AIBU to question the safeguarding policy?

[OohRains]

DC9 was due to attend netball club after school today.
School end is 3:20 and club runs until 4:15.

At 3:40 I received a phone call from another mum to say that DC was at her front door and had decided to skip Netball Club today.

Obviously I was furious at DC for making a unilateral decision to vanish from school but AIBU to wonder where the schools safeguarding is at given Year 5's need permission slips to sign out of school alone (not signed currently) and he didn't attend Netball either so wouldn't have been in the building had there been a roll call.

Have read DC the riot act of course and plan to speak to the school in the morning.

Yes, you need to speak to the school.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask why the policy wasn’t followed/was able to be circumvented. Do the school issue punishments for this kind of behaviour - given that he would have clearly known it was wrong?

I'd be more than happy for a punishment to be given by the school. He's more concerned his dad doesn't hear about it as in his words "he once shouted at me so much I felt like ice all over as I was so scared" - would rather make it a one time occurrence if we can.

We take a register at the start of every after school club. We then have to ascertain whether a pupil is absent from school or simply has chosen not to come to club. If they are in our class, this is simple. If not, registers need to be checked. Our policy then is to phone home and check with parents to see if they have gone home/been collected. All this takes a bit of time and means that clubs start a bit after they should. That said, if a child hasn’t got permission to be walking home alone, they shouldn’t be able to leave.

So your year 5 child walked out of school with no adult or written permission to walk home alone after they didn’t attend a club? I’m a primary teacher and I’d be kicking off about this.
Your child was wrong but it’s the school that has a duty of care and they have seriously failed in it. I’d be asking who the safeguarding team are and what they’re going to put in place. This could have ended much worse!

I asked him what he would've done if his school friend had been out and doors locked and he said he would've gone back to the school - not sure how that would've helped the situation either.

You are being unrealistic. If a Yr 5 decided to deliberately sneak off then it’s unlikely a teacher would spot it at home time - lots of children piling out at the same time.
I would fully expect a Yr 5 to wait outside the classroom for a parent and, if no parent arrived, to alert the teacher of the situation.
I absolutely would not expect a Year 5 child to have to hold a teachers hand until they could see their parent before being released.
Similarly, I would expect them to make their own way across the playground to the afterschool activity. If there was an issue, such as their name not being on the list or the coach not being there, I would expect the Yr5 child to go back into school and inform them of the problem. I would not expect a Year 5 teacher to have walk the children over to the after school club.
Year 5 child is old enough to know better and I would place the blame squarely on their shoulders. They know very well not to just leave school.

I'd definitely be having firm words with school as they knew he was at school that day they should have questioned why he wasn't there at club. A quick phone call to you to say "Hey child isn't at netball club did you pick him up?" isn't that difficult to do it takes 2 minutes to check. I'd definitely be having words with your son as well as he put his safety at risk and personally I'd be telling him that if he can't be trusted to stay where you expect him to be then he'd not be doing after school clubs anymore.

I worked for a school and oh my god all
hell broke loose if a child was absent without parental permission.

I was close to signing the permission form so that he could do 3:20-4pm in the park opposite the school on my pick up days but I just don't know now. He's never given me any issues in this regard so not sure if it's a rebellious moment or what.