School refuses independent after school discharge.

[Barrelofwine]

Hi all.

I need your guidance and expertise, please.

After a scrupulous research and long conversations me and my wife decided that our children are mature enough and the conditions are favourable for an independent walk back home from school.

Our son is y.5 (9y.o.) and our daughter is in y.3 (8y.o.), although very often she is the more mature one.

After an email exchange with the school we've been partially refused as the school has "legal safeguarding duties" and "other schools in the borough do the same" and they don't allow children younger than y.5 to walk back home unaccompanied. The 9y.o. Is fine coming back by himself (and he's loving it!)

I've got several questions her:

• isin't it the whole point of the government guidance is to leave the decision to individual parents?

• isn't the school infringing on my rights?

• I haven't been asked any questions by the school; how long is the walk? (0.3miles, considering that she will join her brother after 100 yards that's even less), how long will they be alone for (30 minutes). Hiw does the route looks like? (leafy, residential area l, crossing a road only once, residential road, barely any cars), Why there is no individual approach in contacts with the parents despite learning individualisation being on top of the agenda?

• Are there any services that I can contact if I feel I've been mistreated?

• what would you do next if you're 100% positive she's ready and safe to walk back independently?

Sorry for my rant, but I just feel we've been denied something here.

Our daughter is mature and responsible, she is on top of her learning being one of the best in the class. There is no social care involvement and we're both education professionals with tight grip around our children wellbeing.

You're right. It's a crusade for me atm.

Why? Don't you have anything more fulfilling in your life?

@justcheckingreally no nspcc advice is not law but social services can deem in unsuitable and then that could cause all sorts of issues , nspcc is guidelines and even that is 12 but doesn't mean if you left a 13 year old you still could be in hot water with ss if they see fit and depending on circumstances
Yes situations come up as an adult but then you have some other experiences but even as an adult some of these situations can be scary , let alone for a child
I mean as an adult you use the cooker etc doesn't mean you let a 4 year old use just because as an adult they will have to

@KingsleyShacklebolt yet I know of people in scotland who's schools do have similar rules

In the absence of the parents, the school is in loco parentis.

This includes the period between the end of the school until they are back in your care.

Either by coming to school to collect them, by arranging separate adult care (after school club for example).

The school, acting in place of the parents I.e. in loco parentis (since you would not be there at the end of the day) is entirely within their “rights” to set policies relating to when children can be released from school without an adult parent/carer.

If you don’t like it, then tough.

@titchy

You're right. It's a crusade for me atm.

Why? Don't you have anything more fulfilling in your life?

It's not about that, although I've wasted better half of my afternoon threading through the suage.

I'm not going to get what I want and what I believe in, so I'm just point the subjective and incomplete views that 90% of you seems to have, also what resonates from time to time is the assumption that older will look after the younger or that i need to do it gradually.

@Barrelofwine

So it seems that walking back home is fine and staying home alone isn't.

How about staying alone 10 minutes? Maybe unlocking only the door? Can they go through the the front gate by themselves?

If they've inherited your level of common sense, probably none of those things.

If its so important that you live in a world where you can let your child walk home from school at 8, move to a country that allows it.

Or be honest and tell your wife you can no longer afford child care. Because there has to be more to this than an obsession that you can only Foster independence by them walking home. Surely, you know lots of ways to do this, without expecting the school to change a rule for you and potentially be held responsible of something happens.

Don't your children play out? Do you have a good relationship with neighbours with kids? Here the kids are playing out at that age on the grass that the houses over look and we all keep out eye out. There's a shop about 200 yards away, that ds has been walking to since he was 7. Admittedly, I watched him out of the window alot at first. But he doesn't know that.

Even you taking them to the shop and letting them go in and buy things, while you wait outside, helps their independence. There's a lots of things you can do and work your way up

The obsession with walking from home, has to serve another purpose to you. Because you can achieve what you want to, without the school being party to it.

As for teaching your kids, to trust people. People shouldn't be trusted 100% a 100% of the time. That's a massive disservice to your child.

Especially, to your daughter who is at high risk of being sexually assaulted or abused at some point in her life. By someone she knows and/or trusts. Look up the stats.

A healthy amount of skepticism is not a bad thing and as a parent, you do your child a massive disservice but leading them to believe that's bad.

But there's something else at play here. Either GF or a parent that puts their wants ahead of their children or someone trying to hide something.

I feel for your wife, who would email the school about this before both parents even agree. Did you discuss it with her and she said no? And you ignored her? Or just decide you wanted to the schools position before you discussed it with her? You knew she would say no, so was planning on using the school to support your stance? Try and strong arm her into it?

Ultimately you chose to send your kids to a school with that policy but you're well within your rights to move them to a different school with different policies.

I don't particularly think you're wrong in that children these days don't have nearly as much independence as they used to. However I can see schools POV because if anything were to happen at all on the way home (lost keys, car mounts the pavement, child trips and falls) questions will be asked of the school and it has the potential to damage the school's reputation. Safeguarding concerns can also trigger an ofsted inspection. A school near us had a situation in that vein with a y5 child and the parents went to the papers - the whole report centred on the school's (not the parents') lack of safeguarding when presumably the parents had agreed to the child walking home alone.

I didn't realise schools were involved in how children got home. It must be a fairly new thing.

Op, I would have thought both your children could walk home together if school isn't far away and they finish at the same time.

@Plumtree391

I didn't realise schools were involved in how children got home. It must be a fairly new thing.

Op, I would have thought both your children could walk home together if school isn't far away and they finish at the same time.

Depends on what you mean as new. My dd is almost 18 it was definitely a thing when she was at primary.

Agree that it should be up to the parents.

Schools in Scotland don't seem to have these blanket rules that a child under a certain age or year group can't leave alone, or with a sibling. We live very close to school (probably about 200m door to door) and my kids were bringing themselves home from the age of about 6.

Am I right that children in Scotland go to their nearest school? So you will have children walking a shorter distance in the company of other children who live near by?

I walked home at about 7 or 8 but there were other children and parents about. My mum worked part time so sometimes I let myself in but the next door neighbour was in and her son was in my class so I had somewhere to go if I needed / wanted help.

There were rules about what I could and couldn't do so no cooking, no using the kettle or having a bath.

Subtext: I've exhausted my wife wittering about this and she suggested mumsnet. Bloody genius.

I'm not going to get what I want and what I believe in

Amazing how this continues to be about you want instead of what your children need. And stop with the ‘teaching them to trust strangers will make them achieve great things’.

OP, many years ago when schools didn't query these things, my mum deemed it acceptable for me and my brother to walk home alone. He was 10 and I was 8. One day when we got home, there was a small fire going on in our plastic dustbin, just outside the backdoor. Mum had put the ashes from the fire place into there. But they hadn't quite gone out. The bin had melted down and the bin was smouldering away. It was another half hour before she got home from the clinic with my baby brother. Thank God for us and for our mum that the fire was just outside and not inside the house.

But I wonder whether you would heed even this? You seem more interested in being 'right' rather than doing the right thing for your kids.

Our school allow children to take themselves home if parent emails to explicitly give written permission. Not sure if they're is a minimum age mine do this with one in year 6 and one in year 3.
Mine were coming home to an occupied house and walking along a quiet road.

@trojaninTroy no offence but this is pure stupidity on your mum's part. Nothing to do with you being home alone.

@justcheckingreally
But pure stupidity happens, even with the well intentioned. And if it happens to someone who is home alone, then they are in danger. That is the whole point.

Many schools won’t even dismiss to an older sibling (16+) let alone a y5 child going alone with a y3 child. This is unlikely to be allowed by any primary school. There will be policies on dismissal. These will most likely state that the children may be dismissed to alternative adults with written permission. Children won’t be dismissed to other minors. That would be the case even if you lived 1 step from school grounds.

Not true buffyfanforever my children are allowed to take themselves home (at my request) and they aren't the only children in their primary school to do this.

This thread reminded me of this
"Teacher Tom: Letting The Child Be A Child" teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2021/09/letting-child-be-child.html?m=1

Interesting read as always from TeacherTom

They’re doing the right thing and protecting your child. I’m a teacher, IMO even a mature Y3 child is NOT old enough to be walking home in their own, any responsible adult can see that. If you start kicking up a fuss about it, personally it would set off huge red flags for me about your lack of understanding and I’d be reporting it as a safeguarding issue.

At the school I teach at, only year 6 children are allowed to leave independently and other children can only be collected by someone over 18, no high school aged children allowed to collect younger siblings.

This thread cannot be real.
OP - you say the views on here are largely subjective and incomplete (the latter doesn't even make sense) yet it is YOU who is being subjective.
You will not accept, despite the majority of posters explaining why the school has rules in place about what age pupils can walk home and be left unsupervised, which is OBJECTIVE as these people are not talking about themselves but about children's safety in general.
Your obsession about being right and 'having your own way' is ridiculous. Your poor wife!
And it's 'sewage' by the way.

I must say, things have changed a lot since I was at primary. I remember the school had a rule that you couldn’t cycle on the road until you’d done your cycling proficiency, which most kids did in the Easter holidays of y4 or y5. And once you’d passed, you could bike to and from school on your own. I also remember loads of kids in my class walking to school without their parents, although we lived a fair hike away so I generally preferred to get a lift and sometimes we’d stop and give them a lift too.

I don’t understand what has happened since then - are the streets really that much more unsafe? Have rates of child RTAs or abductions or
assaults materially decreased since all this safeguarding?

@Ziegfeld I posted about this earlier but I would urge you to have a look into the book 'coddling of the American mind'. It's really really interesting even if it's not something you agree with as a whole.
It mainly covers the situation in universities but it is a very interesting look at the whole situation around safety and raising children.
One of the findings is that the 'i generation' had
less unsupervised time and fewer offline life experience than any previous generation, which ill prepares them for confronting ideas alien to them. It creates overreactions to things that offend.
Post 1995 saw the biggest difference in parenting. The practise of safetyism came about. It used to be joked about that some schools make their children look like bob the builder when they're on trips, this is now the norm.
People will argue that there are plenty of ways to give children these experiences as they're older but actually that older is getting much older. We are refusing to go along with these traditional behaviours eg walking home with a sibling but we are sticking with others like leaving home at 18 to go to uni when those students are just not prepared for that. They've had 2 years if they're lucky and even then we see more and more parents of 16 year olds micromanaging their teens lives. They move out and are completely overwhelmed.
It's not just about this y3 child staying home for 30mins. It's a big issue that's been trickling through society since the mid 90s.