School procedures - mumsnet jury required!

[gilmoregirl]

I recently posted about procedures primary schools have in place for the collection of children due to my concerns about the procedures at my child's school.

Yesterday I received the email below from my child's after school club.

I am very concerned about the issues raised, please can you read this email and let me know what you would do if this happened at your child's school?

"Dear Parent

As you may know, our procedure in the case of a child not appearing for collection is to ask at the school office to determine whether the child was absent from school or not.

If they were not absent, then this would raise immediate alarm bells for us, and we would seek urgently to determine their whereabouts. If a child was not in school, we would usually try to phone the parents later on to confirm this, but without the same urgency.

There have been one or two instances over the last few months where the school office has informed our staff that a child is in school, but where it has eventually transpired that they were not. This has resulted in some delay to the remaining children, who have to wait at school with the staff until we can contact parents to find out if the child is absent from after-school club and/or school.

I recently took this up with the school office, who have informed me that their computers go off what the teachers input on the register, and that if the teacher has not updated the register, then we may not get the correct information.

For this reason, I would like to change our policy to the following; that if a child does not appear, we will seek to contact parents/carers by telephone to determine their whereabouts, rather than confirm with the school office. This is because I would not like to rely on third party information that we cannot be sure of. It is likely that this may result in occasional delay to the transport of children, if parents/carers have not left a message re: the whereabouts of their child that day. For this reason, it is very important that all parents/carers please phone, text, or email (before 1pm in the case of email) to let us know if your child is off school or will not be at after school club for any reason.

Yours Sincerely

After school club manager"

Some schools do, some don't. My DS's school does but I don't rely on it, preferring to contact the club myself if he cannot attend.

In a functioning relationship between school and ASC, there would be no need to state that information could not be given to third parties, as a competently written authorisation for the club to collect would cover the passage of such information in a single sentence. Another thing to ask to be improved, perhaps?

I do not have an issue with phoning the ASC to inform them if my child won't attend (I did that anyway before I received that email).

MissA - unfortunately I don't think it is as organised at that! The school is not sending any information to the ASC at present. My understanding is that the ASC has a list of children they expect to come out of school, should a child on the list not come out of school then they will ask the school office if that child was in school.

Ultimately I am concerned that there is a real grey area around the process which I am keen to have clarified.

Electronic register.