AIBU to think named items shouldn’t end up in school’s lost property?

[HJ40]

DC started at a Junior School (yr3-yr6) this term following on from Infants. It’s a huge school, 5FE. Quite spread out with PE, after school drama, his classroom, the library and after school care all in separate buildings. He is

forever having to get changed in different places, carry bags from one to another, change shoes etc.

I know the staff are stretched and busy and I know he needs to be responsible for his belongings (I’m lucky he’s actually very good), but the lost property “system” is to chuck everything into a cupboard whether it’s named or not. Is this normal? At his infant school named items were returned to class.

The cupboard is honestly a black hole. I went through it once and 75% of the stuff is named, but there’s so much in there it takes about half an hour to wade through.

This feels incredibly hard on parents, especially of year 3s when the change of school is such a culture shock. AIBU to think named items shouldn’t go in lost property?

It's clearly not feasible for staff to be spending their time doing this. Maybe you could put together a group of parents who all volunteer once a month or so to go through it and reunite kids with their items? Or maybe join the PTFA and see if they could take over doing it?

I work as a midday assistant, among other roles in a school- at the end of each play we have a mountain of coats, jumpers, cardigans, water bottles and lunch boxes that have been left around the school. We have a bench we put most items for parents or child to collect at afternoon play/end of day. If the weather is poor it goes to reception. When not claimed on that day, it goes to lost property.

I haven't the time or want to return all items to individual children or classrooms at the end of my shift. I haven't the time or pay to traipse around making sure every item finds it's owner. At the end of my midday shift I'm straight into another role on the campus. We do remind children at the end of play, we do help children find items at the end, but we don't have time to search for tags and personally drop of items to their pegs or classes.

We do a few times a year have a lost property table in the playground where parents can search for their 6 month old mouldy sandwich boxes and rain soaked jumpers. After that we throw the crap stuff, clean the good and sell it as 'pay what you can' in our uniform shop.

It’s a knockoff ikea kallax sort of thing. At least then you have a place to start!

I picked up 9 coats last week as I walked through the playground. It was starting to rain and I didn’t want to leave them outside. If it was one I may have checked for a name but I was about to get my class so I flung them in lost property.

Let's face it if little Jimmy drops his coat or jumper wherever he likes and it makes it's way back to him he is going to continue doing the same thing. There is no incentive to look after his property.

They do the same at our very small single form entry school where everyone knows everyone. I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't insist that all kids wear the branded logo jumpers that cost £18.50 each.

I used to do this at our junior school. I didn't really have time to help out weekly but I'd pop along towards the end of term or half term, grab a class list from the office and sort it into piles. You could volunteer. It always seemed to be appreciated.

My bugbear was people who just put "smith" or "j.smith" or initials. It's amazing how many JSs and LBs there are even in one class sometimes, let alone an entire school.

I am a TA. It’s important children learn to take responsibility for their own belongings.
Many children make no effort to collect their coats/jumpers in from the playground as they know someone else will do it for them - this really isn’t teaching them anything useful. Much better that they experience the minor inconvenience of having to go to the lost property box as this will help them to remember next time that they need to collect their belongings.
Many a time I’ve seen children deliberately leave their items as they can’t be bothered to go back and get it (and yes they have actually told me this when I reminded them to go back and get it).

I send DD to rummage for missing items and if she can’t find it then I’ll make time to go and do it. There’s always loads there and I’m really shocked that some of it isn’t claimed - expensive coats etc. The charity shop next to school does quite well at the end of the year!!

Our school put out lost property buckets once a term for parents to rifle through. Anything left over gets donated to charity. I think this is a good idea, perhaps you could suggest it via a parent rep if such a thing exists.

Otherwise you could get together some like minded parents to sort the cupboard of doom. Done once, it might encourage others to come forward the next time. Although thinking about my DC’s school and lack of PTA volunteers for fun stuff, maybe not!

It takes you half an hour to wade through it, so a staff member should take half an hour of their day to do it for you? Parent here, and also primary school receptionist. My children lose things constantly and it's my child/my responsibility to sort out belongings, not some harried staff member that is doing their best with a class of 30 kids and trying to remind them constantly to keep their things together! And the incredulity of parents when I insist that I can't put out a school wide panic alert for little Josie's cardigan that's she already lost 3 times this week - sorry but no, I have actual real work to be getting on with 😑 have a word with yourself 🙄

maybe you can volunteer to do this

DC started at a Junior School (yr3-yr6) this term following on from Infants. It’s a huge school, 5FE. Quite spread out with PE, after school drama, his classroom, the library and after school care all in separate buildings

Op you answered your own question really, you said it's a huge school. Not all staff are going to know all students, unless someone had time to go through the lost property box find who each student is and return to their form group all lost items. The to isn't going to happen there aren't enough staff hours to do this in any large school, so ot does end up being the students or parents responsibility to find it. At lest if it's named you know it's your child's.

As someone who works in a primary school office and has multiple conversations about lost property a day, I am in awe, real and total and actual AWE that 75% of items in a lost property cupboard were named.

I am the person in our school who goes through the piles of lost property and does their best to return named items to DC who have dumped them wherever they fancy because they can't be bothered to look after them lost them. In fact I did it this very day. I returned a princely four, yes four, named items to their respective owners' classrooms. I counted another fifty seven items that were unnamed. Our parents are utterly shite at naming things. It drives me witless but they never learn!

Unfortunately though, in general, lost property is another area where parental entitlement and rudeness has gone off the scales in schools. Always the school's fault that something has been lost...

Ex school receptionist here - I used to let parents in to search for lost property, I was only too glad to get rid of some of it.

I used to strap items to the register with an enormous elastic band - we had registration twice a day so it was a good way to get rid of stuff. Invariably I'd find it again at the end of the day abandoned somewhere - secondary age kids. Obviously registration is electronic these days so don't know what they do now

Sounds like a year 6 Friday lunch time job to me.

I don't know why so many people have got hung up on teachers not having the time to sort this. In my experience children are happy and able to do it.

Controversial q. If it was a private school would the responses be different?

Maybe in the school you work in this would work, but it definitely wouldn't in others (say teachers).

Volunteer to sort it and man a ‘stall’ so parents can go through it. Pisses me off that schools have to waste time doing this shit when kids should be more responsible for their crap.

I think this is a fantastic idea! It would be a great activity for the children to do. Failing that, it's something I'd be happy as a parent to volunteer a couple of hours each term to, if school asked.

I must be exceptionally lucky though as with one in Year 7 and one in Year 4 we haven't lost anything yet.

Obvs doesn’t apply to you OP as you’ve kindly volunteered to sort it but this thread reminded me of this nonetheless

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was, Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized
that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody
did what Anybody could have.

Great idea. We would find roles/responsibilities for different pupils to boost confidence and this would appeal to some pupils. Children love taking charge of certain things.

It's annoying and it's not that hard for the school to sort out for free. Simply have uniform monitors. You get yr5 and y6 children to collect and redistribute them.

Yes it's incredibly hard on parents.....it's also really hard on staff. Finding many jumpers and cardigans and god knows how many water bottles strewn about the school. And you say you label your stuff. Does it say both name and class? Because if a TA in year 6 finds a named jumper they probably don't know the kid. Or which year or class to return to. And some people label in pen so you are trying to read a faint squiggle. Or they label in the collar or the pocket or the washing label. It would use up so much time. Teach your child to be more careful with their belongings or waste your own time searching . But this is definitely not a staff job.