Would you be happy with this?

[Admodean]

My kids school has staff on the door to welcome children and then the door gets locked. You can walk into the reception area but they have to buzz you into the actual school, and you aren’t allowed in unless accompanied by a staff member.

The school has announced a Friday coffee morning for parents and toddlers. Adults with no DBS checks will be in the school hall and not accompanied one on one. The hall is central and anyone could wander off into the school. I don’t think this is ok.

Would you be happy with that? If not, who would you report it to as a safeguarding issue? Ofsted? LEA?

You're being ridiculous.
Random adults will not be wandering around the whole school.
Schools tend to take safeguarding very seriously so there will have been a risk assessment done.

You only need a DBS if you have regular, unsupervised access to young or vulnerable people.

Honestly this post makes me sad. The school tries to set something nice up for the community / parents and this is what they get. Fwiw our school has coffee mornings for parents in the hall. As far as I am aware no one has complained. There is a teacher with us supervising and in any case children are in their classrooms also supervised by a teacher. I am not sure what the risk is.

Will the adults be able to access the same toilets being used by the school children? It’s concerning.

No. Absolutely not.

There will be staff/visitor toilets. Either these will be accessible without accessing the whole school or visitors will be escorted.

Imagine being the HT having to deal with this type of parent.

The hours they will have to spend justifying everything to a parent who has no clue is unreasonable.

If you don't like it, don't go. But please don't write complaints about something you don't know anything about.

Are you prone to catastrophising?

Please go and speak to the head teacher about this and see what they say…

Op you are massively over reacting.

If any adults did need the toilet they would be directed use the adults toilet. Staff don't use the same loos as the kids

Adults wandering off round the school. Going into toilets unsupervised with children as young as 4. An attacker could gain access to the school with a weapon. The locked security doors are for safety - it’s not safe if random people are allowed in.

You're completely over reacting. In the unlikely event a parent manages to escape out of the hall, what is the likelihood that they will head to the reception class toilets & intercept a 4 year old & do something inappropriate?

Do you live in an area with lots of knife crime? I think even in more deprived areas a knife crime related incident would most likely be late at night between older teen boys/men. Very rarely are any children involved.

You’re catastrophising now. None of the things you’ve said are going to happen.

School staff will all be trained to challenge any unfamiliar, unaccompanied adults who are not displaying verified ID

If an attacker was determined to target a school I'm afraid they would find a way without having to conceal a weapon in a nappy bag whilst using a decoy baby to gain access to a coffee morning. Schools may have gates and locked doors but they're not Fort Knox.

Sadly risks to children do constantly exist and a DBS check doesn't remove those risks. A coffee morning with a few parents and toddlers isn't going to feature highly in the risky scenarios your child will encounter in life.

You're being absolutely ridiculous. Do you also expect adults who attend Christmas concerts etc in the school to be DBS checked? Your child is just as safe in the school as they are anywhere else where there are adults they don't know.

DBS checks arose to safeguard against adults creating improper relationships of trust with children.

As far as I know, they can't, and have never been intended to, safeguard against violent crime, or completely unpredictable and uncharacteristic adult behaviour that circumvents other day-to-day safeguarding arrangements.

The play session will be to help bolster or boost school admissions, which will be helpful for the whole school including your DC in the longer term.

You're vastly misunderstanding yet overthinking it. If you're DBS checked yourself, perhaps you could volunteer as an extra adult helper on these mornings if you're so concerned?

My children’s old primary had two halls they used - one had an outside entrance the parents used and the internal exit doors were shut and monitored.
The other bigger hall had a corridor where you entered to the right was the hall the left the rest of the school you needed a code to enter

schools have been running such events for years and will know how to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Yet again, people are telling OP that she’s over reacting and yet again, there’s a catastrophe scenario. It will have been planned.

I think your anxiety is overwhelming you OP.

Are you sure there aren't other doors that require a pass to access the rest of the building? DS' school has the setup you describe, but there's another set of not immediately obvious secure doors beyond the foyer/school hall.
I would have thought a similar setup would apply, and if there are no toilets other than within the main building, a staff member would have to escort anyone needing to access them.

As a headteacher, I’m not particularly surprised by this kind of mis-judged post. We have to deal with an awful lot of stuff like this, and it’s got a lot worse since COVID. Please don’t worry and, for goodness sake, don’t report the school to OFSTED 🙄 it really is not something to be concerned about.

Another thing that has got worse over the last few years in schools is parents going straight to OFSTED or making a formal complaint about something without actually just talking to the school. OP, if you are concerned, have a chat with the school to allay your fears, rather than considering contacting OFSTED.

Yes, I would absolutely be happy with this. A lovely weekly event like this will do so much to enhance the school community. Attitudes like yours are damaging our children if we allow the fear of an extremely unlikely event from a random stranger to stop things like this happening.

Are we really so paranoid these days? Parents and toddlers allowed in school for a coffee morning, I would imagine mainly mums and quite likely with other children at the school, but obviously they must all be paedophiles trying to catch little Johnny in the toilets, or there for a mass shooting. All things are possible, but some are so unlikely as to be not worth worrying about.

These are parents just like you and people you may be letting little Johnny go for a play date with sometime, do you get all parents your child might interact with fully vetted first too?

So you think that a parent looking after their own toddler will abandon their child in a hall in order to wander off and molest another child? You need to give your head a wobble. This is craziness.
Do you often get worried about things like this?

I’m assuming you’re joking? Adults walk around public places where children are all the time- do you never go to the supermarket, cinema etc?

When we have school events, the headteacher is on the door and checks who has come in, if she felt something wasn't right I would expect she would say something and cctv around the school also. Also there is a teacher and multiple classroom assistants in each classroom. However I understand what you are saying re the Southport stabbing etc, it worries me too.

Our village playgroup is held in a the school's hall. They have the details of everyone who attends. We don't use the children's toilets, we use the accessible toilet by the hall which is used for visitors and a very small handful of supervised children. We absolutely don't have permission to roam around and the lady running the session has her eyes on the door to note who is coming and going for the toilet etc.

Are children roaming the corridors alone much at this primary school? I've been going to this group for 2+ years now and I've never interacted with an unaccompanied child or even seen one in that time.

Our school does these sessions. The hall door isn't locked but staff members would check no one was going out (I know as I once stepped literally outside the door to take a phone call and got told to step back in), and all adult visitors get a badge on a red lanyard (staff use other colours). If anyone does need the toilet they use the adult one which is in view of both the hall door and the office, so unlikely to be able to slip off anywhere else.

our school have coffee mornings regularly. I don't have a problem with it.