Should school have let me know that ds didn’t arrive.

[AFOLNerd]

Ds 14 (not quite so d at the moment!) decided to bunk of school yesterday.
He has a bit of a cold and wanted to stay home and I told him to take some painkillers and suck it up like the rest of us.
So he decided that he would pretend to go to school and wait until I left for work and then come home.
I finish work after he gets home from school so was completely oblivious to the fact he didn’t go to school until I got a text from school at 6.30pm last night stating that “your child was absent today please call us and let us know why”

So at that point he had potentially been missing for 9 hours!

I am beyond angry with ds and he will be dealt with severely.
I rang the school and spoke to someone who told me that they don’t have to let parents know that a child hasn’t arrived. Surely that is a huge safeguarding risk? In 9 hours if he had run away he could have been halfway across the country or lying in a ditch while I thought he was safe at school.

Also she told me that they don’t punish in school for bunking off and it’s down to me to punish him. Which seems completely crazy.

Would love other people’s opinions on this.

admission it's considered a safeguarding issue at our school. If a child went missing then the police would quite rightly be looking at the school systems to see what safeguards there were for liason between school and home because the school is the one in the position to know a DC hasn't arrived. Parents just know they left home, or went in the direction of the bus or whatever. So the real situation is that the school is the only one in a position to, and therefore with a duty to, sound the alarm. DC don't tend to tell their parents they've arrived at school, so it's absolutely incumbent on the school to have systems in place to track a (potentially) missing child.

Our school texts and then rings you if you don't respond. All before 9:15am. They also do it for each lesson, so I've had calls to say that DS hasn't turned up for a lesson, only to find the teacher wasn't aware of his music lesson.

That gave me a bit of a panic- but better they do that than have them potentially missing all day. I agree it's a safeguarding risk and one which I would report to Ofsted as their procedures need looking at.

the thing is that all schools now have electronic registers,a nd automated systems, so, once the office staff have filled in the phoned in absences on the system, it is simple for them to send out an automated text to any child not present whose parent hasn't phoned in.

I cannot see why they wouldn't really.

Both mine at secondary would send text/call. But they probably have a very low level of unexplained absence.

On the other hand, I have had texts from people sent at say 10 am that I receive 12 hours later for no reason, even when I had signal. Never can explain why.

Our high school doesn’t contact us at all if a child is off.
I’ve never really thought about it before, with dd1 there’s been a couple of times she’s been ill and I’ve forgotten to call, only received a letter a few days later asking to clarify the reason for her absence, we get a termly letter with listed absences too but never a phone call. I’m going to double check their policy after reading this thread. It’s never worried me personally as I do trust dd to go to school, but I can see how it would be bad for children who are prone to skive or even as you say, children who run away. What age would you want it to stop, 16? At my dds school there’s 6th form and I can’t expect many parents wanting a call advising of the absence of a 17-18 year old.

Primary school here we get callled by 9.30 if child hasn’t registered, although I received a call once saying dd2 hadn’t registered which put me into a panic! The office lady had to check and call me back, teacher had just forgotten to tick her off, I was sweating waiting on that call back!

I suppose the time to stop calls by c10am is when a student is not classed as vulnerable, whether that vulnerability is because of age or circumstances.

This is interesting!

They can wait 3 days and then prosecute you for unauthorized absents. Nice.

Member of staff was very rude on the phone, talked over me continuously and wouldn’t listen to my point of view at all. Kept stating that it’s impossible to keep track of 1200 kids and she doesn’t have time to be phoning parents when kids don’t show up, that legally she doesn’t have to let parents know and the text they send out is just curtesy.

There's no excuse for rudeness, but she has a point.
Given the state of school funding these days she's probably doing the job of three people and her rude response may well be frustration making itself felt.

No excuse for rudeness and no excuse with electronic registers for not putting a call into home. She's probably just one of those rude officious types who man desks and think they can talk down to people, rather than being a poor overworked receptionist. I'd lob a complaint in about her too.

Offices close around 5pm normally with schools so, like noble I find it odd that the text would be sent at that time.

Ideally school would let you know as soon as possible. However this is not always as simple as you’d think.

You can get “mismarks” a lot with registers (human error; another child answering; not calling out the name and putting a present mark etc). You can get teachers not doing registers (forgetting with the distraction of 30 14 year olds arriving; network down; computer closes down; register doesn’t save; students arriving late and teacher not opening it all back up again to change marks; PE teachers being outdoors and not able to do register; supply teacher not knowing how or doing a paper register and not handing it in or handing it in late) etc etc.

I do think the school should punish for this (he would have 10 hours of detention at our school) but I would save up my annoyance for him rather than their texting service (which is a courtesy and not a requirement). When I first started teaching we just used to ask for a letter - when they returned after an absence. One boy took 3 weeks off once I remember!

Our school did. Safeguarding risk, definitely.

I also had frequent calls from one of the schools when DD had forgotten to tell the teacher that she was at a music lesson.

Same here. Every damn week, except dd had told the Form Teacher, (and the office staff after the first week). She was in the 6th form and had been asked to help the peri teacher with the group she had first thing. The form teacher was never there before the lesson started to remind her, and (according to her friends) never asked if anyone had seen dd, for them to tell her. Every week for about 6 weeks!!

So my suspicion is that it is pretty normal - with electronic registering these days - for this to be compulsory in every school. 12 - 14 years ago we were doing it when it was still paper registers and pre- automatic texts (it all started after there was a case where a child went missing on the way to school, and no-one knew she had been taken until hometime - don't remember the year but I remember the case ).

Sounds a safeguarding issue.

Couple of girls bunked off school in DDs form. Three visits from Deputy to form, phone calls to both sets of parents, with the final visit to the form with Deputy announcing that unless someone could tell them what's going on they were about to call the police and report the girls missing. All before 11am. Deputy H encouraged girls to phone the girls on their mobiles to tell them of the level of concern. It worked, girls phoned school and returned. Its important that schools take it seriously although I imagine it drives them nuts when most of the time they hear' oh I forgot to tell you'.

Absolutely. Some parents don’t pick up their phones or answer as they are at work or miss the call. When they eventually do ring it’s often “oh yes he’s not well and I forgot to tell you” - human error on both sides

I think the text was somehow delayed, they wouldn’t send it at 6.30pm.
And really, it’s not up to them to ensure your child is in school. That’s on you. With 1200 pupils they wouldn’t have time to follow up unanswered messages etc.