Absent without notification to school - what's the norm?

[maybenormal]

Hello

I have concerns about they process my DC's school uses to tell parents if a child has not come to school and parents haven't notified school to expect this, but I don't know if my expectations are unrealistic given the size of secondary schools so wondering what other schools do.

If your child doesn't attend registration and the school has no record that they've been notified child is sick etc, will your school contact the parent, how quickly will the school contact the parent, how (eg email/phone) will the school contact the parent, and who will the school contact (eg primary contact on file, all contacts on file or specifically the mother)?

Background is that twice in the last six months I've been contacted because my DC wasn't in registration when school thought they should be. The school didn't tell me until 3h after registration ended, told me by an email that was not specific and did not indicate urgency, only emailed me and not the other emergency contacts on file, and (deliberately) chose to email me as mother rather than DH who is the primary contact on file.

Does this sound normal? Maybe even good and many schools wouldn't notify at all? Or am I right to be concerned about the process?

[Note both cases were errors on the school's part, but that's not my concern.]

Thanks!

Depends a bit on age of child and background/history.
A year 7 child who they know walks or takes public transport unaccompanied, and is rarely ever late, I'd expect them to be phoning the primary contact within half hour.
A year 11 who is driven to school and often running late maybe more like 10:30/11.

They should be trying the primary contact regardless though

Large secondary and they sent a text if they didn't think he was in school. It was probably two or three hours into the day and was always a mistake. I assume if there is some reason for a child to be particularly high risk then the school would notify you earlier

DD is long term absent from school but unauthorised (emotional based school avoidance). Initially, we didn't get the 'your child hasn't registered' texts until about 11am. Now it's usually around 9:15am. I don't know if the change is due to the school changing the settings or because she's a persistent offender.
DS is at a different school. When I forgot to notify them that he was ooorly once, the absence lady phoned me at about 9:30. He's very rarely off school.
Both kids at secondary.

depends of the age. until year 8 our school notified us within the first school lesson time.

from then onewards similar what's described in the op.

We get a text
just looking through texts (I’m clearly terrible at notifying the school when they’re ill!) it’s usually before 10am but occasionally has been nearly 11am

In a large secondary school, say 1500, there could be 10%of children who are absent on a given day. That's 150 children not in reg. There is a human sifting through the various emails (some very lengthy) that come in with reasons for sickness. Then that person has to organise who needs an absent alert. Some may be on a priority notification list. It takes a long time!

I got a text, email and another text between 9.30 and 11 (so three lots of communication).

what had actually happened is DC had been suspended and this had not been communicated to the attendance team.

À text between 9.30 and 11am. High priority kids earlier but often these students have come to school and hidden somewhere instead of attending lessons.

We wait for 2 N codes- registration and period 1. If we have received no notification if absence these parents will receive a text. It takes us this long to add all the absence on, but by 9.30 you should know, maybe later if a busy morning. Also teachers can be bad at taking accurate registers.

Not attending registration isn't the only flag either. We have registers every lesson so attendance officer can check lesson by lesson. Not attended registration and period 1 gets an email/text home.

Are you definitely priority 2? I say that because our attendance system is automated somewhat, so the attendance officer will send the same email/text to "primary guardian 1" for the list of students not in.

School of around. 2000. Have been contacted by 9, by text. School starts at 8.20am.

A year 7 child who they know walks or takes public transport unaccompanied, and is rarely ever late, I'd expect them to be phoning the primary contact within half hour

We don't know the children at this level. They are mainly just names to us.

It should be by about 9.30. Text message automatically to primary contact. Follow up phone calls if we don't hear straight back

I don't get anything but then I always phone before 8am if they are ill so that might be why?

In my school it depends partly on vulnerability of child.

Secondary school - Usually a generic email at about 11am. I always ring in early if they are off sick so it's when they have been late and missed registration but it's a big school so it takes them ages to work through - so I check "find my iPhone" and then ring back and say I can see he's at school and they say oh yes sorry to worry you he missed registration but has been marked present in period 1....

Primary - got a call about 11am once when I'd used their new app to log absence instead of ringing the office and they hadn't checked that! Apparently the app is now up and running and they prefer parents to use that rather than phone them.

@themidimit exactly this. In totally appreciate that as a parent I would want to know ASAP but I do think we are ignorant of the volume of kids this could be and the processes involved.

The secondary dd went to would send a text and a notification on the parent app by 9.30 if a child wasn't in registration. If they hadn't heard from a parent by 11am they would then call

DC's school sends a text around 2 -3 hours after school starts.

The only part of your description that sounds odd is that your school chose to contact you and not the designated primary contact. So I would follow up on that bit to check they have this recorded correctly. I wouldn't expect, for example, the email to sound urgent. As a parent if you are emailed to say your son is not in school and you think he should be, then at that point, you can flag an issue. I would imagine most emails are mistakes or parent forgot to notify school.

I'm not entirely sure what my DCs school does as it seems to vary.

I have to report absence in the app every day they're off, even if I have already said they'll be off the rest of the week. In those cases, if I forget a day I get a parent mail message and text by about 10.30.

Once they didn't think DD was in school, without a previous sick day, and called me 6 times at 9am. I was on the train to work so the calls didn't come through and they didn't leave a message. When I rang them back in a bit of a panic, thinking something terrible must have happened, it turned out they'd forgotten she was taking late mock exams in the library as she did every day for 3 weeks.

I was not best pleased they'd forgotten their own arrangements but at least they chased a missing child quickly!

Yes same here, random text message and no response when I reply they are in school! Good job I can track them otherwise I would be really worried.

I get an automatic notification almost immediately if my DC are missing from registration or any lesson. Large secondary school.

I imagine for alot of schools it depends on how many other students / admin staff are also sick. It takes time to go through the absence voice mails, update the register and then contact parents of when the child isn't in. If they are doing it manually they need to get through the voice mails first before sending an email.

I wouldn't expect them to contact the entire emergency contacts list which often includes adult siblings / grandparents etc. I would expect them to contact the primary carer who ever that is listed as. Contact them and request they put you as Secondary as you work remotely and don't always get messages which is an issue if they are urgent.

Thanks everyone.

Can I check whether concerns around this type of notification is something that I could raise as a potential safeguarding concern? I don't want to go overkill, but equally last time the head of year agreed with my concerns and said that they would sort it out, but six months later the process is exactly the same. This time (different Head of Year) I've had an even weaker 'I'll tell the absence team' response. I'm not clear if the previous head of year was just placating me and never did anything, but it's pretty clear that I need to come in stronger if I want anything to change.

Seems like 3 hours is longer than usual, but not completely unknown so I will take that into account. I agree that it must take a lot of time to go through all the emails from parents to work out who is expected to be absent but I would prefer that they emailed everyone absent (and could understand waiting until both registration and check in until that email) saying 'don't worry if you've notified us' than having to wait three hours to be told DC didn't make it to school. I will approach from that perspective.

They must be reconciling emails to the school somehow as it's not normal for me to be contacted when I've notified school but unless they have some fancy pants machine learning system to scan emails, someone will need to be reading each email to be able to reconcile (it's a free form email not a form submission and same email address for any absence whether it's for that day, or the following Tuesday). I can understand why that might take 3 hours but then I think they need to change how this works!

I asked why I was contacted and not the primary contact and was told it was because I am the mother and "I feel that this is something for the mother". Not sure if this is an individual making this decision (she gave the impression she had decided this, but if it's decided case by case and day by day, their systems even more of a mess than I suspect!), or if for some reason the system defaults to mother. I'll raise this as well and say that there needs to be the ability to specify who should be contacted about this type of thing. Given how many people in education are working mothers, and that a large number of them have access to phones restricted, I'm always amazed that schools set up processes assuming that every family set up has a mother checking their phone regularly!

The first incident DC was in school but for reasons the absence team should have known was not at registration (school activity meaning they were somewhere else in the building at registration time). Therefore the email the absence team they had obviously missed the email. This stuff happens and there's only been an email sent by mistake twice over two DC and several years - not a biggy.

Note that whilst DC actually does have SEN and does make their own way to school, I'm not expecting their teacher to think 'oh DC isn't here I must notify'. I just want the standard process to pick up sooner than three hours after registration that they've been knocked off her bike into a ditch (or has truanted or whatever reason they're not in registration when they should be).

My kids school sends a text at 9.30 if your child isn't in school and they haven't been notified, so an hour after registration.