Noone picked up my daughter and school didn't ring.

[Cantheowneroftheredcorsapleasemovetheircar]

On Thursday my daughter was supposed to be picked up by my sister as my husband and I were both working. She finishes school at 3:20pm, she's 7 and is in year 3.

At 4pm I was on my break at work and called sister to ask how DD is.

Sister bloody FOROGT to pick her up and wasn't even in our home town. She was about an hour's drive away at her new boyfriends house.

In a panic I hung up on spluttering apologising sister and immediately rang school to find out what happened to DD. They just casually said "yeah, we've got her, she's in after school club"

At the time I was too busy arranging for someone else to pick up her with only 10 minutes left of my break and relieved she was safe to think much more on the fact that the scholl hadnt informed me so I just said thank you to the school and said someone would be there soon.

Would you complain to the school or at least mention it that noone rang me or DH to say she hadn't been picked up? If I hadn't rung sister I wouldn't have known, and what would have happened when noone arrived at 5pm when it closes?

They also charged me and I could have avoided this charge or at least got a lower charge if I'd got her picked up by 4pm.

YANBU.

I think school dropped the ball by not phoning any of your emergency contact numbers within 40 minutes of pick up time. I’d ask them to clarify their policy on this.

They know you occasionally use the after school club but she wasn’t booked in on this occasion, so surely they should check why she wasn’t collected on time? Presumably, they don’t have more than 1 or 2 children not booked in on any given day, so it’s hardly onerous to check?

Imagine if you’d had a car accident on your way to collect her? They would only become aware of a problem when everyone is leaving and she’s still not been picked up.

Some of it though is schools just being really rubbish at acknowledging when they have messed up.

If they had proactively said to the OP when she called "we've got her in after school club - sorry we should have called you", she wouldn't need to complain.

@thirdfiddle

I guess what people are saying is that given only 40 minutes had passed between pick up time plus then herding the children to ASC, it is more reasonable to assume that the school WERE going to call her than to start off with the view that the school did something wrong.

Hence why people are responding to her focus on making a complaint / being resentful about having to pay for ASC etc - because honestly, this is all on her sister and OP didn't give the school a chance to enact their processes.

I think they assume the family will know if they don’t have the child - it’s not like in the morning if she didn’t turn up for school and was missing.

You should be apologising to them

You have purposely reduced the PP’s valid comment to make it appear petty.

I know lots of teachers (myself included) who have left the profession, in part because of the expectations of some parents that schools are there to be moaned and complained at over matters that at most required a civil conversation. Don’t get me wrong I got on brilliantly with most of the parents but a few made life incredibly challenging.

If course one parent making a query about school policies doesn’t make a teacher want to leave the profession 🙄. But a parent who turns an incident like this into a complaint, on top of the several others that will happen that day or week from other parents, extended throughout the school year may well do it. The OP clearly asked if she should complain, not if she should find out what the school policy is. There’s a big difference.

This is why I could never be a teacher! Entitled parents!

you failed to make adequate provision to collect your child from school. That is your responsibility not the schools.

The school made sure your child was safe and well cared for. You are now angry with the school for not doing a ‘welfare check’ on you and for charging you for the after school care your daughter used.

dear god. when did society get so bloody useless.

It’s not the school’s Responsibility to check if OP had had a car crash! Lots of parents get caught up in traffic, caught in a meeting, don’t really care about getting to school on time etc!

it’s not like the kid was standing at the gates alone for two hours! I am sure they would have rung at some point - they just hadn’t yet because there is a lot going on in a busy school and one child safe and well in after care isn’t always going to be the top priority.

this is all so silly

My mum.

She's retired and lives very close to the school and is my emergency person if anything ever goes wrong during school hours when we are at work. She also does pick up for me every Wednesday.
I called her after calling the school and asked her to please pick up DD as sis had not turned up and she was supposed to have DD until 6/6:30 when DH finished work and picked her up from sis's house.
So mum had to keep DD until 6:30 and give her dinner with no notice.

Definitely a query as to why there was no phone call and give the school an opportunity to respond. Maybe they tried and didn’t get through. Probably unlikely, but not impossible.

The point about whether the school knew the aunt should be collecting is a good one. If the child was asked who was collecting her and told them her aunt, they wouldn’t have the contact number for her anyway, because she’s not on the emergency contact list. You might expect them to try the others perhaps.

It’s worth a mention to the school and it’s worth reminding children when arrangements are different. It’s a lesson learned and a chance to tighten up procedures perhaps.

I’m surprised that school didn’t try and ring you. But, I certainly wouldn’t complain to them. Does it happen often enough that school know to put her in after school club?

I was responding specifically to a poster saying school could have reported OP for abandonment. No they couldn't because they hadn't yet gone through the basics of calling the contacts. Which is exactly what OP was hoping they should have done so...

I would definitely mention it to the school, without complaining, as I’d expect a phone call if this happened. I would also thank them for keeping her safe.

You should be directing your ire at your feckless sister, not school who kept her safe.

Quibbling that they’ve charged you for looking after your child is pretty ridiculous OP. You should be thanking them. Jeez 🙄

We have just returned to the UK from abroad and DH is teaching here again for the first time in a decade. After five weeks he already feels ready to throw in the towel. He loathes what schools here have become, and a large part of it is parents turning every minor incident or disgruntlement from a child into a complaint. He has never experienced this level of unreasonable expectations before. We are moving back to our home abroad next summer.

I wouldn’t complain in this instance as I’d just be relieved my child was safe, but I’d wonder about what would happen if the club was over capacity?

What works for us when it’s going to be different to normal in terms of pick up is to check the night before. Was your sister ok the night before when you checked and confirmed?

Lucky mum local and about

was your mum surprised that sister aka her daughter didn’t pick up ?

but yes do check to see what their procedure is for non collection and when they would call you if you hadn’t turned up

guessing dd excited aunty picking up and told teacher this

As it seems like it was only 40mins since end of school and you ringing, I would imagine your child was sat waiting to be collected until the all the kids had gone (maybe 15/20mins) then the office notified/child taken to wraparound. So really, likely only a 20min window to call you and I wonder if the office staff might still have been busy dealing with parents etc. Certainly at our primary school, the reception hatch has a queue as long as your arm at the end of the day. Your child was safe in wraparound and I expect they would have called to find out where you were when they could. I also think they might have been expecting a call from the collecting person to say they were stuck in traffic etc (rather than your sister having forgotten hence no call).

I totally get that it's annoying they hadn't rung you, especially if you could have collected and saved the wraparound fee. In an ideal world, with plenty of staff, it would have been great if they could have rung you straight away.

This is very entitled. You can’t expect the school to run around after you. Why should they run around ringing to see what’s happened? They can keep the child safe until closing and then they would ring if no-one arrived. Your poor planning is not their responsibility. Doesn’t matter it was your sister who didn’t turn up. The child is your responsibility. It’s your sister you should be complaining to.

YABVU!

OP, your complaint is basically that you did not receive a phone call in the first 40-45 minutes after the school day ended.

Although being phoned might have been at the top of your list of priorities, I would like you to reflect on where it was – and should have been – in the school's list of priorities.

If the school day ends at 3.20pm, no-one from the school is realistically going to be on the phone at 3.25pm calling up parents. For lots of reasons - volume of activity in the collection zone, chats at the school gate, parents experiencing short delays in getting to the school – I can imagine a good 15-20 minutes before it's clear which kids have been left behind.

Crucially, the most important thing was done – your daughter was taken to ASC where she was safe and looked after.

Of course the school was going to phone you if you neither phoned them nor turned up, but once again, perhaps there were other, more important, tasks that they needed to attend to?

I think the reason why you're getting criticised for entitlement is because teachers are tired of nothing ever being good enough. The school had a plan in the event that you didn't collect your daughter, and yet it wasn't executed well enough because you didn't receive a call sufficiently quickly. Can you see how that might imply that you think that you and your child are more important that everything and everyone else? How do teachers ever 'win' if all parents take that approach?

You have a sister problem not a school safely put your child in after school club, problem.

Though I do think they should have rung ultimately they'd have needed to put your dc in the club until you got there anyway - assuming you wouldn't have been a minute or two away.

My kids primary has a policy of keeping in the after school club on the basis that sometimes parents get held up. Traffic and so on. But if no show by end of that or close to it. They would call parents and if they cant get hold of anyone they then call social services.

The club finished at 4 so really it was just giving parents a little extra time . And most of the time when going to be late parents do phone the school.

I disagree with many on here, if a child is uncollected from school I would think they would attempt to find out what the issue is rather than just throw them in to after school and see what happens.

This, schools really can’t do anything right anymore can they