Locking unsupervised children in a classroom - is it even legal?

[Mogmog]

My 11 year old came home and said that his class had been locked in their classroom because their teacher was off sick. Is this ever justifiable. I was very, very shocked. Not only does it raise real issues of safety in an emergency but I think it is highly inappropriate to lock children up ever. AIBU?

I've never heard of such a thing. I would be looking for an explanation from the school, bearing in mind that your DS may have got the wrong end of the stick. But if correct, very disturbing.

I would worry about fire safety, as well as any other emergency.

I cannot think of anything in favour of this practice.

Are you sure they were in it? My dd's classroom is locked sometimes because of no supervision especially at lunchtime but the students are elsewhere!

I woudl check with the school before believeing anything like this tbh. My class once insisted that I locked them in a classroom when I left to cross the corridor to get something from another room. The door locks from the outside, so I needed a key to get back in, they can still get out but that did not matter to them!

There are three questions here. Was their teacher off sick yesterday? Were they left unsupervised for more than a few minutes? Were they actually locked in the classroom?

You need to ask carefully what has happened at the school and see what did occur. If they were really left unsupervised in a locked room, that is very serious.

As others have said, check the facts with the school. It seems a very off thing to do, Y7 can be feral on occasion and locking them in without an adult sounds odd in the extreme.
What did they do all day? How did they go to the toilet? Why are they all still alive?

Sorry, but am ing at 'why are they still all alive?' I have some yr 7 classes who would go Lord of the Flies after 10 minutes with no teacher.

If they were locked in then YANBU and I woudl go postal but I would find it very hard to believe that someone would do this to Year 7's.

Another thought I had though, I have known schools to call occasions when children are not allowed in teh building (because of vanadalism during break) 'lockouts' and when they are not allowed outside to break (for various reasons) as 'lockins' could that be what she meant?

I would be massively sceptical about this, sorry.

It would, of course, be highly inappropriate...