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.

I do actually think that teachers are leaving the profession because of a huge increase in parents often aggressively ‘complaining’ in situations that warrant a mild query.

The only person at fault is your sister!

So many people completely missing the point.

The OP can firmly place the blame for this scenario on her sister forgetting AND be concerned at the lack of call from the school to inform her. That doesn’t mean she blames the school for her sister not picking the child up.

They should be calling. What if you or your DP ever had an accident and that was why you didn’t collect your child? That kind of thing could happen to anyone and is completely out of your control.

You should be incredibly grateful. Definitely don’t complain

Our school has 2 session times for WAC and parents would be called at the END of the WAC session and safeguarding LADO policy followed if parents/guardians not answering or have not attended to collect.

So how long do parents have after getting called to collect before you phone LADO?

Many parents are late daily for various reasons - would be a huge job to call parents who are likely just running late or whatever else.

I have always found charges for ASC is a good deterrent for lateness.

It was good of them to make an exception to the policy for your benefit, wasn't it? Far more helpful than making the DC stand in front of Reception whilst they make a phone call, hopefully get a response often get shouted at why they didn't just send her to ASC instead of humiliating her for a mere admin oversight, wait for the parent to log into the app and try to make a booking which might not be accepted because the session's already started and then potentially have to stay unpaid supervising her until another person can come and pick her up.

I do actually think that teachers are leaving the profession because of a huge increase in parents often aggressively ‘complaining’ in situations that warrant a mild query.

What suggests the OP was going to be aggressive in her approach?

@Pregnantgrumps it's unfortunately very normal on here 😆

Fine. That's how you'd feel. You don't get to tell op how she should feel. And it's fairly obvious from her posts that she is indeed very angry with her sister. Presuming op's sister isn't a serial flake she (op) has done absolutely nothing wrong here.

Ungrateful springs to mind.

Your sister is clearly flakey -but did you call or text in the morning to remind her? It's not uncommon that people forget arrangements that aren't their 'norm'.

And I would be hugging the school for keeping my child safe!

It's different to an absence call, because they knew the child was safe. They were safeguarding the child by keeping her in after school club when she wasn't collected as expected. Given that they had ensured she was safe, they then needed to follow their own policy regarding communication. If they didn't, then drawing their attention to that would be appropriate (not necessarily submitting a complaint), but they don't need to be working with the goal of saving a parent the cost of ASC.

Kids can't leave unsupervised until year 5 at this school

You are one CF.

Your sister failed to collect your child, the staff took care of her and you're complaining that you didn't get this paid service for free?

If the staff had not been vigilant and if there was no after school club, things might not have been so safe for your child. These people act in loco parentis and did a much better job than your family. You should be ashamed of yourself for complaining.

i was just making a general observation really, rather than particularly directing it to the OP. It’s really the idea of instantly leaping to ‘complaining’ (and they often are fairly aggressive in my experience) that I think is putting a huge amount of unwarranted pressure on pretty overworked school staff at all levels.

Part of their procedure should be to ring parents who haven’t booked their child into after-school club and who have not picked their child up.

our primary would put the child in after school club, and ring the parent. Parent had to pay for the time that the child was there.

Club closed at 6pm, if any parent was late there was a £25 charge.

This this this!

This is exactly why we do call parents/carers.

I've had one case of child abandonment at school. If we had of just waited until the end of ASC to bother our arses about calling the parents, we wouldn't have started the process until 5.30pm meaning the poor kid would have been is a shite state of limbo long after all their friends had gone, most of the staff and having no idea what was happening.
As it happens, we knew because I called the parents when they failed to collect and they informed me they weren't going to come back for them. They spent a couple of hours playing happily in ASC while we managed to run around contacting SS and OC and they left school the same time as many of their peers with some very reassuring and trained SS workers.

The teacher would have been the one in charge of dismissing the child. If no parent or relative turns up, the teacher would be the one to safely deliver the child to After School club. They’re not just shoved out the door at school finishing time! I suspect the teacher kept the child with them waiting for a parent or relative then took them to After School when nobody turned up.

It's not the schools fault, it's your sister's

No, of course not! I would follow school policy and in extreme circumstances if DSL took over (as parent not answering and no one collected) and WAC/school now over - it could escalate to that. Very rare but does happen. More so in PRUs.

Of course the school should have called. MN is just so against parents talking about anything against schools.

This!

If this was a post about how a child was left on their own at the school gates by teachers then that would be very different. But they did the right thing and kept DC safe.

Op you should already know their policy on contacting parents, if you don't then why not??

I get that these things happen but blaming the school for not contacting you is diabolical.

You know schools and childcare has a point where they ring social services because a child hasn't been collected?

If they did that before making efforts to contact parents and emergency contacts they'd get short shrift from SS. They are the port of last call if the responsible adults are unreachable or incapacitated. Not a threat to hold over parents instead of just calling them and finding out what's gone wrong.

Yes they should and probably would call but the end of the day is so busy it's not going to be a priority. You have parents lining up to speak to the office, multiple uncollected children all with possibly multiple contact numbers to try. There was plenty of time before after school club closed at 5pm. Its not unusual to put uncollected children into after school club after a set time (10-15 minutes) then deal with other issues by which time most of those children have been collected then phone around for any still there but those 'other issues' can take quite a bit of time.