Am I right to be angry with school?

[24hourmommy]

Hi all, so my daughter is in year 3 and she has after school club on Tuesdays. But today when I went to pick her up she was crying. She had been sat not inside school but in the reception area where the doors are constantly open and visitors come and go.

Nobody has informed me or noticed that she has been there for a whole hour! I asked her why she didn’t speak to any staff and tell them and she said she was scared and shy as she is not familiar with some of the staff. But surely if she had left school unnoticed it would be a safeguarding issue. I am a teacher myself but in my school children stay with a member of adult inside the school for a certain time and then parents/guardians are contacted. On schools part they have been very careless.

So would you be angry if this had happened? And should I go speak to the head tomorrow, I know him very well even outside of school but I know he will get all defensive.

So why did you say that people who questioned this have no understanding of children, as if we had no evidence of children behaving the way we described? Your point was that children are not all the same. But that is not what you said.

That’s shit OP - I’d complain

Someone mentioned about being a people pleaser and I think maybe that is the problem. Her teacher had assumed that her parents were late and she didn’t want to correct her. She was aware that it’s Tuesday ( she counts down to treat day on Fridays) and I also reminded her this morning. I’m a single parent so I do overthink things and when it comes to scenarios of what to do in certain situations we have discussed it many times. Not sure why she didn’t say anything it’s not her normal behaviour but I do know she goes into a shell sometimes. As some have advised to communicate through writing I will be sending an email tonight.

How strange. I would be annoyed with the club leader as well, not checking or noticing where your daughter was.

I've found my son wandering on the road outside school if I was just five minutes late for school. It's quite an eye opener as to what some schools see as normal!

Really ?
My year 1 dd6 knows what day is is

And if she has a club and /or not picking her up pm

I would say you have choir today /asc /xxx mum is picking you up etx

Assume op told her dd she wasn't picking her up/going to asc

Crossed posts

So you did tell her this am it was asc yet she failed to tell any teacher or receptionist she was meant to be there

Maybe you need to tell the teacher in the am op on a Tuesday that dd has asc if dd isn't capable of mentioning it to the teacher

My dd did as well. Not so much one of her friends, who got things muddled past year 3. Young children specialise in certain but different areas. By year 6, they mostly know a similar amount.

In answer to your question, I’d be rather cross. I doubt my dd would have said anything either and she would have been beside herself upset. It is such a shame no one spoke to her or tried to comfort her.

I'm a teacher and that is poor and worthy of a complaint. I can understand the cover teacher taking her to reception because she thought you were late, and I can understand your child feeling too shy to speak up. We have a similar system ourselves. But when I drop uncollected children in reception, I tell the office staff that they are there. After ten minutes or so, they would call home.

Either the cover teacher didn't tell them that she was there, or they forgot about her.

But I'm also surprised that nobody passed and asked if she was OK. I wouldn't pass a crying child without asking if I could help. I suppose it's possible that she told anyone who asked that her mum was late picking her up and that she had to wait.

Definitely worthy of an email.

I didn't say 'no understanding', I said 'little understanding'.

Direct quote: Some of these responses read as though the posters have little understanding of kids.

I accept people have experience of their own child, my point is people seem to have little understanding of kids in general - there is a wide range of behaviour in any class of 30 kids.

There is a lot of blaming a child here. Yes your DD could have spoken up, but she is 7/8 years old. The responsibility is on the multiple adults around to ensure she is safe. They need a better system.

You picked her up after an hour. That's a long wait when you don't know what is happening. But no-one in the school knew why you hadn't picked her up. How long would they have left it before investigating?! She could have been there hours!

I imagine that other staff who saw her there would have assumed you had been phoned by the office staff. But the office staff would not have known to phone you unless the cover teacher told them she hadn’t been picked up.
At my school, the after school club staff would have come looking for her if her name was on the list. I’d say the system needs tightening up. ASC staff first need to check up where children are, cover staff need to know what to do if a child is t collected, office staff need to actually speak to any child left outside the office.

The first question we ask a child who hasn't been collected is whether they should be in a club. Usually they know but sometimes there's confusion which is why we have our club lists. I'm stunned that no one saw her for an hour. We're stupidly busy that time of day but we know who's waiting and why. That's a huge oversight on their part.

Lots of unpleasant posts about shy children here. Both mine are very shy - we've done lots to try to build confidence but they both find it hard to speak to adults they don't know. I was much the same as a child.

As I said upthread, as a primary school teacher this is absolutely not on and is a serious safeguarding concern. Schools should not allow any children out of the secure area of the school without being handed to an adult (excepting upper KS2 children who have written permission to leave alone). If the child has walked out of the door and something has happened to her the school would be held entirely responsible.

Sorry,if the child had walked out of the school

At my school, the after school club staff would have come looking for her if her name was on the list.

I thin people are using the term "After school Club" in different ways. This wasn't wrap around care, this was a choir if I've understood correctly.
The teacher leading the choir can't leave the choir to go round the school finding out where the missing 5 children are. a) it would leave the other 20 children unsupervised and b) it would waste an inordinate amount of time each week. It would be incredibly unusual for someone running the choir to have "other staff" there to do this for them. They are there to teach the children who turn up, how to sing in a choir.

I would tell yourself this was a "near miss" incident. Whilst your dd was upset and worried when waiting, hopefully you arriving and the distractions for he evening have allowed her to out it behind her and move on.

Notify the school sit hat the learning can happen and steps be out in place to ensure a near miss doesn't become an actual incident.

Luckily nothing untoward did happen, so try not to dwell on the what ifs. Your DD was in a familiar place with safe adults close by that she could have sought help from (and whilst she didn't, that is still different to eg being lost in a train station or shopping centre in terms of how it feels).

I don't agree that anyone is blaming the child. I do think it is unusual to not be able to speak up, or seek help, especially somewhere familiar and safe. I would want to understand what my DC thought process had been and why so that we could talk through better strategies for speaking up and getting help in the future. I would also worry that they may feel similarly unable to seek help for other worries in school and want to get an idea of whether they were putting their hand up in class/seeking adult support in the playground as appropriate.

I once had a situation when my DS was supposed to stay in school for a club but managed to convince staff he was going to his friend’s for a playdate. His friend’s dad was picking up and assumed I’d made the arrangement with the mum so didn’t question it and took him to their house. I then turned up to pick DS up at the club end time to find he wasn’t at school…!

Quite correctly the school treated this as a safeguarding failure and tightened up their procedures.

Though not as serious as the DD in this case was still on school property, I would expect the school to review procedures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Definitely complain in writing. I can’t get my head around the procedure (or lack of). The supply teacher would have had no idea but still should have told the receptionist or a member of senior management that they had left the child there, the Choir teacher would have assumed your child was absent. How on earth did the receptionist or ANY other staff member not notice she was there? As a teacher and mum I would be furious.

I'm a supply teacher and although schools have different procedures I would never leave a child with no adult. It's common sense as well as safeguarding.

It can be difficult if you get left with one child at the end of the school day as you need to be extra careful about making sure you are not alone with a child, even more careful than a permanent member of staff. And some classes dismiss from the classroom so you have to get out of there as soon as possible with the child and get them to the office. But you don't leave them there!

Same with a regular teacher. You might have a meeting straight after school but you hand over a child to another adult.

Some of the schools I go to don't have office staff in the afternoons which is of course down to money. And TAs finish when the children finish or ten minutes after they finish So it isn't always easy if there is a staff meeting.

Teachers are not allowed to be alone with one single child? I have not heard this before.

I would definitely be emailing the school to complain. At the end of school the teacher should make sure the children have either been collected or sent to after school club. I’ve never known a school not do this. As for your daughter not speaking up my son would have probably done the same at that age! Some kids just aren’t confident approaching adults they’re not totally comfortable with. My daughter probably would have…because kids are different. You can’t force a shy kid to speak up, especially in circumstances when they’re scared.
Hopefully they will apologise and learn from this to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The after-school club should have been checking on her absence, too. (I know of one case where a child forgot they were supposed to be at after-school club and got on the school bus home - which meant arriving at a bus-stop with no parent to meet them.)
However much we might expect a child this age to be able to speak up, the checks need to be in place to make sure every child is where they should be at the end of school.

Sounds like yr daughter isn’t ready for an afterschool club if she isn’t capable of telling a teacher she has one.

Agree it's hard as the club teacher can't go round checking to see who isn't there

So does the blame lie with the teacher or the reception staff

But also agree with last poster - if your child in yr 3 so 8yrs old can't tell anyone she is meant to be at choir /a club then maybe she shouldn't go