Incident at school - come and give me your thoughts.

[Newnamez]

DD is 12 and in yr7 (first yr of secondary).
On the last day of term before Easter she came home and told us that during the first lesson that day 2 'older girls' (she thinks yr9) came to the class (which had a stand in teacher that day) and asked for her by name and said she was needed at the school office by the Head teacher. She went with them. The girls walked ahead of her whispering.
By chance a TA that DD likes and chats to came out of a room and saw the three of them and asked the girls where they were taking DD. The older girls said 'the office' and the TA said i'll take over and they ran away. The TA shared with DD that one of the girls is her (TAs) cousin and said she was a ''little shit'' !! TA took DD to the office and no one had sent for her. TA took DD back to class. That's the bare bones of it. That is literally all i know.

Now, i hear about this at 6 that evening from DD and get more horrified the more i think about it. I emailed a head of year level teacher that evening. I heard nothing all easter holiday which is fine, but i heard nothing from anyone last night either. (yesterday 1st day back)

Ive told DD not to leave class unless an adult has come for her from now on.

Im going to ring the school this morning to ask to speak to someone in person about this.

Am i wrong or is this quite worrying?! How did the girls know my DD s name and where she'd be? Where were they taking her? Why were they wandering round the school? How are they going to stop this happening again?

What would you do/say?

TIA

Would it be enough to ask if it's been logged on their CPOMS for my daughter? ( what does that stand for please?) I take it it absolutely should have been.

What could i learn by reading it myself?

You can ask to see it. The incident is recorded as a safeguarding concern.

OK.
Will they try and say i can't ? Is it common to ask to see it?

That would indeed be good practice. Sadly, good practice is not universal!

Too true, as evidenced here!

You would know it was recorded for one thing and a good school will log the outcome. If you scroll up you will see how I would have written the CPOMS from the TA perspective.
What you would expect is for the head of year or someone to record what happened as a consequence e.g. the two girls were spoken to about their behaviour. They admitted seeing the name on the books that had been left ready for the supply teacher and decided to trick one child into going to the office. I spoke to them about the serious nature of this. They will attend detention on X date. Parents informed.

It's not common to request information but it is absolutely allowed. They will have to blank out names of the girls.

CPOMS stands for Child Protection Online Management System.

I suspect the TA did log the incident, or at least informed someone verbally. Hence the girls have already been spoken to.

OP, I think you're being very sensible here pushing for more accountability from school. I can't believe they'd be ok about two unsupervised students removing a child from class and going off with that child. Hope you hear back very soon.

But - I would try not to panic too much about their intent. I know it feels very sinister but bear in mind that the two older girls, while obviously up to no good, might not have had any plans that were directly to do with your daughter. They may have thought they could use her as 'cover' to do something else, and not have planned any harm to her.

Maybe the older girls have a sibling or relative in your dd's class who don'ts like your dd, so they planned this together.

Do not worry about the TA, tell the HOY everything as it played out.
Very creep, I'd feel unsettled.

If nothing else all teachers and supply staff must be made aware of this incident to prevent any future 'kidnappings' of this sort.

It makes you wonder how crappy their safeguarding training would be. Ofsted would have a field day.

Could have a sinister reason for example a child in your dd's form has beef with her, over nothing or a boy etc.

Or could have been something social media driven, a dare or prank.

I hope you get to the bottom of it,

It was quite a sinister thing to do - planned and risky, not just a spontaneous prank. I’d definitely want satisfactory answers.

Its a shame the TA didn't take them all straight to the Heads office. That would have been the best, immediate action.
I'd want to know what the girls say they were planning and why.

It might worth checking if the girls were ‘student runners’ which might explain why they were out of class but not why they were pulling pranks whilst they were doing it.
In my Son’s school they have a student runner, one child for the morning and one for the afternoon, different children each day. You have to give your permission and it basically allows your child to be the admin assistant during that time.
They run messages to classrooms, forgotten lunches to pupils, show visitors where they need to be etc
It would be odd for a school to pick a pair though and in my sons school its a privilege to be doing it

OP, well done in being so sure footed in your actions.

I really find what they did extremely sinister.
It most definitely should involve safe guarding, and taken extremely seriously.

Your child is in the care of the school and children walking about asking other children to leave their classes off their own back is completely unacceptable.

It warrants investigation and reporting to the governing body and Ofsted.

Any efforts to fob you off need to be carefully documented too.

You are correct to follow up with detailed minutes of what was said and agreed.

You can make a subject access request (SAR) for anything that they have relating to your child. They will redact the names of any students/staff.

I am sorry this has happened but what a star your dd is to not be affected by this. I would 100% be mentioning the TAs language though. Not appropriate.

Isn't attempted luring a police matter? Even when done by other students?

They managed to find her class and get her out of the classroom. This is a serious matter and should be addressed ASAP

she said she was mainly relieved that it wasn't true that the head teacher wanted her

She probably hasn't thought about any sinister motives that the girls might have had.

You can’t see CPOMs as a parent fully-it’s a safeguarding platform. The school can print you a redacted version without the names of other children (including those involved) as that breaches GDPR if you put in an FOI. This clouds the issue though.

your queries are how did this happen, why did they do this and what is happening next to keep your daughter safe.

This is very worrying and the school need to take it seriously and be seen to take it seriously. There are so many questions - where to start? You are absolutley right to take it up with the school, and don't let them waffle their way out of it.

Very scary and premiditated. Not just just what they did, but the brazen lack of fear of authority to carry it through.

They have student helpers at DD's school (as in the present day) who deliver.messages, return PE kit left in a classroom etc, so there could have been a legitimate reason why they were out of class.
Obviously the rest of it is definitely not ok

Not all schools use CPOMS, it is probably the most used safeguarding software but isn’t universal. But the school should have logged it somewhere.

You mentioned saying what you want when making a complain. What is that in this case? An apology, an assurance it had been investigated, improvement in process so students can’t all for others to leave the class…

What I wonder is why the teacher in charge of your DDs class didn’t question this? Especially if one of the older girls in question is a known troublemaker (which makes it highly unlikely she’s trusted to be a runner).