Unauthorized school absence

[Debbiep11]

Anyone had this situation before.
I went to pick up my son early from secondary school due to our dog going in for major life saving surgery and me needing help.
Anyway , the school attendance team kicked off , gave me a lecture and said they do not agree with him leaving early (less than an hour early) and said they would mark it as unauthorised by them.
I get the feeling I am going to be in alot of trouble for doing this.
Anyone else come across this issue before ?

You're not going to get into trouble op. Less than an hour before school finished ? Ignore them !

You will not be in trouble unless he keeps having unauthorised absences. Unfortunately schools don't set the absence rules otherwise they may have been more lenient.

He has had no unauthorised absents since starting secondary school (he is in year 10). But the school made it clear when I picked him up that they strongly disagreed with what I was doing and that the only reason they pet him go was because I was sat in their car park waiting , otherwise they would have refused to send him down if I had rang them before arriving.
One time they sent him home poorly and a couple of days later threatened me with social services. They cause me more anxiety about attendance than anything else!

It's going to be unauthorized. The attendance team have to advice you against it. I always have to provide solid proof of medical appointments for my child. They aren't going to give you authorized absence for a dog. Your child is in year 10, a key year when they will be revising for end of year mocks, they may even be doing them this week

Mocks have finished. My son is autistic and this dog is his only friend in the world. What else was I supposed to do? I was trying my best to save this dog for him and to sort something else out but without success.
I am on my own with an autistic son trying to save his only friend which meant picking him up less than an hour early and the school have been awful about it. They said "leaving even a little early is not warranted for a dog". How heartless can you get !

Just ignore it

One time they sent him home poorly and a couple of days later threatened me with social services.

Why did they do that??

They're not heartless, they're following protocol. No they can't authorise an absence for the dog being ill. Your son's autism diagnosis or his previous attendance record has no bearing here, the reason for absence wasn't authorisable (if that's a world?!). They can't make an exception.

Seriously, forget about it. It's one unauthorised absence. It has to be 10 in a row (so 5 days of unauthorised absence, morning and afternoon sessions), before fines kick in. Literally nothing is going to happen off the back of this.

I hope the dog is ok, and you and your son after the trauma you've been through. School have done nothing wrong though. No school would have authorised this. It's got nothing to do with compassion, they have rules to adhere to.

I call BS, there is no way they threaten social sevices on just a kid being sent home sick.

There is absolutely a massive back story.

Perhaps you should have mentioned autism in your first post. It still stands, schools carnt issue an authorized absence for a dog otherwise they would be issuing authorised absences for all kinds of irrelevent things.

Saving our pet dog is irrelevant? Wow

No saving your pet dog is not irrelevent. But school still won't accept this as an authorised absense because if they did kids would be missing school for sick animals daily. It is possible to go the vet without your child, or after school.

The lesson here is that an unexpected sob story does not get you out of real life consequences. People are fully able to feel compassion on a personal level, but bureaucracy works on a different level. For the same reason, if someone had to miss a flights or holiday due to a medical emergency or bereavement, the companies are not going to waive your fees or give you the trip for free. That's why travel insurance exists or power of attorney or other bureaucratic systems that must be thought about and set up beforehand.

As it was a presumably a planned procedure, there must have been time to inform the school beforehand. Even if they weren't able to officially authorise it, it's still good practice to open communication earlier instead of showing up on the day and putting them on the spot. The second line of thinking from the school's side is probably why a student needs to miss classes to be present at a pet's surgery. It would be fairly unprecedented if they start authorising absences for all pupils to miss school even if their human relatives were in surgery. That would literally be different kids every single day. Imagine every time granny goes into surgery, a kid only has to attend a half day of school.

If it was really such an emotional issue, then you need to obtain a doctor's certification that your son's autism has a dramatic impact on the situation regarding his dog. It's just all common sense.

This post explains things perfectly.

OP, the emotions of what you've been through this week have made you take this way too personally. To us, pets are family. All pet owners understand this. However, school absolutely cannot issue an unauthorised absence for a sick pet. They have to follow the rules. In reality, there are very few reasons they can authorise an absence for and most of them revolve around personal illness of the child. I've known parents be cross when we haven't been able to authorise an absence because they themselves are ill and can't get the child to school, or a younger sibling was poorly and kept the school aged child up all night and therefore they want to keep them off as they're too tired for school. We can be understanding in those circumstances, in that it's the parents prerogative to keep them off and we can't stop them, but we can't authorise it.

It sounds to me as if you assumed it would be authorised because of your son's impeccable attendance record in the past but it doesn't work like that. Having excellent attendance doesn't give you special privileges to have any old absence authorised. If it's not an authorisable reason, there's nothing the school can do about it. There are certain codes they have to enter to authorise the absence (illness, medical appointment, religious observance, extra curricular activity such as a music exam). If the reason for absence doesn't meet any of that criteria, they can't authorise it.

As I said before, you simply need to let it go as there is really no reason to get so het up about one unauthorised absence. I understand you feel it's blotted his excellent record, but in the grand scheme of things it means nothing. You absolutely won't be in trouble for him having one single unauthorised absence. There really are more important things to worry about.

It does sound to me that school could have been a bit more compassionate in how they handled the situation but the fact remains, they couldn't authorise it. If you reacted to them how you have to some people on here who are are making valid points though, I can understand why any compassion they may have had disappeared. It's not their fault they couldn't authorise it, so you're taking your frustrations out on the wrong people.

What were their reasons for referring you to social services after sending him home from school when he was sick? They must have given a reason to you / SS.

The pm register gets done after lunch (we do ours at 1). As long as they were present for the pm register, they don't have to be marked absent for the afternoon session if they leave before home time.

Your disagreement is fundamentally with the rules set by government. Make your feelings known via the ballot box on Thursday.

I agree about the importance of dogs (or cats) in a child's life, be they NT or ND. Hope your dog has successful and a full recovery from the surgery.

Once the register has been taken after lunch your child is considered present in school for the whole afternoon session. It would be an illegal act for them to retrospectively change it to an unauthorised absence if he leaves early. They are being ridiculous.

Sounds like an over zealous receptionist tbh.
Afternoon registration has already happened, they'll mark him as leaving early, probably sign him out on the system somewhere but they can't change the register when there's only an hour of school left.
So he may be marked absent for the last session if it's not yet started but not overall if you see what I mean.

Just ignore them. I am starting to feel like our children are a piece of state owned property.

You are doing what is best for your child that is parenting and they should understand this if he is autistic. Especially also as it’s a one off.

Depends on when registration is - it could be the end of the day.

Anyhow, as much as I agree fundamentally that dealing with the dog was an emergency and I would have collected a child in order to get it to the vets without having to delay to collect at the end of the day, it's also by its nature an unauthorised absence.

Unless you're already on a School Attendance Order, it won't make much difference, anyhow.

Why have you posted this in primary??

You needed help from your child who was in school, to take your dog to the vet's? I'm sorry but I don't see that as a good enough reason to take your child out of school early. Take the dog to the vet's yourself. If the dog is not able to move you need to call a vet out to your house.

Just ignore them. Look up your LA’s rules on fines, check with school what the consequences are for absences. Work within those limits or accept the consequences.

You can’t expect them to authorise an absence over this. But they also don’t need to be quite so over bearing.

OP still hasn't explained why she needed help from her son to get the dog to the vet's. You can't just drag kids out of school because YOU need help with something.

Secondary schools are big and busy places with minimal admin staff. You can't be expecting them to run round school on messages, getting kids from classes to help their mother out with something. They'll already be expected to do that to get them for medical apppointments that the kids forgot to come to Reception for.