AIBU to take 30 minutes to get to school when they call?

[Hermitintraining]

Dd felt unwell at school yesterday, I was called to collect her.
As it happened I was off work but in the middle of something at home, so I told them ok, I will be about 30 minutes. School is a 15 minute drive away (secondary).
When I got there I got told that it was too long. Dd had a headache and felt unwell but hadn’t actually been sick, I think she was just too hot as she was fine once home. I commented that if I had been at work it would have been closer to an hour to collect. The office area had about 5 other kids all waiting to be collected and when I asked dd she said they had all been waiting at least as long as she had. Dd was just sitting there quietly, she is no trouble and this isn’t something that happens very often for her.

Primary school we were always told that around 30 minutes was ok. It seems entirely reasonable to me, surely most parents can’t just drop everything and be at school in moments? It feels like secondary, with much longer travel involved, should be the same if not longer tbh. I understand that they don’t want ill kids hanging about and it must be a pain, but there was no need for the drama it was turned into.

So am I unreasonable to think 30 minutes to get to school is actually fine?

So you actually told them you’d be there in 30 minutes and they still felt the need to tell you off? Knobs.

I work in a city about an hour away on the train. The train is once an hour then it’s roughly a 15min drive so realistically they could be looking at 2-2.5h for me to get to DC…

It's futile to prescribe the amount of time parents must appear in, unless you're going to give them a radius they can travel from school to adhere to, and a list of activities they can do during the school day.

If you'd have been in a hairdressers mid having foils an hours drive away what then? Walking the dog in the countryside forty minutes away from your car, which was parked forty minutes away from school? A barrister in court? A doctor mid shift? Stuck in traffic on the M1? A thousand other reasons why anyone might not be able to appear at school within a half hour time limit.

Total nonsense, ignore it.

If i'm in the office it takes me at best 25 minutes to get back to school, school need to realise we can't teleport and have other things sometimes that can't be stopped with immediate effect. Even more annoying as you'd already told them!

This is ridiculous. Of course you can't be permanently poised to just drop everything and race off when there isn't a life or death emergency.
If your child was being taken to A&E in an ambulance, yes, you would have moved quicker. But she was safe and not in a life threatening condition. You did nothing wrong.

What an unnecessary response. They had no idea where you were or what you were doing when they called.

Utterly ridiculous.

school once called me to collect DC with earache. I was about a 45 minute journey away from the school which I let them know. They then rang back 20 mins later to say DC was actually fine and had gone out to play!

I’m a school first aider, 6 unwell out of in our case 600 ish isn’t unusual. Particularly as there is very little I can do if for example a child has a headache, my council won’t let me give out paracetamol unless previously requested and provided by parents, so all I can do is give them water and let them sit, it’s so frustrating. If it’s too bad I have to send them home, I understand parents work but what can I do ? I understand it can take a while for parents to collect, it is what it is, I’d never comment .

So what I meant to say is that out of those 6 possibly only one was really unwell, the others possibly fall under the category of not feeling great but a sit down and a drink of water is all I can do and it’s not helping.

I’m regularly 3 hours away and am a lone parent
the school is being ridiculous and you should tell them so

The school is being ridiculous.
That wasn't an emergency. Your child felt unwell with a headache.
You told them you'd be half an hour. If they thought it was more serious than that they should have told you straight away or called an ambulance if it was an even more serious situation. But it wasn't more serious and it didn't need an ambulance and 30 minutes was absolutely fine.

It's OK.

You do the best you can. Some days I was two hours away from my DS.

If you could get there in fifteen minutes it probably would have been better to go straight there. You didn't know how ill she was and they were probably short of space and worried she might be really ill. Reading these answers shows how so many parents have no idea about the logistics of running a school and making sure everyone is safe and accounted for.

YABU why don't you have a teleportation device like everyone else?

Ridiculous. Half an hour is fine. I got moaned at once and I work at the school as an English teacher. Nobody came to cover my class so I had to wait until the end of the lesson 🤣

Of course it’s fine - more than fine! You get there when you can. Unless it’s an absolute emergency you can’t literally drop and run. Ignore them

On the other side, the school office didn’t put a call through to me from my husband who was in the back of an ambulance having a heart attack and trying to arrange childcare for our DS who was at primary school.

I was blissfully unaware as during lessons we aren’t allowed to check emails as the office emailed me that husband called. Obviously no mobiles in class.
so I didn’t check until after I dismissed all
my children and then checked phone as had missed calls from my son school as they wouldn’t release my child to neighbour. Bless my neighbour as she had been stuck there for 40 minutes. My husband had phoned the school from ambulance to tell them neighbour was Collecting and nobody told class teacher and class teacher didn’t bother to ask the office!
husband was ok!

after this I got a cheap smart watch so I could monitor calls coming in. Didn’t care that I wasn’t allowed one as it couldn’t take pictures etc.

They ABU.

If DC was projectile vomiting everywhere then I’d drop everything immediately. If it was a general feeling unwell then I’d go as soon as reasonably possible.

I got a call a couple of weeks ago and I was two hours away with work! I told them to try DH and see if he was closer which luckily he was.

I used to be called to either one of my twins’ schools almost weekly (both SEN). We lived 30 minutes away but occasionally I dared to leave the house and go further afield and it took me even longer.

I never apologised for how long it took me and I was never questioned about it either.

The school were being ridiculous.

Yes, yes they do

I work in primary and it sometimes takes people ages to get to us. It’s not unusual for someone to be more than an hour. We have parents who work in a different area and don’t drive so have to get 2 buses or whatever.
they sound very unreasonable that 30 mins is too long, especially at secondary age!

And the Tesco delivery ?

Surely that stance works both ways... What about he logistics of getting to the school from further away as has been shown by many comments on here.

When I was a single parent it would take me 50 mins on a train to get back absolute minimum and obviously there is train waiting times too.

Tesco driver is a bit understandable. Depending on what the call was about I might have finished that task as well.

if you have a medically fragile child though, which dd was when she was in primary, you do need to be ready to drop anything and run. Rotting food, in your pajamas, the middle of a critical meeting, it doesn’t matter. You bolt. I do not miss those days. Still get flashbacks to her turning grey.

so I guess what I am saying, is consider yourself lucky that you can take 30 minutes to an hour to get to the school. If the worse that happens is a staffer briefly scolds your arrival time, your day was still pretty good.

I work 1h15 from school and am regularly unable to take calls. DH works for himself 10min from school. Guess who they insist on calling despite him be first on the contact list and the children TELLING them they need to call Dad not Mum...