to expect school to check for a name before adding a garment to the lost property mountain?

[lisbey]

I am a stickler for rules and I have never ever sent anything of my DSs' to school without a name in it. All their uniform is properly labeled with embroidered name tapes and anything they announce last minute they need to take in will have a name hastily added in permanent marker.

Whenever something is missing, I will politely enquire at the office and am pointed towards a huge pile of dirty clothes to rummage through.

So why do a need to put the name tapes in, if no-one has a look to see if the item is named before adding it to the mountain?

YABU - the kids know where to look, you know where to look - so go look

the school have not the time to return 30 X little johnnies jumper to the right class after each sunny playtime!

but YA not as BU as those parents who sigh when their DC come out having lost yet another piece of clothing and say "I suppose thats another jumper/coat/pair of trainers i'll have to buy you" - Label your stuff and make your kid go LOOK for it!! and teach them to value their stuff and not lose it in the first place. if you'll just replace, what is their incentive to look aftr anything?

I work in a school and sometimes help out in the office; I do occasionally look through the lost property bin if I have a minute while waiting for the laminator to heat up or the copier to run through the latest newsletter.

Last time I did (actually last week) 80% of the stuff was unlabelled, only one item had a proper label, the rest had scrawled names in various degrees of faded biro, frequently just initials or a first name & last initial, often for children who left the school five years ago, so you then have to try to work out if they belong to a younger sibling or if they have come from the second hand stall.

Actually I quite enjoy the challenge of trying to work out who is the owner of the size 7-8 sweatshirt with 'JB' on the label, when there is no-one in Year 3 with those initials, but neither I nor the rest of the office staff normally have time to spare for the exercise. Last weeK it was only because I was waiting for Capita to ring me back & I knew they would do so as soon as I had gone back to my desk & started a complicated piece of work....

I do wonder why the playground staff, or whoever it is who rings the bell and gets all the children to line up to go back in to class, can't just say a quick "have you all got your jumpers/coats/hats/gloves?".

It would be nice if 5 year old children could take responsibility for all their clothing but I think it is quite within the realms of normal behaviour for them to forget things repeatedly occasionally.

bibbity... do you really believe that the staff don't already do that?
I have had 11 year olds swear blind that a sweatshirt is not theirs, when it clearly has their name in and you've picked it up from the floor under their chair!

yabu

Bibbity - because they would all chorus 'Yes' regardless of whether they had or not....

And if Year 6 children did do a lost property run during lunch break, when none of the children were in their classrooms, what would they do with them? If they weren't instantly put in their bags, they would just go missing again....

bibbitybobbityhat, we generally do that, but it is amazing the places children can leave odd items of clothing, in cupboards, toiletsstrewn around the school, in the dining hall, you name it, jumpers will be found there ( and not just jumpers, we find shoes, socks and underpants- don't ask!)

If your learly names item has gone missing, how long do you search before taking one of the mountain of un-named ones? I am SO tempted to take a replacement, as DS coat had to be lost at school; so someone is wearing it, instead of theirs..I rummage through, and return items to pegs where they are named, but I just can't quite make that final grab.

Clearly Named item was what I tried to type

Clearly Named item was what I tried to type in the dark.

I once went in with another mother, whose son had lost an inordinate amount of jumpers, and we went through the lost property bin and, using a class list, reunited items with the child. interestingly, none of her son's stuff turned up.

If you're that worried about it, perhaps you could volunterer to to this.