Child given money by "Vicar" at school

[TakeALookAtTheseSwatches]

So my 10 year old daughter (year 5) came home from school on Thursday and told us the Vicar (possibly just a trainee, I'm not entirely sure) who was taking their collective worship at school gave her £5 to "get herself an Easter treat" and that it was "just between me and you" I asked her if she told the teacher and she said no. I feel quite uneasy about this, should I say something to the school?

County Durham broke up yesterday, 2nd.

I am responding to another poster.
Nowhere on this thread have I accused the OP of lying.

Right. The schools I know must be outliers, fine.

{mention:MagicTape}{mention:MagicTape}why@MagicTapewhy would you check school dates? If you don't believe op just scroll on by.

I think asking other mums for more details if possible (if you think there are any you could confidently approach) would be a useful idea. And it wouldn't hurt to contact the diocese too. I think you're right to hold off on the police at this point, OP.

Please contact the Diocese of Durham. Info on their website.
Tell them exactly what you've said here.

Of course! If it was legit he'd give eggs to all the kids or do a contest to win one or something. Not money to one child only. And he wouldn't tell her to keep it secret?!

@MagicTape we broke up on Thursday here, n somerset.

im a safeguarding officer for c of e, you can report a concern to either the church they are attached to or the diocese if you are more comfortable with that, our names are on church websites or A Church near you.

if they are not Church of England similar arrangements will apply. This is not acceptable ever, even if given in response to a child saying they cannot afford food, it always needs to go through staff at the school, documented etc.

Yes, it's that last bit that's concerning.
Basic safeguarding broken there.

North Tyneside here, the normal schools finished yesterday.

Anyway, I'm on team: "He's a wrongun, get it reported."

Giving her money and telling her to keep it quiet is 100% grooming. Call the Police, dont be fearful about it. Call the council education department ASAP.

I can't believe that 18 people voted that you are unreasonable.

On that topic - we always go with "keep it a surprise" for mothers and fathers day gifts from ks1. Gives them the prompt to save if for the day but a surprise is waiting for the right moment rather than keeping something "hidden" like a secret.

Btw all kinds of denominations go into non religious schools, if they are not from an established church with a proper safeguarding hierarchy, contact the police directly because you can’t risk it being ignored. Whilst we as a c of e church look after 2 church schools, the non church primaries are visited by Baptists, Methodists and an independent church in my town, the Catholic Church look after the catholic schools

I'm on the same team as you, if you've read my posts.

Definitely take this up with the school in the first instance - send an email without delay.

This is from co Durham website:

I think she's unreasonable not to have reported it straight away and contacted the diocese ( not that I voted that way, but I could see how some might).

If you know what church the vicar was from, they will have a safeguarding lead whose contact should be on the church website. That should be monitored daily even over Easter weekend and you could tell them what your daughter is saying and ask them to get to the bottom of what happened

This is a distraction now, I was responding to an earlier poster.
Please report this to the school, and to the Diocese.

Yes, please do this.

It needs reporting.
However, unless the vicar has contact with DD outside of school it seems very low risk.

Hopefully its a case of she either looked sad or he got the impression she doesnt have much money, and he gave it without considering the more modern rules around safeguarding and conduct.

Its the sort of thing which wouldn't have seemed unusual in the past, I remember being given money around christmas time on 2 occasions as a child, both times by elderly men who seemed to have no other intentions, one was a neighbour and the other a stranger.

@MadeInGrimsby. You need to know the denomination and name of the clergy though, the c of e diocese can’t help unless they are from c of e. On a positive note we monitor the email (well I do at least) a few times a day during weekends and administration is back in on Tuesday if it’s more complicated to work out who it could be

can we not think this is a school version of Naundy money/.

You've never heard of object lessons? Quite often they do involve money as they talk about value systems or similar and cash can be a good way to make it understandable. Sometimes the poor kid who got dragged up to assist the pastor (or whoever) would get to keep the money or other object. This is not unusual or uncommon in children's work. I haven't known it to happen with a fiver, but definitely with coins. I worked for a non -denominational Christian organisation.

However, this is 2026, and child protection and safeguarding are huge issues. The church is dealing with historic cases of child abuse and has had to implement safeguarding.
This is not another worldly unaware older gentleman. This is someone who must have done safeguarding training.

She knows their name and it will be C of E because it's a C of E school. Apparently this person sometimes does the services but it's also done by a couple of other people too so I'm not confident it's the actual Vicar, maybe a curate?