are lost property bins on the playground. Uniform are sorted every two weeks by Yr6 kids . Any named is returned to kids in class . Unnamed goes into one big bin for collection with a sticker on the label. Anything still there two weeks later - goes to recycling / second-hand uniform! I personally took home over 100 items of unnamed uniform and washed it at the end of one term to be sold / recycled. Just isn't the space to store and it ends up soggy and wet in the uniform bins as there was just too much.

I agree - I can't imagine how any halfway competent parent could claim they didn't know how to label their child's belongings!

I’ve always written DCs names in their school clothes. Obviously they still lost stuff, and sometimes it ended up in lost property. But often other kids took it home, and parents just chose to keep it (sometimes it came back months later) Consequently on a few occasions I’d take a replacement unlabelled jumper (not coats or anything fancy) out of lost property. After all, if people can’t be bothered to label the uniform, they’re clearly not that fussed about retrieving it! And since my labelled stuff got stolen, it seemed like a fair exchange.

When I was at school many years ago our uniform had to be labelled at a particular point on the outside of the garment.

Absolutely. Brand new 'proper' jumper with badge goes missing. Label ripped out and replaced with felt tip name.
Kids come home in different trousers after PE. You end up with the supermarket pair, whilst the pair you have bought from Next (due to a wider waist specifically) trots in newly labelled on Asda kids legs.

If only there was an adult at the place the child lived who could do this with them on a weekend.

Getting changed for PE seems to be the worst point for everything getting mixed up. A kid only has to obliviously put on someone elses jumper. You have to label clothes clearly enough the child can recognise their own in the crowded changing room. Smudged initials on the wash label might not be enough.

I still remember finding another child's named shoe that had somehow come back to our house and got buried in the shoe trunk for months

The stickers seem to be best for speed and staying power.

Our primary has the dc attend all day in their PE kits on days when they have PE. It's a branded tshirt and hoodie (which school provides one of at no cost each year) and whatever shorts/leggings/joggers the children want to wear, and a pair of trainers.

Saves on lots of lost property.

I'm honestly amazed by the amount of parents who don't name their child's items. I'm always seeing posts on the school FB group and class whatsapp groups "Katie lost her cardigan... has anyone seen it... I forgot to label it" ffs how is anyone supposed to be able to tell that a random lost unlabelled cardigan belongs to Katie??

My oldest is in year 5 now and we have only lost a couple of things in the last 6 years. One of the TAs mentioned last year that I was "very good with your labels"

That being said I've noticed my kids lunchboxes don't have a space for a label on the outside ... you have to label them on the inside. Fortunately I have now attached a named keyring to them.

Op, just a heads up. Your post makes you quite identifiable to someone who knows you. I think I might be a TA in the school you work in.