another school one-think i may have overstepped the mark this time...

[sleeplessinstretford]

dd is in year 9, at 11.20 this morning I received a text message from school saying 'your daughter was absent from registration this morning-please explain via text where she is' to which I replied 'dd left for school at 745-is she not there now or was she just late as depending on which one this is i will either have to discipline her for poor time keeping or ring the police'

this is the 4th time that i have had words with them about the same thing. DD shouldn't have been late but surely there's some way of cross referencing whether the kids were actually late or in the ICU? When
ever I have rung school to ask if she's there they have to then go and check up.
AIBU (and as i know i am not ) would you then follow up this matter with a letter to the head?

oh if only .. if only

YABU. The school were right to let you know that she missed morning registration.

You cannot trust secondary school students to swipe in and out. You need an adult / responsible person to mark presence or not

I agree, I was thinking of a simple database or application rather than a clocking system.

Do you really think it unreasonable that the school should know who they have in the building at any time?

That doesn't happen though, e.g. at breaks and lunches some are in some are out, some are completely off the grounds.

A year after they've finished and go to university they're wandering about huge campuses with thousands of other people.

This has happened to me (and other parents) with my four year old DD in Reception, when she was present (and I had seen her enter the school door) but the register had been taken incorrectly (there are four children with a similar name in her class).

I received a phone call at 11.30am asking why she wasn't in class. I completely panicked until the school rang me back over an hour later (the secretary had gone on lunch!) to say DD had been in class all morning. I was on my way to school to check for myself whether she was there.

I was not best pleased. They need to differentiate between late and absent.

There is a simple application.

Child is at registration - child is marked in.

Child is absent from registration - child is marked out.

Children who have signed the late register/parents have called are marked accordingly.

Children who still haven't got a mark have texts sent to parents.

Simples.

The system falls down when child arrives in school late and doesn't register as such/ arrives on time and fannys about in the loo and misses registration/ teacher makes mistake taking register.

Staff have no time to go searching for said errant children. Said search maybe fools errand anyway as child may have been run over by a bus/abducted by the 456 in which case text will be gratefully received and not a cause for exploding head scenario.