Are older juniors allowed to leave school without being met by an adult at your school?

[Bramshott]

DD's school have just changed their policy on the end of the school day. Previously Yrs R - 3 were handed over to an adult at their classroom doors, and Yrs 4 - 6 just came out of the side door by themselves and either walked home, or found their parents in the playground.

They've recently changed this so that all children have to be handed over to an adult at the end of the day, unless you log written permission with the office for your DC to walk home alone.

Now this doesn't actually effect DD much as she goes on the school bus most days, but I can't help feeling that it's a bad idea, and is infantilising kids who will be off to secondary school soon. So I'd be really interested to know what happens in other schools, and whether this is normal these days?

Primary schol all children have to be collected by an Adult dd1 coped fine with transfer to 2ndary

Ours hand to an adult unless permission has been given to walk home alone. I think that's fine. Parents are best placed to judge wrt the child and their route home. It will of course be different for each individual so makes more sense to do it this way than a blanket rule.

I'm shocked at 4 yr olds being let out rather than handed over. That's just scary.

Only yr 6 can just walk out at DS school. Everyone else has to be handed over.

OP did you write?

Thanks for all these views. I haven't written yet - I've got a busy week and probably won't get round to it until next week. I'm still trying to work my ideas through, and this thread is helping - thank you.

I suppose one of the things that bothers me is that probably fewer than 10 children in the upper juniors live close enough to walk anyway, so not that many will opt out.

Forgive me, but are you seeing an issue that in fact, at your school, doesn't actually arise. You think that fewer than 10 children might possibly be walking home alone before the request that parental permission is sent in writing. Are the other children, in fact, leaving school into the care of an adult already - so for the majority of children there is no actual change?

What happens about children getting school transport - are they left to go to vehicles/buses on their own or do staff hand them over to the bus driver/transport chaperone? What I mean is, is the system consistent for all children however they depart from school? Can the school demonstrate that the 'duty of care' has been handed on to someone - parent/carer (or written permission to leave alone but parent/carer decision) or transport driver.

Yes, KS2 just mosey out at our place. But if you've only got to send in a note, it shouldn't be too bad.

JWIM - The change, for the great majority of the children, will be that instead of leaving their classroom under their own steam, collecting their belongings, and being responsible for going to find their parent - who might be in the car, in the infants playground picking up a younger sibling, or even (shock horror) running 5 minutes late because they're also picking up from a secondary school - they will have to sit in their classroom, with their teacher, until an adult physically comes to collect them. That is what I think is dangerously infantilising for 10 and 11 year olds.

It is unfortunate that schools feel they have to demonstrate the duty of care to such an extent. You suggest that the school, in your view, has got the balance wrong on this occasion. 'Dangerously infantilising' might be over egging it a bit! Do you feel that the children at your school are 'infantilised' generally, or is it much like most of society now see the good old (very old in my case) days - 'not like it was when I was young and we were out all day unsupervised, children are too mollycoddled etc now'.

Just looking at it from the school's point of view - would you, as the headteacher or a senior member of staff or even, if it got to that point, a Governor, stand in their shoes and comfortably defend not knowing how or when a child left school premises to that 'running late' parent/carer who on turning up finds no-one actually knows where their child is? Have there perhaps - do you know - been issues around safety of the older children on leaving their classrooms that have been raised by your fellow parents/carers? Is the school trying to find a happy medium giving parents/carers, ultimately, the opportunity to determine the independence of their child, albeit by having to send a letter in to school?

Has school given a reason? I am wondering if there is an underlying problem somewhere, maybe a child at risk perhaps who needs to be kept safe and not just released. Might be school's way of ensuring it happens. Sadly such situations are not uncommon.

I'm a teacher, I teach year four. I stand at the cloakroom and shout kids names out as their parents arrive, send out the ones who go alone and the ones who go to the infants to meet siblings, hurry up the ones who go to clubs or for taxis and make sure the ones who are going home (usually without adult) to a friend's house have remembered. I really can't imagine any school who sends them out alone (as we do in y 5 and 6 and as I could in y4) would start insisting on handing them over to parents unless there was good reason as it much harder work for staff.

There's a new head, and it's part of a new safeguarding policy which also includes some good things like a staff-operated lock on the front door, and a new lock for the side door. I agree - I can't imagine the staff in those classes are thrilled either!

We all know as a parent our top priority is our child?s safety but how can we let them grow if we were always afraid of something might happen to them. We should let them experience walking alone to and from school for them to be independent. As a mother of an 11 year old kids I let him walk to and from school without any adult supervision. He was doing this routine everyday, since we are just two blocks away from school. However, to his safety I registered him to SafeKidZone a mobile application that has a panic button in case emergency occur he can press the panic button to ask for help and ask for an immediate response from friends and family members and if it's a life threatening situation he can ask for help from 911. This is the protection I provided for my son check this out safekidzone.com/

At our school, small town, rural, all of them are let out, only the pre-school have to be 'collected' and for first few months of P1. P1-P2 teachers come out with their class & watch who's going with who, but can't see all & some meet round corner/at pre-school entrance.

Would assume, as someone up thread said, there's an underlying issue if all primary school need to be handed over to adult, perhaps issue with particular child or bad experience at HT previous school?