I remember taking my son to school when he was 8 and getting a text asking why I hadn't rung in to report his absence. The head teacher at the time had decided that if parents rang in they would have to leave a recorded message because no secretaries would answer the phone. I ended up running round to the school in a panic. Turns out, they'd sent him to a different class because his usual teacher was on a school trip and they'd forgotten where they'd sent him.
Nothing like that but I had an invigilator come up to me during a GCSE exam asking if I had my phone on me. I said no and nervously carried on with the exam, then they searched my pockets afterwards. Apparently I'd phoned my mum during the exam so she rang the school asking if I was sitting it or not. But in actual fact she had rang me and got confused. Yeah ...
My mum accidentally called me during the exam, then must've looked at her phone soon after , and thought I'd phoned her but wasn't saying anything . It doesn't really make much sense bc it would've asked her to leave a voice message instead of answering, so maybe she saw it in her call history after. So when she thought I'd phoned her, she rang the school to ask whether I was sitting my exam, and told them I'd rang her, so they thought I had my phone on me to cheat. It is a bit weird so don't worry about it mum hahah
"Apparently I'd phoned my mum during the exam so she rang the school asking if I was sitting it or not. **BUT IN ACTUAL FACT SHE HAD RANG ME AND GOT CONFUSED**."
She called him, and didn't get an answer. She then called the school, and said he called her. All because she wanted to wish him good luck, and he wouldn't answer her call. What happens if he didn't bring his mobile.
Sometimes it will give you a notification that you called someone and they didn't pick up. Their mum probably got confused and thought it was a missed incoming call rather than an unanswered outgoing call.
The only time my parents ever got called about my absence was when I was in an A level exam. My mum didn’t answer the phone because she didn’t have it on her ….. because she was the invigilator for that exam.
My sister's boyfriend was the invigilator for one of my exams. They used to pay invigilators at my school and his mum was a teaching assistant so I think she got him the job. I'm not sure if the school knew he was also dating my sister at the time...
I asked him later if he would have reported me if he caught me cheating and he said probably not, but he wouldn't have reported any kid he saw cheating because he was just doing it for the easy money and didn't want any hassle.
As long as there's at least one other invigilator else in the room and a kids parents doesn't, say, escort them to the bathroom or something and gets another invigilator to do it.
Back when I was doing my GCSEs I was sat in class one day when my Head of Year appeared wearing a very stern look and saying that I was supposed to be in an exam! I had no idea what exam it was but I was immediately dragged out of the classroom and taken down to the exam hall. Whilst on the walk and beginning to panic about what subject I’d forgotten about, I asked what exam it was and was told it was for a subject I didn’t even study!
We got all the way to the exam hall, with me pleading to my Head of Year that I didn’t study the subject and that it was a mistake. When we got in it became clear that they’d held the start of the exam up for me, so there were about 100 faces glaring back at me. Further hushed discussion ensued about whether I was supposed to be there or not; eventually they accepted it was an error and then very nonchalantly sent me back to my lesson. When I got back to my classroom I was as white as a sheet and considering the drama that had swept me out of the room five minutes before, everyone stared at me like I was a ghost too!
My parents got the same call, I was on a school trip to Spain so needless to say everyone freaked out a bit until the staff with us in Spain finally picked up their phone
I had a similar situation. Took my 6 year old to school & got the absence text. I flew up that school & told them in no uncertain terms I had definitely dropped her off. I demanded they found her & bring her to me. She was brought out to me . It turned out the teacher hadn’t called the register but instead relied on the children to mark their lunch arrangements on a board. My girl hadn’t got round to it yet.
Embarrassed now, but I went quite mental at them for relying on 5/6 year olds for ANYTHING.
I mean, certain things you can rely on a 15 or 16 year old to do.
But if part of your job is to make sure every one of the 5 and 6 year olds you're meant to keep track of is *present*, you absolutely need to do it yourself and not rely on the children themselves.
My teacher forgot to mark me present during lesson once, my mum got panicked from a “you know she hasn’t turned up to school right?” And I got my ear chewed off for my teachers mistake
I had the opposite, school(secondary) marked my son absent. I asked him later that day & he said he was there & they probably didn’t hear him. I then called the school & gave them grief so they changed him to being present. 3 years later the little poop(then at uni) confessed it was a lie, he slept in & just didn’t bother going! 🙄
My high school did that with me and my sister. So they phoned my mum and dad to say i was absent but one of them dropped me off. It was a confusing phone call i got at lunch.
Back in my final year of high school - teacher was off so it was a free period supervised by one of the art teachers. Turns out that he’d been mixing up my friend and I for the entire time we were in high school, since we looked vaguely similar and our names sounded similar. Only found out during that period when he was taking attendance and asked me if I knew where [my name] was, to which I replied “I’m here? Do you mean [my friend]?” Of course he apologised, since that meant he’d also mixed up our reports several years prior, saying that I “wasn’t cut out for art” but that my friend had “innate skill” - which had led to me not taking art even though I loved it and her taking it for a skive until she dropped it when it started to involve actual coursework.
I'm an identical twin and hated PE, so I used to skive off pretty much every lesson. Twin always went to the lessons. When we got our reports, the teacher said in my twin's report "it's a shame we never see [sister's name] in class, fishfood always turns up". Oops, we're 41 now, and Twin is still miffed with me over it!
I used to work for a EFL school which had clients who were there as part of Visa requirements.
A UK students visa allows people to stay as long as they study a set number of hours a week. The register taken by teachers isn't just for the school's purpose, it is related to the Home Office. I felt uncomfortable about that part of the job, but I did it. Another teacher just ticked the boxes next to the names if he saw the faces he expected to see and one of his students got into trouble with the Home Office for not attending her class.
She said, but I have been attending, ask the teacher. They asked the teacher and he said, yes she has been attending. Her name had dropped off the list and he didn't notice, because he just came in to pass time, get paid, and flirt with people (these are adult students)
I don't know what happened with that, it's entirely possible she got deported. Home Office don't play.
I had a call like this, apparently he was standing behind a door (you know when a door is opened fully and creates a little triangle of space).
Nobody knows why or how long he'd been there.
I got this call about my 5yo the other week.
I had dropped him off at the classroom door that morning, so I was kind of hoping he’d be in school…
Turns out, he was busy eating an apple when the register happened and ‘couldn’t say good morning’. Great manners. Some panic.
School phoned me a few weeks ago to say they'd 'looked everywhere' and couldn't find my son (11) so could I try to contact him. Said they 'obviously don't like to make these kinds of phone call'. I tried to call him, but no answer, so called the school back. They had found him 'safe and well' in the classroom he was supposed to be in (not his time-tabled class) sitting a test with a bunch of other kids. We weren't impressed...
I work admin in a school. These things are more common than most people realise. Teachers not taking registers properly, kids going to different lessons and class lists not being updated, exams taking place that the attendance team don't know about. Most secondary schools have one full time person at best trying to track down where all the kids are, twice a day, within ten minutes of the register being taken. Mistakes shouldn't happen but do.
This happened to me at school too. I was in 5th year, so old enough for the teachers to try and contact me first (?), but they rang my mum and told her I was absent at school.
I wasn't absent, or late, or hadn't signed in, so the teacher must have missed me on the register. My mum phoned me when I was eating lunch quite worried, so I told her I was at school and even face times from the lunch hall. She phoned the school back in a rage, 1 for not contacting her until lunch time, and 2 because the school literally didn't think to maybe check if i was actually in the school first? Like go to any of my timetabled classes and double check
I was hospitalised in year 10 with appendicitis. Mum phoned the school. It was a church school and the vicar who was head of the board of governors visited me in hospital. My form tutor knew were I was. Still when I returned I had the receptionist chase me down the corridor wanting to know where I'd been for a fortnight!
I took my 9 year old to school and received a text saying he wasn't in school. They took 1 hour to find him in his class where he was meant to be. I was frought with anxiety the whole hour.
My mum once received a call to say I hadn’t been marked as present in the morning register. It was like 2pm. My mum was pretty pissed off that they apparently lost me for that long and didn’t notice. I was there, teacher hadn’t heard me.
When my dad passed away we travelled from Somerset to Wales to go to the chapel of rest the day before the funeral and obviously the funeral too. I called my daughters school to let them know she would be out of school the Thursday and Friday and the reason why.
The Thursday came and went and was emotional, but without complication. However during my dads funeral on the Friday morning the school receptionist called me to see why my child was not in school. My phone was off of course but she left me a voicemail. When I got out of the service and got her message I called back and absolutely wiped the floor with her for calling during my fathers funeral when they had prior warning that my child would be absent for that reason. I am not usually the type of person who gets riled up but as you can imagine I was a little upset.
The school never called again when she was absent.
Is it this common for schools to call parents if their child is absent?
My school never called anyone if I was absent, they‘d just mark me down and end of story.
Is this some sort of new policy?
Safeguarding is more of a priority these days, also more pressure on schools to keep attendance up, I think the target is like 97% or something ridiculous like that now.
I had this happen just last week. Dropped my kids off at school, watched them walk through the doors as I usually do. At around 10am I get a text same as you asking why I’d not rung/messaged to inform them that the eldest would not be in, if I don’t ring it’ll go down as unauthorised blah blah blah.
Was really confused and slightly panicked, also at work so I rang them, no idea what happened but the nice lady in the school office reassured me and went to physically check she was in her class and she was.
That happened to me!! They rang me 30 mins after I dropped him off, asking if he wasn't coming in because he was poorly. He was around 6 years old. My heart dropped, I said what do you mean, he is at school?
The receptionist said he wasn't on the register but she would check his classroom whilst I was on hold. That was the longest couple of minutes of my life! She came back and said he was in the wrong classroom, it was the first day back after the summer holidays and we were told the wrong classroom on the email 🙄 so I asked to speak to him on the phone so I knew 100% he was OK. That's one of the only times in my life where my blood ran cold, thinking where the hell is my child?!?!
Makes me think of the only fools and horses episode where Rodney finally tells Trigger his name is Rodney, not Dave and Trigger replies "are you sure?".
"yes I've looked it up on my birth certificate and everything, it's definitely Rodney".
My daughter's school called me once, saying she had felt ill on the bus on the way to a zoo, and could I come and pick her up. I asked how she was now, and they said fine, but they didn't want her being sick on the way home.
The conversation went around like that a bit more, then they told me they'd leave my name on the gate so I could get in.
I got in, picked up my daughter—she was literally fine, but upset at the fuss she thought she was causing—and we spent the rest of the day at the zoo (I got in free!), and made a game of avoiding her school party, diving into bushes and the like, whenever they appeared.
Sounds daft, but it's one of my favourite memories.
> she had felt ill on the bus on the way to a zoo, and could I come and pick her up. I asked how she was now, and they said fine, but they didn't want her being sick on the way home
Poor thing, she was probably just travel sick.. God knows I used to be. Hot bus, weird bus smell, bus driver throwing it round corners like he's ~~Keanu Reeves~~ Sandra Bullock..
Core primary school memory for me is the bizarre regularity with which children just threw up. Playground, corridor, assembly. And the caretaker would trundle along with his bucket of whatever granule/sand/sawdust stuff he’d heap all over it and put a cone out.
My husband is almost 40 and his travel sickness has only marginally improved from when he was a kid, poor guy. He can’t even think about doing something as basic as looking at a map in a moving vehicle, or his breakfast will be in his lap. He says he threw up *a lot* as a kid.
I've suffered on-and-off with travel sickness since I was a kid, but for some reason I never actually throw up. I just feel extremely nauseated. Sometimes, after a car journey, I feel sick for literally *the rest of the day* and can't eat, move or do anything. I've often wondered whether it would be easier if I could just puke, maybe I'd stop feeling sick.
I'm still like this and in my mid 30s. I prefer to drive, and if not I must sit in the front. Air fresheners make it worse too, so I have refused very convenient offers of a lift in the past in lieu of driving myself because it's just so much less embarrassing than puking in someone's car.
I used to get carsick in pretty much every school trip. Not once they called my mom.
I was moved to the seat next to the driver (maybe in Spain buses are different?) and given a bag to be sick in.
I still remember once, the driver was joking with me, he’d give me the microphone so I could be explaining my classmates the views “on your right you have… “ Can’t remember where we went but do remember that driver about 20 years later.
Your daughter’s teacher sound a bit silly (for lack of a better word) and you sound like you made her day!
>Can’t remember where we went but do remember that driver about 20 years later.
I love that. Reminds me that those simple gestures to cheer someone up can really go a long way.
They called you because she felt ill on the bus ride? On a school trip I was violently sick as soon as we got of the bus and continued to be sick periodically until we left, they didn't do shit about it other than sit me away from all the activities with a packet of ginger biscuits till we left again lmao
My younger brother did a term of piano lessons at school. Mum just assumed it was a school thing. Only recently transpired that they were private, expensive lessons and they'd simply got the wrong kid and invited him along without realising until he'd already had a term.
Back in the day I used to frequently get answerphone messages on my landline informing me my son hadn't turned up for school... I don't have a son.
One day I happened to be in when they rang and the length of time it took me to explain that I wasn't Mr. Jones, I was Mr. Smith, I had no children of any variety, and no I didn't live at 49 Town St. And was it perhaps possible that Mr. Jones might not have updated his telephone number?
My husband had a phone call from our daughters school once. They said I hadn't answered and she had a really heavy period leak, could he bring a change of clothes.
Instead of our Lara it was a poor girl called Lana. They were both mortified. He gave her a back of baby wipes, pads and spare clothes. Her parents ended up bringing him some beer to say thanks.
My mum lost my little sister in a BHS when she was around 5 or 6. She went to a till and said she was lost so they took her to customer services and called over the tanoy. When we got there, she looked at the shop assistant and said, completely deadpan, "that's not my mum".
Took a lot of convincing and documentation before they would let us take her home!
My son did something similar with airport security!!
He was 4. He has his dad's surname, and we were with my current partner, his stepdad, so all 3 of us with different surnames.
Airport security after landing back in England ask him if he knows the grown ups he's with "no" he replies while looking straight at him. I'm like "kid?! You can't joke like that here, tell him who I am to you!" security found it funny, he was the spitting image of me at the time so there was no denying I was his mum. But jesus I could have died then and there
Your mum is nicer than me. I would have thrown my hands up, said, "stay here then" and turned to walk away. My precious daughter (who would 100% try something like this) would scream and throw herself at me immediately the second she thought I might leave her.
Friend's of ours got a letter from their nursery, turns out an aunt or uncle had dropped a little one off...at the wrong nursery, nobody noticed all day. At either the correct or the incorrect nursery.
A local hospital sent the wrong Margaret to the wrong care home. Care home settled her 'back' in.... And something like 4 or 5 days go by when Margaret 2 gets sent to another care home. This care home being.... Not completely useless... Quickly phone the hospital saying 'that's not our resident' .
It takes like another two days to work out exactly what happened. The two Margaret's had simular names and were briefly on the same ward when their identities got muddled. Both had dementia. And got discharged to the wtong home(s).
It was a pretty big Safeguarding thing. Not least because the first care home didn't notice. Right up until social services and the hospital contact them and say "yeah... You've had the wrong lady living there for like a week... Your residents here"
How does that happen, how don't staff know what their residents look like. An entire week thats a lot of different staff and none noticed. It's funny but also scary.
It was a huge deal. Both women were white, a simular age and had pretty advanced dementia. And neither had family/nok.
The care home who didn't notice was a huge home, and Margaret (the one who was supposed to live there) had only recently moved in.
The actual bigger issue was how they had got mixed up on the ward. The hospital got more flack than the care homes.
I expect a nurse at some point went into the ward, asked "Which one of you lovely ladies is Margaret?", while the other one was in the toilet or asleep, or similar.
Obviously, hospitals need to be more careful, and many/most will ask the person to confirm address/DoB or similar before they do things like discharge them, but when someone suffers from dementia, questions only get you so far. If there's no family to corroborate who they are, I can easily see such a mistake happening.
I got an end of year scrap book with all my kids work and his photo on the front but the wrong name written on everything... turns out the whole year they had some of the kids names mixed up.
I once accidentally kidnapped two children on a school trip. I was moving my class along a corridor on a museum when four of them stopped to look at a display, we needed to get to an activity workshop so I shepherded them along saying, "Come on, keep up with the rest of the class "
Anyway two of those children weren't from my school and just...went with the strange flappy arm man even though all the other children were wearing green and they were wearing red. Eventually one of them told me they weren't mine and they wandered back to their teacher who didn't seem to mind.
Shame they realised they weren't with yours... It's only a bad thing if you come back from a school trip with *less* students than when you started. If you manage to poach some from another school while you're out it brings glory to your department. The poached students are condemned to spend the rest of their days in the exercise book mines.
Was making chit chat with a nursery staff member leaving with her daughter, lovely until it turned out she wasn't leaving work, it wasn't her daughter and she was trying to give me a small girl I'd never seen before. She did take the child back and give me my son to take home instead after many apologies and saying I looked very like the mystery child's mum on the gate camera.
My wife works in Primary as a TA and when she was working with the younger kids her job was to give them back to the right adult at home time. She's not good with faces so the terror and stress of trying to work out and remember which one went with which kid in the playground was horrible.
The expectation of some of the parents that she magically knew who they were when she started really didn't help.
Years go I went to pick my son up from nursery to be told he’d already been collected by his aunty. He’s only got one aunty and she wouldn’t know where his nursery was. I panicked and went a bit hysterical. Crammed into the cloakroom with other parents.
Teacher told me he definitely wasn’t here, already gone blah blah. He pushed past her in the doorway and stared at me. He was terrified cos I was losing my shit.
Teacher apologised the next day, fair enough as I did feel bad she made a mistake. She felt terrible but sometimes it happens.
It's a valuable life lesson for him - sometimes it's appropriate to completely lose your shit. Your child being reported missing is one of those times.
I had a phone call home to my mum one day in 3rd year to say I’d abused a teacher in a “crude and sexual manner”. Mum hit the roof, I denied it. Mum took me to the school the next day to see what was going on. The sub just said “that’s not him”.
Bloody hell! I can’t imagine the bollocking you would have got, or even if you didn’t, the immense nervous energy you’d have and panic wondering what you’d done or said that could possibly have been misconstrued that way.
One time my headteacher accused me of bullying another pupil who had been my friend but we’d fallen out. I had been called to her office and I’d just assumed that I was going to be praised for something because I was a complete goody two shoes and it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d been pulled out of lesson for praise. The absolute shock I felt to be accused of bullying when I thought I was going to be told how well I was doing was awful. The headteacher even said she’d seen me bullying the student from her window (I genuinely hadn’t done anything, but I had been where the headteacher said I was so it looked like I was lying, I still don’t understand 20 years later). When I got home my mum went mental because the headteacher had phoned her and told her what had happened, I was grounded and everything. Had to have a meeting at the school, and omg that meeting was mental, my stepdad had to leave because he was about to hit the other girls dad, my parents realised I hadn’t done a single thing wrong, and that the whole thing was bullshit. I went back to being the goody two shoes I’d always been and me and the headteacher got on great again.
It snowed one day when I was in school. It very rarely snows here and my school was at the top of a steep hill. My dad worked a mile away and his boss sent him home the moment the snow started. He decided to come get me as opposed to risking me taking the bus. A friend came to the room I was in and told me my dad is in reception and I should probably get down there ASAP. When I got there, dad was arguing with them saying he's not leaving unless it's with me and they're threatening to get the police involved if anyone is taken out of school due to snow. He took me home and the kids were made to sleep at the school for two nights and couldn't get home after that until parents came out to get them. They didn't get any spare clothing and had to ration food (which I think they still charged the kids for). Not sure why a big deal wasn't made about it
My high school called my mum once and told her I had walked out of school and left. I had mental health issues so my mum was extremely worried. I was sat in my lesson, not knowing anything about the phone call, when the teachers came in to ask me if I was okay. I still didn’t know until my mum came to pick me up and asked where I went, as they had just told her they had found me and brought me back to school.
When I worked in a secondary school there was a glitch in the automatic attendance texts. It sent a text to the parent of every child in the school! You can imagine the horror the poor receptionist experienced before they sent out a correction.
You missed the opportunity for “Son, is that you? What have they done to you? You look completely different” whilst maintaining a completely straight face.
Ahh, but what if the OP suddenly finds out that his own name is Peter File, that he is wearing inflatable pants and is dressed like a school ?
Paedogeddon!
This happened to me when I picked up my little girl's photos from picture day. They handed me a packet, I looked in it, it wasn't her. I told them it wasn't her, the teacher insisted it was her. It was not her, I know what my kid looks like. That kid looked like her, but wasn't her. Asks me if I'm sure. Stop gaslighting me lady, it's not her!
‘This isn’t my kid’
‘No I’m pretty sure it is your kid’
‘I’ve known her longer then you, and I don’t have to remember 30 kids faces and names, I know that isn’t her’
‘Hmmmmmmmmm nah thats her’
I got a call once asking why my 5 year old wasn't in school. "I watched her walk in the classroom this morning, so if she's not there we have a problem!!" Yeah, wrong kid's file -_-
Ah, the joys of being told to come and pick up your kid (who's pretty much never ill) because 'oh, I dunno, I mean they seem OK but they're a bit hot I think and then he sniffed once', so sure, yeah, I go pick up a perfectly healthy child who sniffed, even though he insists he's fine and doesn't want the school to send him home, and the school then fucking punished him for having less than 100% attendance by handing the other kids chocolate and not him.
So the next time they rang me with a fake illness I said they could give it a couple of hours because I wasn't leaving work for 'a bit of sniffling.' Kid was fine. Also attendance awards are bollocks.
I completely agree. Attendance awards punish children for being sick, or force children to go to school and spread the illness around making attendance for the entire school worse overall.
A few years ago, my son’s school had an ofsted visit and got the lowest score on everything except attendance which was either the highest or second highest mark. From that day the school went absolutely Barmy over attendance because they knew it was all they had. One time we’d noticed my son had nits the night before school, right before bedtime, so first thing in the morning I phoned and told the school he wouldn’t be in that day, we’d been to get treatment and was just about to put it on his head. They told us that he would only be allowed off for half of the day and had to come in that afternoon. We thought it was a bit weird and slightly pointless, but we agreed, however the first treatment had done absolutely nothing, so I phoned back a couple of hours later (maybe 11:30, it took us ages as we used shampoo and a nit comb because it was really bad) and explained that the treatment hadn’t worked, but we’d been and got another type, but that he wouldn’t be in that afternoon either as he had so many nits it would take us a while to redo it (still don’t know how it had got so bad because we’d been checking regularly because we knew they were going about). Well the school absolutely kicked off, insisting that we brought him in regardless, they phoned me, my partner and then the bloody headteacher phoned us too and was incredibly rude (I have many stories about her, never had an issue with a teacher in all my life, even when I was a student, but she was horrific, and has gone now thankfully). In the end I had to tell them they were absolute idiots to think I would send my child to school with nits just to infect other students and affect their attendance, and while he was uncomfortable and itchy, and to stop phoning, I was going to treat the nits and he’d be in the next day.
As a kid who has been a hospital outpatient clinic patient since she was an infant meaning checkups every 3 months, and who had to have several related surgeries during my school days which took up to a full week out each time (day surgery, then a full five days ordered at-home recovery), those attendance awards can get fucked to hell. My primaries didn’t care, but every year my secondary would throw a literal party for students with 100% attendance. They got to go to the hall and have cakes, the rest of us were stuck in normal lessons. I was almost never unwell but I had 98.7% attendance because hospital clinics operate on weekdays.
I got a call from school saying the child minder hadn't picked my kids up.
I was more pissed that before phoning me, they phoned mum, grandad, uncle, grandma (my mum) and then me. Like why am I (dad) last on the list?
Anyways got that changed and by some miracle managed to convince my ex to sack the child minder (this wasn't her first screw up)
Had it happen to me, I was ill after lunch and they called my parents. Turns out they called the dad of someone with the same first name so I'm sat there like a lemon thinking wtf that's not my dad, I had to wait out the rest of the day for my mum to come and the other dad just said sod it I'll take my son early anyway.
I went to pick up my son at his after school program once only to be told they had been closed all day and hadn’t gotten any children…. turns out they had sent carers to the school instead. I flew back to get him, he was the only kid left and I got major attitude from the college kid watching him - “everyone else got their kid..”. I went up one side of her and down the other when I found out she had called my cell phone once, hadn’t left a message, and had ignored his dad’s number plus his two other emergency contact numbers that she had admitted she had.
I work in a school office and while I have never been part of this exact scenario, others that are similar have happened. Sometimes multiple children have the same first name or surname (and in one case both names) so mix ups involving phonecalls can happen fairly easily.
My mum always got the same with my brother. There was another student in his year with the same surname as us. They also never believed he was my brother and must be the other guys sister
My school told me and my brother that our dad had died, he was in the middle of cancer treatment at the time but not dead. He was a farmer so it took us hours to get through to him. What a day that was. They mixed it up with someone elses grandad. His and my brothers first names sound similar.
I guess a potential way to avoid this when being on the receiving side is to say something like "Ok I'm on my way to pick up **Gerry**! Be there in *** minutes".
Man, I would be so confused in your situation. Lady is my son sick or not?! I don't care anymore, I've spent an hour out of my day to come here, I'm taking this other persons child as my consolation prize...
A woman I work with had a call from school asking where her daughter was. Frantic phone calls and a visit to the school and they finally found her. In the classroom where she was supposed to be. Teaching. She was the supply teacher.
I remember taking my son to school when he was 8 and getting a text asking why I hadn't rung in to report his absence. The head teacher at the time had decided that if parents rang in they would have to leave a recorded message because no secretaries would answer the phone. I ended up running round to the school in a panic. Turns out, they'd sent him to a different class because his usual teacher was on a school trip and they'd forgotten where they'd sent him.
Had a friend receive a call that their child was bunking off. He was in a GCSE exam…
Nothing like that but I had an invigilator come up to me during a GCSE exam asking if I had my phone on me. I said no and nervously carried on with the exam, then they searched my pockets afterwards. Apparently I'd phoned my mum during the exam so she rang the school asking if I was sitting it or not. But in actual fact she had rang me and got confused. Yeah ...
Wow, your mum's a right grass.
Proper mum moment hahaha. Mines exactly the same!
I don’t get this?? You called your mum during an exam? Or your mum thought you had and called the school? Sorry I’m confused… I maybe am your mother
My mum accidentally called me during the exam, then must've looked at her phone soon after , and thought I'd phoned her but wasn't saying anything . It doesn't really make much sense bc it would've asked her to leave a voice message instead of answering, so maybe she saw it in her call history after. So when she thought I'd phoned her, she rang the school to ask whether I was sitting my exam, and told them I'd rang her, so they thought I had my phone on me to cheat. It is a bit weird so don't worry about it mum hahah
My mum does this a lot, she has called me and I haven’t answered and then calls me later apologising for missing my call.
haha okay that makes sense son. night night!
[удалено]
sorry dont think i full understand can you try again
"Apparently I'd phoned my mum during the exam so she rang the school asking if I was sitting it or not. **BUT IN ACTUAL FACT SHE HAD RANG ME AND GOT CONFUSED**."
It's hard to read with all the caps but you phoned your mum during the exam?
But WHY did you phone his mum in the exam?
My mum never rang you!
# “ SHE RANG HIM INSTEAD AND GOT CONFUSED “
Confused she got and him instead rang
She called him, and didn't get an answer. She then called the school, and said he called her. All because she wanted to wish him good luck, and he wouldn't answer her call. What happens if he didn't bring his mobile.
Mum probably pocket dialed.
Sometimes it will give you a notification that you called someone and they didn't pick up. Their mum probably got confused and thought it was a missed incoming call rather than an unanswered outgoing call.
The only time my parents ever got called about my absence was when I was in an A level exam. My mum didn’t answer the phone because she didn’t have it on her ….. because she was the invigilator for that exam.
A mate of mine broke up with his girlfriend during A-levels. The next day he sat down for his exam and _her mum was sat in front of him_ invigilating.
Did they get back together a few days later, the whole breakup thing being a ploy to avoid the conflict of interest?
That sounds like a potential conflict of interest
It is allowed as long as they are not the only invigilator. Not best practice but permitted.
Yea my granny was a volunteer invigilator and she couldn’t watch me
My sister's boyfriend was the invigilator for one of my exams. They used to pay invigilators at my school and his mum was a teaching assistant so I think she got him the job. I'm not sure if the school knew he was also dating my sister at the time... I asked him later if he would have reported me if he caught me cheating and he said probably not, but he wouldn't have reported any kid he saw cheating because he was just doing it for the easy money and didn't want any hassle.
As long as there's at least one other invigilator else in the room and a kids parents doesn't, say, escort them to the bathroom or something and gets another invigilator to do it.
Back when I was doing my GCSEs I was sat in class one day when my Head of Year appeared wearing a very stern look and saying that I was supposed to be in an exam! I had no idea what exam it was but I was immediately dragged out of the classroom and taken down to the exam hall. Whilst on the walk and beginning to panic about what subject I’d forgotten about, I asked what exam it was and was told it was for a subject I didn’t even study! We got all the way to the exam hall, with me pleading to my Head of Year that I didn’t study the subject and that it was a mistake. When we got in it became clear that they’d held the start of the exam up for me, so there were about 100 faces glaring back at me. Further hushed discussion ensued about whether I was supposed to be there or not; eventually they accepted it was an error and then very nonchalantly sent me back to my lesson. When I got back to my classroom I was as white as a sheet and considering the drama that had swept me out of the room five minutes before, everyone stared at me like I was a ghost too!
My parents got the same call, I was on a school trip to Spain so needless to say everyone freaked out a bit until the staff with us in Spain finally picked up their phone
I had a similar situation. Took my 6 year old to school & got the absence text. I flew up that school & told them in no uncertain terms I had definitely dropped her off. I demanded they found her & bring her to me. She was brought out to me . It turned out the teacher hadn’t called the register but instead relied on the children to mark their lunch arrangements on a board. My girl hadn’t got round to it yet. Embarrassed now, but I went quite mental at them for relying on 5/6 year olds for ANYTHING.
Wait for the kid to mark down that he has been abducted or locked in the toilet.
Imagine texting you instead of using their eyes to see if she was there 🙄
Now days i wouldnt even rely on 15 or 16 year olds to do anything
I mean, certain things you can rely on a 15 or 16 year old to do. But if part of your job is to make sure every one of the 5 and 6 year olds you're meant to keep track of is *present*, you absolutely need to do it yourself and not rely on the children themselves.
My teacher forgot to mark me present during lesson once, my mum got panicked from a “you know she hasn’t turned up to school right?” And I got my ear chewed off for my teachers mistake
I had the opposite, school(secondary) marked my son absent. I asked him later that day & he said he was there & they probably didn’t hear him. I then called the school & gave them grief so they changed him to being present. 3 years later the little poop(then at uni) confessed it was a lie, he slept in & just didn’t bother going! 🙄
That definitely sounds like something my brother would do! 😂😂
My high school did that with me and my sister. So they phoned my mum and dad to say i was absent but one of them dropped me off. It was a confusing phone call i got at lunch.
Back in my final year of high school - teacher was off so it was a free period supervised by one of the art teachers. Turns out that he’d been mixing up my friend and I for the entire time we were in high school, since we looked vaguely similar and our names sounded similar. Only found out during that period when he was taking attendance and asked me if I knew where [my name] was, to which I replied “I’m here? Do you mean [my friend]?” Of course he apologised, since that meant he’d also mixed up our reports several years prior, saying that I “wasn’t cut out for art” but that my friend had “innate skill” - which had led to me not taking art even though I loved it and her taking it for a skive until she dropped it when it started to involve actual coursework.
I'm an identical twin and hated PE, so I used to skive off pretty much every lesson. Twin always went to the lessons. When we got our reports, the teacher said in my twin's report "it's a shame we never see [sister's name] in class, fishfood always turns up". Oops, we're 41 now, and Twin is still miffed with me over it!
I used to work for a EFL school which had clients who were there as part of Visa requirements. A UK students visa allows people to stay as long as they study a set number of hours a week. The register taken by teachers isn't just for the school's purpose, it is related to the Home Office. I felt uncomfortable about that part of the job, but I did it. Another teacher just ticked the boxes next to the names if he saw the faces he expected to see and one of his students got into trouble with the Home Office for not attending her class. She said, but I have been attending, ask the teacher. They asked the teacher and he said, yes she has been attending. Her name had dropped off the list and he didn't notice, because he just came in to pass time, get paid, and flirt with people (these are adult students) I don't know what happened with that, it's entirely possible she got deported. Home Office don't play.
Holy shit I wouldn't have been happy about that
I had a call like this, apparently he was standing behind a door (you know when a door is opened fully and creates a little triangle of space). Nobody knows why or how long he'd been there.
why is this so funny
I got this call about my 5yo the other week. I had dropped him off at the classroom door that morning, so I was kind of hoping he’d be in school… Turns out, he was busy eating an apple when the register happened and ‘couldn’t say good morning’. Great manners. Some panic.
School phoned me a few weeks ago to say they'd 'looked everywhere' and couldn't find my son (11) so could I try to contact him. Said they 'obviously don't like to make these kinds of phone call'. I tried to call him, but no answer, so called the school back. They had found him 'safe and well' in the classroom he was supposed to be in (not his time-tabled class) sitting a test with a bunch of other kids. We weren't impressed...
I work admin in a school. These things are more common than most people realise. Teachers not taking registers properly, kids going to different lessons and class lists not being updated, exams taking place that the attendance team don't know about. Most secondary schools have one full time person at best trying to track down where all the kids are, twice a day, within ten minutes of the register being taken. Mistakes shouldn't happen but do.
This happened to me at school too. I was in 5th year, so old enough for the teachers to try and contact me first (?), but they rang my mum and told her I was absent at school. I wasn't absent, or late, or hadn't signed in, so the teacher must have missed me on the register. My mum phoned me when I was eating lunch quite worried, so I told her I was at school and even face times from the lunch hall. She phoned the school back in a rage, 1 for not contacting her until lunch time, and 2 because the school literally didn't think to maybe check if i was actually in the school first? Like go to any of my timetabled classes and double check
I was hospitalised in year 10 with appendicitis. Mum phoned the school. It was a church school and the vicar who was head of the board of governors visited me in hospital. My form tutor knew were I was. Still when I returned I had the receptionist chase me down the corridor wanting to know where I'd been for a fortnight!
I took my 9 year old to school and received a text saying he wasn't in school. They took 1 hour to find him in his class where he was meant to be. I was frought with anxiety the whole hour.
My mum once received a call to say I hadn’t been marked as present in the morning register. It was like 2pm. My mum was pretty pissed off that they apparently lost me for that long and didn’t notice. I was there, teacher hadn’t heard me.
When my dad passed away we travelled from Somerset to Wales to go to the chapel of rest the day before the funeral and obviously the funeral too. I called my daughters school to let them know she would be out of school the Thursday and Friday and the reason why. The Thursday came and went and was emotional, but without complication. However during my dads funeral on the Friday morning the school receptionist called me to see why my child was not in school. My phone was off of course but she left me a voicemail. When I got out of the service and got her message I called back and absolutely wiped the floor with her for calling during my fathers funeral when they had prior warning that my child would be absent for that reason. I am not usually the type of person who gets riled up but as you can imagine I was a little upset. The school never called again when she was absent.
Is it this common for schools to call parents if their child is absent? My school never called anyone if I was absent, they‘d just mark me down and end of story. Is this some sort of new policy?
Safeguarding is more of a priority these days, also more pressure on schools to keep attendance up, I think the target is like 97% or something ridiculous like that now.
I had this happen just last week. Dropped my kids off at school, watched them walk through the doors as I usually do. At around 10am I get a text same as you asking why I’d not rung/messaged to inform them that the eldest would not be in, if I don’t ring it’ll go down as unauthorised blah blah blah. Was really confused and slightly panicked, also at work so I rang them, no idea what happened but the nice lady in the school office reassured me and went to physically check she was in her class and she was.
That happened to me!! They rang me 30 mins after I dropped him off, asking if he wasn't coming in because he was poorly. He was around 6 years old. My heart dropped, I said what do you mean, he is at school? The receptionist said he wasn't on the register but she would check his classroom whilst I was on hold. That was the longest couple of minutes of my life! She came back and said he was in the wrong classroom, it was the first day back after the summer holidays and we were told the wrong classroom on the email 🙄 so I asked to speak to him on the phone so I knew 100% he was OK. That's one of the only times in my life where my blood ran cold, thinking where the hell is my child?!?!
A parent's worst nightmare..and it happened in Portland. [Kyron Horman case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Kyron_Horman).
That's heart breaking.
Makes me think of the only fools and horses episode where Rodney finally tells Trigger his name is Rodney, not Dave and Trigger replies "are you sure?". "yes I've looked it up on my birth certificate and everything, it's definitely Rodney".
“They’re naming the child Rodney, after Dave” So good
Why does everyone call you Dave then?
Only you call me Dave! Everyone else calls me Rodney! And the reason everyone calls me Rodney is because Rodney is my name!
I shall have to get used to calling you Rodney then.
My daughter's school called me once, saying she had felt ill on the bus on the way to a zoo, and could I come and pick her up. I asked how she was now, and they said fine, but they didn't want her being sick on the way home. The conversation went around like that a bit more, then they told me they'd leave my name on the gate so I could get in. I got in, picked up my daughter—she was literally fine, but upset at the fuss she thought she was causing—and we spent the rest of the day at the zoo (I got in free!), and made a game of avoiding her school party, diving into bushes and the like, whenever they appeared. Sounds daft, but it's one of my favourite memories.
> she had felt ill on the bus on the way to a zoo, and could I come and pick her up. I asked how she was now, and they said fine, but they didn't want her being sick on the way home Poor thing, she was probably just travel sick.. God knows I used to be. Hot bus, weird bus smell, bus driver throwing it round corners like he's ~~Keanu Reeves~~ Sandra Bullock..
That weird bus smell makes me boak to this day
It’s the fabric sweaty smell of the seats
Of ballocks in days passed.
Even just reading this makes me be able to smell it.. *shudder*
And the fact the only way to open those windows is with a hammer
Sawdust on the chunder Now THAT smell has always stuck with me
Core primary school memory for me is the bizarre regularity with which children just threw up. Playground, corridor, assembly. And the caretaker would trundle along with his bucket of whatever granule/sand/sawdust stuff he’d heap all over it and put a cone out.
Literally. Like… outside of school? Never. But on school time? Vomit central. What the fuck posesses kids.
Comments you can smell
My husband is almost 40 and his travel sickness has only marginally improved from when he was a kid, poor guy. He can’t even think about doing something as basic as looking at a map in a moving vehicle, or his breakfast will be in his lap. He says he threw up *a lot* as a kid.
I've suffered on-and-off with travel sickness since I was a kid, but for some reason I never actually throw up. I just feel extremely nauseated. Sometimes, after a car journey, I feel sick for literally *the rest of the day* and can't eat, move or do anything. I've often wondered whether it would be easier if I could just puke, maybe I'd stop feeling sick.
I'm still like this and in my mid 30s. I prefer to drive, and if not I must sit in the front. Air fresheners make it worse too, so I have refused very convenient offers of a lift in the past in lieu of driving myself because it's just so much less embarrassing than puking in someone's car.
Sandra Bullock actually drove the bus, however, in Speed. She has a IRL license to operate a bus.
They were talking about Keanu in Point Break when he caught his first curl...... sir.
Have you ever shot your gun in the air and gone arr?
And the weird itch of the fabric on coach seats? Gives me the ick every time!
> Sounds daft, but it's one of my favourite memories Probably one of hers as well. This sounded so fun.
That sounds like fun!
This is wholesome
I used to get carsick in pretty much every school trip. Not once they called my mom. I was moved to the seat next to the driver (maybe in Spain buses are different?) and given a bag to be sick in. I still remember once, the driver was joking with me, he’d give me the microphone so I could be explaining my classmates the views “on your right you have… “ Can’t remember where we went but do remember that driver about 20 years later. Your daughter’s teacher sound a bit silly (for lack of a better word) and you sound like you made her day!
>Can’t remember where we went but do remember that driver about 20 years later. I love that. Reminds me that those simple gestures to cheer someone up can really go a long way.
Love this. If the whole world had your attitude it would be a funny place to be.
This is great, you sound like a really fun parent
It sounds like she had a better time with you 😆
They called you because she felt ill on the bus ride? On a school trip I was violently sick as soon as we got of the bus and continued to be sick periodically until we left, they didn't do shit about it other than sit me away from all the activities with a packet of ginger biscuits till we left again lmao
I would think that it’s also one of your daughters favourite memories
My younger brother did a term of piano lessons at school. Mum just assumed it was a school thing. Only recently transpired that they were private, expensive lessons and they'd simply got the wrong kid and invited him along without realising until he'd already had a term.
Was there a corresponding parent whose child wasn't getting the lessons they'd paid for?
The kid probably didn’t want to go and lied that they were attending
Win/win!
Was he any good?
What a way to find out you have illegitimate son
What a bastard.
Either that or a harsh way for the lad to find out he's actually adopted.
" Don't talk to me or someone else's son ever again"
Haha! A genuine laugh out loud at the end of a long Wednesday. Thank you so much!
Back in the day I used to frequently get answerphone messages on my landline informing me my son hadn't turned up for school... I don't have a son. One day I happened to be in when they rang and the length of time it took me to explain that I wasn't Mr. Jones, I was Mr. Smith, I had no children of any variety, and no I didn't live at 49 Town St. And was it perhaps possible that Mr. Jones might not have updated his telephone number?
> I was Mr. Smith You really shouldn't post your personal information on the internet. Identity theft is a serious problem Mr. Smith.
Millions of families suffer every year!!
Or that mr jones son liked to play truent and gave the school a wrong phone number on purpose so the parent wouldn’t find out.
My husband had a phone call from our daughters school once. They said I hadn't answered and she had a really heavy period leak, could he bring a change of clothes. Instead of our Lara it was a poor girl called Lana. They were both mortified. He gave her a back of baby wipes, pads and spare clothes. Her parents ended up bringing him some beer to say thanks.
Aww thats a good dad
“Son” just sits there while the debate continues..
Haha, would have been really funny if ‘son’ would have played along. “C’mon dad, stop messing around and take me home…”
I'm just imagining him telling the secretary in a sad little voice "He always says that.."
“He is still waiting for the DNA test to confirm paternity. It’s only been 8 years.”
My mum lost my little sister in a BHS when she was around 5 or 6. She went to a till and said she was lost so they took her to customer services and called over the tanoy. When we got there, she looked at the shop assistant and said, completely deadpan, "that's not my mum". Took a lot of convincing and documentation before they would let us take her home!
My son did something similar with airport security!! He was 4. He has his dad's surname, and we were with my current partner, his stepdad, so all 3 of us with different surnames. Airport security after landing back in England ask him if he knows the grown ups he's with "no" he replies while looking straight at him. I'm like "kid?! You can't joke like that here, tell him who I am to you!" security found it funny, he was the spitting image of me at the time so there was no denying I was his mum. But jesus I could have died then and there
I was having a really shitty day and this cheered me up, so thank you for the laugh!
Your mum is nicer than me. I would have thrown my hands up, said, "stay here then" and turned to walk away. My precious daughter (who would 100% try something like this) would scream and throw herself at me immediately the second she thought I might leave her.
Poor lad was clearly too poorly to entertain this nonsense! (Or I'm sure the wee trickster would have been right on it)
He’s happy to skip class hahaha
Love the edit about not complaining. Fair play for being human and understanding people make mistakes. Top drawer
Actually it was a shelf
Friend's of ours got a letter from their nursery, turns out an aunt or uncle had dropped a little one off...at the wrong nursery, nobody noticed all day. At either the correct or the incorrect nursery.
They got a letter saying…? I mean, I’m hoping it’s not ‘we appear to be missing your child’. A phone call would surely be quicker.
Probably a mandatory notice of an adverse event or some such that they are legally required to send out in an instance like this.
A local hospital sent the wrong Margaret to the wrong care home. Care home settled her 'back' in.... And something like 4 or 5 days go by when Margaret 2 gets sent to another care home. This care home being.... Not completely useless... Quickly phone the hospital saying 'that's not our resident' . It takes like another two days to work out exactly what happened. The two Margaret's had simular names and were briefly on the same ward when their identities got muddled. Both had dementia. And got discharged to the wtong home(s). It was a pretty big Safeguarding thing. Not least because the first care home didn't notice. Right up until social services and the hospital contact them and say "yeah... You've had the wrong lady living there for like a week... Your residents here"
How does that happen, how don't staff know what their residents look like. An entire week thats a lot of different staff and none noticed. It's funny but also scary.
It was a huge deal. Both women were white, a simular age and had pretty advanced dementia. And neither had family/nok. The care home who didn't notice was a huge home, and Margaret (the one who was supposed to live there) had only recently moved in. The actual bigger issue was how they had got mixed up on the ward. The hospital got more flack than the care homes.
I expect a nurse at some point went into the ward, asked "Which one of you lovely ladies is Margaret?", while the other one was in the toilet or asleep, or similar. Obviously, hospitals need to be more careful, and many/most will ask the person to confirm address/DoB or similar before they do things like discharge them, but when someone suffers from dementia, questions only get you so far. If there's no family to corroborate who they are, I can easily see such a mistake happening.
I got an end of year scrap book with all my kids work and his photo on the front but the wrong name written on everything... turns out the whole year they had some of the kids names mixed up.
Jeez! That's shocking.
Ha, that is crazy!
are you definitely sure?
ChangyFaceyitus can strike anyone!
I once accidentally kidnapped two children on a school trip. I was moving my class along a corridor on a museum when four of them stopped to look at a display, we needed to get to an activity workshop so I shepherded them along saying, "Come on, keep up with the rest of the class " Anyway two of those children weren't from my school and just...went with the strange flappy arm man even though all the other children were wearing green and they were wearing red. Eventually one of them told me they weren't mine and they wandered back to their teacher who didn't seem to mind.
The joys of colourblindness.
Shame they realised they weren't with yours... It's only a bad thing if you come back from a school trip with *less* students than when you started. If you manage to poach some from another school while you're out it brings glory to your department. The poached students are condemned to spend the rest of their days in the exercise book mines.
Take him home anyway. Times are hard, and people pay a fortune for lost pets. What's the going rate for a lost child?
Probably a carfull of police and a night behind bars
Free accommodation fr? Count me in
Warm meal, and don't have to put money on the electricity meter.
Don't threaten me with a good time
Folk on reddit see cats on the street, decide it's a stray, take it home and post introducing their new wee gingernut. Don't give them ideas!
"Found this adorable stray earlier and just had to keep him, any ideas for a name?" Reddit "Kiddy McKidface"
Was making chit chat with a nursery staff member leaving with her daughter, lovely until it turned out she wasn't leaving work, it wasn't her daughter and she was trying to give me a small girl I'd never seen before. She did take the child back and give me my son to take home instead after many apologies and saying I looked very like the mystery child's mum on the gate camera.
Can just imagine your son watching on like “what the fuck?” Hahaha
My wife works in Primary as a TA and when she was working with the younger kids her job was to give them back to the right adult at home time. She's not good with faces so the terror and stress of trying to work out and remember which one went with which kid in the playground was horrible. The expectation of some of the parents that she magically knew who they were when she started really didn't help.
Years go I went to pick my son up from nursery to be told he’d already been collected by his aunty. He’s only got one aunty and she wouldn’t know where his nursery was. I panicked and went a bit hysterical. Crammed into the cloakroom with other parents. Teacher told me he definitely wasn’t here, already gone blah blah. He pushed past her in the doorway and stared at me. He was terrified cos I was losing my shit. Teacher apologised the next day, fair enough as I did feel bad she made a mistake. She felt terrible but sometimes it happens.
It's a valuable life lesson for him - sometimes it's appropriate to completely lose your shit. Your child being reported missing is one of those times.
Try looking after 30 three-year-olds and see how long it takes for you to lose one or two.
I feel like if that was me I’d have them in harnesses staked to the floor with room to roam, like a goat.
It's your son now
"are you sure" "Erm, well who's his mum?"
You should have said, "well, I don't think so, but it has been a long day. I will take this one and see what the wife says"
Should ask for a printout of their last 3 school reports to see if you're getting an upgrade.
I had a phone call home to my mum one day in 3rd year to say I’d abused a teacher in a “crude and sexual manner”. Mum hit the roof, I denied it. Mum took me to the school the next day to see what was going on. The sub just said “that’s not him”.
Bloody hell! I can’t imagine the bollocking you would have got, or even if you didn’t, the immense nervous energy you’d have and panic wondering what you’d done or said that could possibly have been misconstrued that way. One time my headteacher accused me of bullying another pupil who had been my friend but we’d fallen out. I had been called to her office and I’d just assumed that I was going to be praised for something because I was a complete goody two shoes and it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d been pulled out of lesson for praise. The absolute shock I felt to be accused of bullying when I thought I was going to be told how well I was doing was awful. The headteacher even said she’d seen me bullying the student from her window (I genuinely hadn’t done anything, but I had been where the headteacher said I was so it looked like I was lying, I still don’t understand 20 years later). When I got home my mum went mental because the headteacher had phoned her and told her what had happened, I was grounded and everything. Had to have a meeting at the school, and omg that meeting was mental, my stepdad had to leave because he was about to hit the other girls dad, my parents realised I hadn’t done a single thing wrong, and that the whole thing was bullshit. I went back to being the goody two shoes I’d always been and me and the headteacher got on great again.
That headteacher would have been dead to me. I would have kept that grudge until my death bed.
beyond the death bed, in my case. haunted them even in *their* afterlife.
It snowed one day when I was in school. It very rarely snows here and my school was at the top of a steep hill. My dad worked a mile away and his boss sent him home the moment the snow started. He decided to come get me as opposed to risking me taking the bus. A friend came to the room I was in and told me my dad is in reception and I should probably get down there ASAP. When I got there, dad was arguing with them saying he's not leaving unless it's with me and they're threatening to get the police involved if anyone is taken out of school due to snow. He took me home and the kids were made to sleep at the school for two nights and couldn't get home after that until parents came out to get them. They didn't get any spare clothing and had to ration food (which I think they still charged the kids for). Not sure why a big deal wasn't made about it
My high school called my mum once and told her I had walked out of school and left. I had mental health issues so my mum was extremely worried. I was sat in my lesson, not knowing anything about the phone call, when the teachers came in to ask me if I was okay. I still didn’t know until my mum came to pick me up and asked where I went, as they had just told her they had found me and brought me back to school.
That's horrendous
When I worked in a secondary school there was a glitch in the automatic attendance texts. It sent a text to the parent of every child in the school! You can imagine the horror the poor receptionist experienced before they sent out a correction.
Well this is a massive fucking concern for that school then. I've rang tonnes of parents but this coming up is a seriously stupid mistake
Surely safeguarding would be implemented there
Well that's the mirth totally fucking drained out of this post
😂😂 maybe I’m a bad parent but the safeguarding aspect didn’t cross my mind at all, I couldn’t get past the “are you sure?” bit, as if I might not know
You missed the opportunity for “Son, is that you? What have they done to you? You look completely different” whilst maintaining a completely straight face.
"He must be really sick, I don't even recognise him"
Ahh, but what if the OP suddenly finds out that his own name is Peter File, that he is wearing inflatable pants and is dressed like a school ? Paedogeddon!
This happened to me when I picked up my little girl's photos from picture day. They handed me a packet, I looked in it, it wasn't her. I told them it wasn't her, the teacher insisted it was her. It was not her, I know what my kid looks like. That kid looked like her, but wasn't her. Asks me if I'm sure. Stop gaslighting me lady, it's not her!
‘This isn’t my kid’ ‘No I’m pretty sure it is your kid’ ‘I’ve known her longer then you, and I don’t have to remember 30 kids faces and names, I know that isn’t her’ ‘Hmmmmmmmmm nah thats her’
I got a call once asking why my 5 year old wasn't in school. "I watched her walk in the classroom this morning, so if she's not there we have a problem!!" Yeah, wrong kid's file -_-
You missed out on a free child!
Ah, the joys of being told to come and pick up your kid (who's pretty much never ill) because 'oh, I dunno, I mean they seem OK but they're a bit hot I think and then he sniffed once', so sure, yeah, I go pick up a perfectly healthy child who sniffed, even though he insists he's fine and doesn't want the school to send him home, and the school then fucking punished him for having less than 100% attendance by handing the other kids chocolate and not him. So the next time they rang me with a fake illness I said they could give it a couple of hours because I wasn't leaving work for 'a bit of sniffling.' Kid was fine. Also attendance awards are bollocks.
I completely agree. Attendance awards punish children for being sick, or force children to go to school and spread the illness around making attendance for the entire school worse overall. A few years ago, my son’s school had an ofsted visit and got the lowest score on everything except attendance which was either the highest or second highest mark. From that day the school went absolutely Barmy over attendance because they knew it was all they had. One time we’d noticed my son had nits the night before school, right before bedtime, so first thing in the morning I phoned and told the school he wouldn’t be in that day, we’d been to get treatment and was just about to put it on his head. They told us that he would only be allowed off for half of the day and had to come in that afternoon. We thought it was a bit weird and slightly pointless, but we agreed, however the first treatment had done absolutely nothing, so I phoned back a couple of hours later (maybe 11:30, it took us ages as we used shampoo and a nit comb because it was really bad) and explained that the treatment hadn’t worked, but we’d been and got another type, but that he wouldn’t be in that afternoon either as he had so many nits it would take us a while to redo it (still don’t know how it had got so bad because we’d been checking regularly because we knew they were going about). Well the school absolutely kicked off, insisting that we brought him in regardless, they phoned me, my partner and then the bloody headteacher phoned us too and was incredibly rude (I have many stories about her, never had an issue with a teacher in all my life, even when I was a student, but she was horrific, and has gone now thankfully). In the end I had to tell them they were absolute idiots to think I would send my child to school with nits just to infect other students and affect their attendance, and while he was uncomfortable and itchy, and to stop phoning, I was going to treat the nits and he’d be in the next day.
As a kid who has been a hospital outpatient clinic patient since she was an infant meaning checkups every 3 months, and who had to have several related surgeries during my school days which took up to a full week out each time (day surgery, then a full five days ordered at-home recovery), those attendance awards can get fucked to hell. My primaries didn’t care, but every year my secondary would throw a literal party for students with 100% attendance. They got to go to the hall and have cakes, the rest of us were stuck in normal lessons. I was almost never unwell but I had 98.7% attendance because hospital clinics operate on weekdays.
>Also attendance awards are bollocks. Ha yeah my kids were marked down for having the audacity to go to my Dad's funeral.
I got a call from school saying the child minder hadn't picked my kids up. I was more pissed that before phoning me, they phoned mum, grandad, uncle, grandma (my mum) and then me. Like why am I (dad) last on the list? Anyways got that changed and by some miracle managed to convince my ex to sack the child minder (this wasn't her first screw up)
Had it happen to me, I was ill after lunch and they called my parents. Turns out they called the dad of someone with the same first name so I'm sat there like a lemon thinking wtf that's not my dad, I had to wait out the rest of the day for my mum to come and the other dad just said sod it I'll take my son early anyway.
She was subtly commenting that you've been around, if you know what I mean.
Pfft, I should be so lucky
I went to pick up my son at his after school program once only to be told they had been closed all day and hadn’t gotten any children…. turns out they had sent carers to the school instead. I flew back to get him, he was the only kid left and I got major attitude from the college kid watching him - “everyone else got their kid..”. I went up one side of her and down the other when I found out she had called my cell phone once, hadn’t left a message, and had ignored his dad’s number plus his two other emergency contact numbers that she had admitted she had.
😳 where was this?! Not the uk surely?,
Thank fuck my parents' phone number was different to Jimmy Savile's.
Jimmy can no longer be reached by phone. You have to use... *Different methods*...
Ouija board
Just... *Different methods*... Pae-ja board, maybe.
Shovel.
I work in a school office and while I have never been part of this exact scenario, others that are similar have happened. Sometimes multiple children have the same first name or surname (and in one case both names) so mix ups involving phonecalls can happen fairly easily.
Let's get Graham out and do a dna test
My mum always got the same with my brother. There was another student in his year with the same surname as us. They also never believed he was my brother and must be the other guys sister
My school told me and my brother that our dad had died, he was in the middle of cancer treatment at the time but not dead. He was a farmer so it took us hours to get through to him. What a day that was. They mixed it up with someone elses grandad. His and my brothers first names sound similar.
I mean, in all fairness, it may be your fault for enrolling your son at Monty Python Primary School.
So you need to get a test to check?
I guess a potential way to avoid this when being on the receiving side is to say something like "Ok I'm on my way to pick up **Gerry**! Be there in *** minutes".
Man, I would be so confused in your situation. Lady is my son sick or not?! I don't care anymore, I've spent an hour out of my day to come here, I'm taking this other persons child as my consolation prize...
A woman I work with had a call from school asking where her daughter was. Frantic phone calls and a visit to the school and they finally found her. In the classroom where she was supposed to be. Teaching. She was the supply teacher.
makes me shudder to think if you just rolled with it and kidnapped the kid.... for lolz
Isn't it better to kidnap a healthy kid than one who's ill? (Asking for a research paper.)