went to get ds1 from afterschool club, and he wasnt there. teacher said he had gone with a tall blonde woman.............

[lazybluealien]

wtf?
eventually found him. he was with short, brown haired friend. she took him home with her because he waswandering round looking lost because he wasnt allowed to do the afterschool club. she was picking up ds2, and did the responsible thing and told ds1's teacher she was taking him.
in the morning i went to the woman at reception and said i was going to pick him up at 4. as he was doing rugby, i wasnt sure if i had signed the permission slip or not. but he was doing it. she said it would be fine.
i am really really annoyed and upset. but i dont want the school to say to me that they are not legally responsible coz he is in year five. and i hadnt signed the bloody thing.

Obviously your DS could have gone with any other person and they won't have realised....

I think they should be far more careful but I do have the slight suspiction that if you complain they are going to wave the unsigned permission slip at you.

I'm surprised they had any idea who had taken him. At my dc's school, the KS2 children are just let out at the end of the day. Quite a lot of them walk home alone. Others meet their parents/carers at the gate. The children are told to go to the office if the person they were expecting isn't there, and then they are helped. Apart from that, they are considered old enough to take a bit of responsibility. Once, whne ds's Club was cancelled, he went with a friend's mum and got her to text me - very sensible I thought!

At my DCs school, if a permission slip is not signed they are not allowed to join in.
I still think its out of order that they just left him, makes no difference that he is in Year 5. If he doesn't go home alone, they should have phoned you. Did the receptionist say it would be ok even without the slip being signed? If so, I'd complain about her if the school throw that back at you.

Now that I think better of that, a friend once asked me (very late) to pick up her 8yr old twins from school and when I arrived they were no where to be seen, any staff I asked for didn't have a clue, they only said they were not in the afterschool club. After wandering around the school unsupervised and with some helpful parents having a look as well, I started knocking doors of other neighbours that the girls could have gone to... and nothing. 2 hours later the mother found them at a friend's house.

At DCs school, if a child is allowed to go home alone, the parent has to send a note to confirm. If not, the children that are not collected by 3:45pm get taken to the office and the parents are phoned.

At the school I work at he wouldn't be allowed to do rugby without a signed slip, because of insurance, but he would have been told to wait for his mum in the library (and we would have contacted mum if possible)A year 5 probably would have been sent back to the library by himself, but if they'd met a friend of their mum & gone off with them, they would be expected to tell someone. If they don't get picked up at the end of the school day, they are meant to come back to reception & we ring up.