Talking about my local authority and education policy in Aberdeen has mostly been focussed on my middle child who is fairly impaired brain wise. I have had the odd niggle with a teacher at primary school, but it was pretty good for eldest there.
Moving on to secondary at the tender age of 11 – 12, things change dramatically. He’s not the best, nor the worst behaved at secondary, but apart from a few minutes late sometimes, he’s not been a truanter at all.
Our secondary is a few miles away from the village, so kids are transported there by bus and he is there half an hour before school starts EVERY DAY.
A few days ago, my boy, along with a few others went to registration as normal.
At about 12.30 – 1pm I noticed a TEXT on my phone saying.
“Your child has not shown up to their Period 3 class today. Please contact the school to inform us of the reason for this absence. Thank you”
I contact the school to be told he hadn’t shown up for his Period 4 class either. There were a few other kids also missing, but they wouldn’t tell me who they were. It’s easier to find a group than one child, but hey ho, we have to follow the rules.
He had effectively been missing since 10.55 – almost 2 hours – and they didn’t think that was a necessary reason to actually call a parent and speak to someone in person.
That meant by the time I found him after trawling the streets round school, he’d been missing for nearly 3 hours.
He explains the reason for bunking off as not wanting to go to a class as the teacher just screams at a couple of them all the time. Who knows what the real reason is, and it really doesn’t matter.
I had an appointment with the new Deputy Head yesterday who is adamant that a Groupcall Text is appropriate to notify a parent that a child is missing from school. It’s local authority policy apparently, and they believe they’ve done their job. One of the other parents didn’t even know her child had been missing until I phoned her in the evening to see if the kids stories matched.
None of these kids are known for truanting so I don’t think it’s too much to ask for the school admin office to make sure they actually speak to a person if a child is missing from school unexpectedly. Parents often don’t get to check their phones at all if they’re working or busy.
I actually sat there in the meeting and felt like I had forked tongue disease or over anxious mum stamped on my forehead as they were incredulous that I find it out-of-order for them to not to notify a real live human being when a child is missing.
I didn’t go too much into why I think it’s unacceptable as they weren’t prepared to even consider the fact, but the first few hours when kids go missing is crucial if something dangerous has happened or there has been an accident. With sub-zero temperatures outside, I find it incredible that they really think it’s not necessary to contact a living breathing person.
I was given excuses like how busy they are, they don’t have the time, kids can leave school any time they like through the emergency doors and so on. Our local primary school manages to notify parents of important things and they have far fewer admin staff than the secondary, so I’m not buying that kind of excuse. This was school hours and part of their duty of care as far as I am concerned.
I’m aware that some kids are very grown up and responsible at around 11 – 12, but I wouldn’t say this group are. So, I guess my question really is, how long after a child is missing should schools contact parents, and how?
You should have had a phone call.
Shocking behaviour from the school.
Thanks, I think so too. Horrible not to know what’s going on.
I also have to disagree on one thing – the reason for bunking off DOES matter as it could be something serious, potentially even child abuse. But if it’s a case of they don’t like a teacher – tough. I hate to be that blunt about it but no-one ever likes all their teachers just as, in the working world, we don’t like everyone we work with. We learn how to handle that at school though.
(I’m not saying you don’t have a grievance here but there’s not a model that works – short of giving your kid a mobile phone so you can keep an eye on him but if he’s skipping class he’s hardly like to answer it and if it’s a GPS-enabled phone he could just turn it off so you can’t track him.)
The reason for bunking off is being dealt with and it’s an issue that has to be addressed for sure, but the policy of notification sits uneasily with me. A text might work for you, but you’re one person who probably has their phone on all the time. One of the parents didn’t get the text at all and had no idea her child was missing. School getting a reply from a text or talking to a person is the safest way forward.
I tweeted with you when this happened (@beachpebble) and although my children aren’t at secondary school, I found it disgusting and shocking that this happened – and is seemingly standard practice!
If a child is in school then as far as I’m concerned, the school is responsible for their welfare. If a child goes missing from school (especially if its out of character) this should be a concern, not a text message situation.
I find it hard to grasp that they can be so blasé about it and not see how serious this could have been.
The school should be more responsible over children being able to freely leave – if children can go missing without any staff noticing or bothering about it, then anyone with ill intentions could also enter the school.
Absolutely appalling way to handle missing children, and perhaps if schools stopped expecting and diverting so much responsibilities on 11 years olds, just maybe they would get to have the childhood they should, rather than growing up to quickly and doing adult things too soon. * Side track alert* Maybe this is the route of so many teenage pregnancies, it’s certainly not helping, is it!
I can’t help but think not being bothered/ responsible or notifying you in an appropriate manner if a child goes missing from school is down right stupid, if not criminal, child neglect, anyone? It’s a different situation if the child hasn’t made it to school at all that day.
Hi Emma, thanks. There seems to be lots of parents who don’t like it, yet could well be standard. If it’s so easy for kids to get out of school unnoticed then it must be easy for people to get in. I was told that they could have got out any of the fire exits, but the same argument could apply at primary schools and they are usually frantic if a child goes missing.
Shows how much difference a few months in age makes to the expectations adults put on kids.
I think this is awful. They weren’t notifying you because they cared about the child, it’s their absence figures they are worried about it seems. Surely they should be more responsible for children of this age?
School’s aren’t nurseries. Schools are there to provide an education, not babysit and look after the kids.
Having said that, there is still some duty of care there but short of tagging the kids how are they meant to keep tabs on them at all times. Assume a school has 600 pupils of which let’s say 5% of are more than five minutes late for a lesson. That’s 30 pupils. Imagine a) the disruption to teaching as teachers all try and contact the office staff (normally only one or two of them) and then get the same two staff to call 30 parents – perhaps 60 or more even if the primary contact can’t be reached.
Then imagine the chaos and hassle as the teachers – disrupted again – call back to the office to say Jimmy or Elaine has turned up, they were just in the bathroom or bumped into another teacher and asked them a question on something. Then the office staff – who have plenty to do in the first place – have to try and contact parents/carers again.
Rinse and repeat for potentially up to six times a day and you’ve got an unworkable model.
Realistically, our primary school can notify parents within 15 minutes of the school be to say a child is missing of hasn’t turned up for school without the school having been prior informed. The secondary has some more kids, and looks like about 3 x the admin staff. This is hours after the kids went missing. They weren’t just late. I can handle not notifying if a few minutes late, but these kids had been to registration and then disappeared from school.
I don’t expect them to babysit, but while kids are there, they are responsible for accepting them into their care and into their building. The buck stops with the responsible adults on premises. Add adoption into the mix, and if something goes wrong there are huge potential repercussions.
These were young 12 year olds who could get themselves into a mess of trouble and were missing for hours. I don’t find that acceptable at all.
You say parents might not see a text but equally they might not answer a phone call. In fact if I’m in a meeting I can sneak a look at a text message but I couldn’t answer the phone so texting works for me.
I’d also imagine that there may be an issue of cost..
Cost could well be an issue of time and expense. I’d be inclined to think that they just couldn’t be bothered. The reason given that they were not on top if it earlier was that these kids would never have been picked up as potential truanters so the fact they were missing from class wasn’t acted on earlier. I’d have thought that would have been MORE worrying as not a normal pattern of behaviour for them.
Some schools are an alien species to me.
That is unbelieavable.
I would expect a call immediately. A call, not a text. I don’t like using text myself for anything urgent, I always call, then use a text if no response.
Gobsmacked that a text is considered ok. I guess the school are only considering truanting as a reason for absence, but it could be all sorts of dire things that have happened.
I would have thought a call would be minimum. At primary school, the phone is ringing within 15 minutes if a child hasn’t shown up for school. I’m not comfortable with a text only. I often feel that schools just see kids as numbers to get through the day. I used to be HR so I have every idea of how it can be when people are difficult, but I’d never have ignored an issue, just in case.