do you drop your reception aged child at the classroom door or do you just let them walk on their own from the carpark?

[icecreamsoda]

Our reception-year 2 children are supposed to be dropped at their classroom doors. And also they will only be released to someone coming to pick them up. Those classes are right around the other side of the school.

So today I was shocked to see a child in my dd's class walking up to school on her own. I asked her where her mummy was and she answered that she was in the car. So it seems she's parked the car, little girl has got out and walked through the carpark, through the school gates and around the school building on her own.

So I went into the office and reported it, and also told the teacher who said that it's not on and that it will be addressed.

Was I unreasonable?

She's not walking to school alone though. The only area to worry about is the car park. Once she's inside the gates, she's fine surely.

I'd ban the car park actually, rather than ban children having a bit of independence. If you want to ban anything.

sorry-that was in resonse to someone saying they used to walk to school alone at 4

Same here. Cars are a worry. Too many of them, too many bad drivers.
Ban them from towns. I hate cars.

My mum took me to school until I was at least 7 or 8 - I guess you just view what your parents did at normal. I will walk up to the gates until DS is 8 or 9 partly because the traffic is horrendous and partly to ensure he actually goes rather than hanging about in the park.

I wouldn't let a 4 or 5 year old walk across a car park by themselves. However sensible they are, they are less visible to drivers than an adult would be and could be hit by a reversing car. Once they are away from the car park (as long as you know they are sensible), just walking across the school grounds is a somewhat different matter.

I wonder if the child involved is happy with being dropped off in that manner?

I'd have an issue with a 4-yr-old walking alone through a carpark that parents use at school drop-off time. Not that she is too young, just that she would be too short. Too many cars manouvring, too many parents in hurry, one small person in the middle - not good.

Our school doesn't have a parent carpark, and our kids aren't allowed across the staff carpark even when they are accompanied.

We can drop the kids off in the playground, up to 10 minutes before they line up and go in. Although most KS1 parents stay till the bell goes.

but she's not inside the gates. In fact there are two gates. So she could walk past the reception area (reception into school not the reception class) could walk through the gate there and could then turn right and walk through another gate and down to the shops. And no-one would know because her mum couldn't see her from the carpark. And at 8:45 the gates are locked so she wouldn't be able to get back into the school grounds. She would show up as absent on the register, but given that parents are expected to drop their children off there wouldn't be reason for any concern, parents wouldn't be notified that she hadn't arrived for school, it would probably just be assumed she was ill. Until the parents turned up to collect her at home time.

Dropping at the gates is one thing, but dropping in the carpark where the child has more than one access to get out of the school grounds is quite another.

I would not have reported it, but I would not let my children walk through a car park. However, I would drop them off in the playground rather than the class room door.

I will bet that the parent is not sitting in the carpark she will

1. looking after a younger child
2. rushing an older child somewhere
3. going off to work

it is only parents who have the luxury of being able to look after their own children who have the luxury of the long drawn-out goodbyes and kisses and subsequent chats with other parents

sometimes needs must and all that

It is difficult to judge without knowing other people's school layouts. Certainly from the age of 6 I remember being left to walk in on my own from the gate.

I have a DD in Y3 and a DS in Reception. There is an expectation that Reception children are to be brought to the very door of the classroom by a parent or other adult, and 99% of the time we do this.

Recently I had a couple of workshop sessions booked at another school and this involved being at that school for their start time - so I took my children to the door where they waited with the other children and parents, and DD took DS in while I headed for the bus. There was some huffing about this, largely from people who seem to have forgotten that some of us have this thing called work. Given the choice, I chose huffing at the school entrance over huffing from the people who were paying me.

Agreeing with twiglett. And the entrance is always clogged by yakking mums with nowhere better to go getting in the way of those parents who have WORK to get to!!

(And it is mums - plenty of us dads do the school run but seem uncannily to have mastered the simple art of drop-and-go.)

I really can't believe I'm the only 70's child who walked to school by herself! There was most the rest of the school for a start.

I agree cars are the bigest problem, at our local schools parents are not allowed to drive onto the school premises or use the school car parks at all so once inside the gates cars are not an issue.

I have an older child and a young one, and work full-time.I drop her in the playground, wait until the teacher collects them - yes, needs must, but to me this is a basic of care and not a luxury.

icecreamsoda - yes she could do all of those things but I'd assume that her parents know her best and know that she won't wander off to the shops (why would she when all her classmates are going to school?).
I wouldn't have reported either

YANBU I don't think a 4-5 year old should be left to walk through a car park alone, not by our school anyway.

I wait at the gate and watch my reception child go in the class room then take my son to year 2 and then go round and wave to him at his classroom window.

I think you were right to report it. That child might not have made it in to school for any number of reasons and no one would have known until pick up time.

My DD will also still be 4 when she finishes recception.

oh unquietdad-you people who go to work are just so busy and important aren't you?

it's not a skill to drop and run you know .. it's rather sad .. particularly if you're having a lovely chitter-chat and arranging fun things for kids to do as you watch the retreating back of the scared drop it and run brigade

goes off singing "drop it like it's hot" or something

"That child might not have made it in to school for any number of reasons and no one would have known until pick up time."

Alien abduction?
Escaped tiger?
Amnesia?
Whirlwind?

The child is walking from her car, through the school gates. She will be fine.

Fine but no child of mine would walk through a car park to school aged 4. I have seen the way the other monther's drive.

Posieflump but her classmates were already in the playground. In fact they were already in their class as I saw this child on my way back from dropping off my dd.

If you picture the school layout, it's like a horseshoe shape. So you walk through the gate and the gates to the carpark are on the left, and to the right is the gate into the playground, with the building in front of you. So you turn right into the playground and walk past the year 6 classes on the left, turn left around the building and there are more classes on the left. Again turn left after passing these classrooms and there are year 1 and 2 classes, and then a gate in front of you into the reception playground, and the reception classes on the left.

You cannot see this side of the school from the carpark, and you can only get to it by walking all the way around the school.

I just feel that as a community we should all take responsibility for all our children. I did not report this child because I want the parents to be given a talking to. I reported it to the school because if in the unlikely event this child were to ever deviate from her normal route and wander off school grounds and out into the wider community, the school would, upon discovering she was not in class when taking the register, be aware that this child is allowed to walk on her own from the carpark to class, and would act immediately to ensure she hadn't left school ground, and would also immediately contact the parents to make sure she wasn't just off sick.

As a child fo the 70's I moved house a tthe age of 9 and it was a 25 min walk to school. A group of us, with our younger siblings walked to and from school unaccompanied across roads every day - my parents didn't have a car. We survived! Having said that, at my school, reception and Key Stage 1 children are expected to be taken into their classes by their parents and settled to an activity before being left.

at our local infant school children aren't taken to the classroom door - even when they first start reception, once the inner school gates is opened in the mornings they go into the playground, and into the school on their own.

DS1 has been going through the outer school gates and waiting to go through the inner gates (if they're not already open) since he was 1/2 through yr1 (when I had DS3)

I'm most definitely of the "drop and run" (or shove out the door and put the kettle on) group.