When did no surnames become a thing?

[jewelcase]

There are bigger problems in the world, sure. But it was my younger DD’s school play the other night. The Y8s do a play every year, and this was hers.

In the programme, they listed the cast. But they only put first names. The school newsletter is the same. No surnames.

When did this start, and why is it a thing? I guess for some kind of safeguarding reason, but what’s the risk? It just seems to infantilise the kids, and you can’t tell one kid from another with the same name.

Is my kids’ school the only one? I suspect not.

AIBU to want surnames back?

It may not be a universal practice, but it is a sensible one, and one your children's schools should adopt.

I'm more relaxed about clubs as that is discretionary (though even then, I don't understand why anyone wouldn't just err on the side of protecting vulnerable children given that nothing is lost by not including surnames).

Well, we could argue we do more of the same for adults.

We had to challenge our employer for putting up photos, phone number direct line, and office hours and location on websites, because we had a couple instances of stalking. So no one now has this information on their staff pages.

Although the safeguarding posts have described the risks to individual children, there is also the potential risk to every child and adult within the school. Someone who has decided to enter a school to take or hurt a child is unlikely to be all that fussy about hurting anyone stood in the way.

We have to mitigate the risks as much as possible to keep children safe. Staff also have a right to a safe working environment. One of the first things said during safeguarding training now is ‘It could happen here’.

Not too long ago there was a fatal stabbing in a school. While that was two students, I can’t remember anything similar happening when I was at school. You are comparing apples with oranges if you try to compare current times with previous ones.

What a load of tosh! (not you OP)...

What's wrong with wanting your kids to play outside? Is that a bad thing?

Obviously, when presented with the emotional testimony of a tiny handful of people whose kids are vulnerable, it’s very hard to be rational. But the question should be, on all matters not just this trivial one, ‘What is the best solution overall?’ That might mean some people being less safe.

You seriously want to put children in danger so that your child's name appears on the programme of a school play?

more broadly I wonder whether sometimes ‘safeguarding’ is overdone to the detriment of the general community.

How is the community being harmed by this? Seriously, you sound bonkers. You complain about infantilising children, but you're so precious about your own children that you act as though they'll be traumatised because their surnames didn't appear in the programme of a school play!

By your logic, I don't think it's risky at all. It's statistically very, very unlikely that someone will see your children's names and school and decide to track them down and harm them. So why not just post them now?

Those simplistic memes about how great things were in the old days are usually vacuous nonsense.

If you want your kids to play outside, let them play outside.

What is it that you think is 'tosh'?

Protecting vulnerable children who, for various reasons, can't have their full name and location linked to protect them or their families?

Kids can play outside, nobody's saying they can't

Maybe they don't have any children whose parents have asked for their full names and faces not to be publicized.

Quite possibly, and I suspect it probably is done on a case by case basis, though I’m talking about 1 large primary and 3 enormous secondary schools, so thousands of children.

so obesity, poor mental health and unhappiness can be solved by changing a random newsletter that hardly anyone will ever read, from saying "Joe" to "Joe Bloggs?" Okay...

All your other examples sound like they've been lifted from the daily mail. You'll be complaining about Christmas being replaced by Winterval, next.

What activities don't go ahead because an adult hasn't been DBS checked, exactly?
Schools by me still all do Home Ec - there are plenty of things that can be cooked without sharp knives, although tbh from my own experience I don't remember the lesson in making a fruit salad or watery lasagne being the epitome of "Joy and learning"

And what does any of this have to do with full-naming someone?

Yes, but youtubers and bloggers are probably not quite of the same order of magnitude really, are they?

No, they’re of a much bigger order of magnitude than a child’s school play… but privacy is privacy on all scales. I have fewer followers than audience members in most school plays but still don’t have my surname on my Instagram…

I genuinely think you're being deliberately inflammatory.

If you've got a batshit crazy ex who has vowed to make you pay for leaving him, yes, that show programme when it fetches up on the internet can be exceedingly dangerous.

They could be not including some names. So a show with 20 kids in it might only list 19 of them.

My kids’ school have always used full names. Interesting how different schools are.

I don’t think it’s schools being different. It means one of several things:

-your school has no at risk kids
-the at risk kids aren’t allowed to participate
-they miss the at risk kids names off the programme.

schools in the uk at least are the same. They manage the risks in the same way. The “differences” you find interesting aren’t really differences.

I can’t imagine their school has no at-risk kids at all. Feels unlikely. My kids’ school perhaps needs to be more cautious.

This isn't a thing at all where my kids went to school. They only just left so it's not years ago. It's an ordinary state school and they had performances and prize-giving where everyone's name was printed in full in the program.
Come to think of it - DD likes to watch her theatre friends in their school performances and at least three other schools in the area also print full names. Should they not be doing that?

Wow. This is some thread battle for a hill we're not dying on 😳