School Lost Property

emz118

What would you rather your sons teacher spent their day doing...
Teaching your child, marking his work, making assessments, planning next steps and generally working on their education OR searching for missing items and chasing children who don't put things in the correct place?

I teach y1/2 mixed and in my classroom I have labelled boxes with pictures to show children exactly what should be in them. Children also have drawers and pegs with their names on. (All of which were made and attached by me in my "holidays") I spend the first weeks of term constantly reminding children where things go, and having "quizzes" at fruit time to decide where to put things. I fail to see what more I can do.

As for rules about property, Dept of EDUCATION and OFSTED (E=EDUCATION) have many more important things to consider.

I have just reread this, and it may seem harsh, but as annoying as it is for parents to lose things, it is equally annoying for teachers and TAs to be expected to pick up after a whole class of children, what with the pressure that is put upon us by the government etc.

JodyBPM

Sorry, I had crossed posts with your earlier post re the snow boots being transferred by the school. This is a rather unusual situation, and not one I've ever come across before - usually the school will specifically say NOT to leave anything at school during the holidays. I don't really know what you can do in this situation though, but appreciate its not a case of your child leaving something laying around, although in future I'd recommend that you take all personal possessions home at the end of term, as most schools have a policy to simply throw left behind items out!

That said, 3/4 year olds certainly are responsible enough to be in charge of their own possessions. My children are not much older, (so my memory is not clouded!) and they definitely did at that age. Yes, a few things got "lost", but that was because they hadn't put them where they were supposed to. Mostly they turned up in lost property soon enough. I always considered the responsibility for their items to be their own (and mine to name them/check up that they had everything at hometime/track down things that have gone awol), right from nursery age, and I would never, ever consider it part of a teachers job description to chase up lost property, or the schools responsibility for it being "lost" in the first place.

julie03

if you have to keep a pair of wellies at school, why a £30 pair?

there are much cheaper options.

WestonDave

I'm going to swim against the tide here - if the school had safe keeping of the snow boots in respect of sessions there, and there was no opportunity to bring them home because they were required to remain in school for the reasons the OP states, then the school should be responsible for keeping them safe and ensuring they get transferred from nursery to school. As he/she says, everyone elses got shifted, but this nice pair somehow went missing.

That said there isn't really a higher power on this and you end up in the invidious situation many parents face from time to time - do you butt heads with the school your kid is being taught in, and thereby risk him being seen as the son of those troublemakers, or do you swallow it and move on, learning as you do that anything that goes into school (especially to be fair for very occasional use like snow boots) is cheap or very identifiable or sufficiently "damaged" as to make them unattractive.

Its also not fair to blame the kid - I still recall having to explain to my parents why I only had one shoe after a gym session. It turned out that the class muppet had thought it funny to throw it on the roof of a nearby classroom whilst faking off gym. Hardly something I was able to prevent as I was taking part in the lesson at the time.

My way of operating now is that the kids can have nice stuff but where I can help them keep an eye on it - stuff for school is either bog standard school stuff heavily labelled or stuff which does the job but isn't in a state to attract green eyed monsters.

julie03

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LannieDuck

I agree with Dave - in this specific case I think it is the school's responsibility.

The OP was asked to leave a pair of wellies/boots in the classroom and the school would transfer them to the next year's class. They failed to do this. Nothing to do with OP's son.

What OP can actually do about it is much harder. OP, have you had a calm word with your son's previous teacher? Maybe ask how they transferred the boots because you'd like to have a thorough search for them before you buy a replacement pair - you could walk the route and see if anything fell out of the box (although it's probably a bit late to do this now), or were they stored in a cupboard at some stage? Or, given it's a pair that's gone missing, perhaps they just got overlooked and are still in his old classroom?

Counting_Pennies_2

I guess schools do what they can with the resources they have available.

It is terribly frustrating when things go missing.

I find the key thing to do is ask to go into school on the day the item goes missing and search around the coat pegs and class room as that is when you have greatest chance of getting the item back. Also ensure gloves are attached to the coat through elastic, and just ensure they are cheap things going in.

The school are welcoming of a parent going to the office and asking permission to sign in and wear a tag to say you are a visitor when all the kids have gone home. Often the teacher is still in the classroom.

Another thing is the school have invested in a water tight lost property box. The type you have in the garden, so all parents are to look in there first. Often an item found in the playground goes in there. Teachers will do their best to reunite items, but they are so busy it does not happen regularly.

Some parents in our school have offered to sort the lost property box once a fortnight and those items named are then given in to the office and they send them into the classrooms and those not named are displayed once a month for parents to see (most are too lazy to lift the lid of the box) this gets a good surge of parents rehoming the items. If the item has remained in the box for a couple of months they are donated to the rag collection we have at school which provides money for rags.

Perhaps some parents should get together and be proactive offering to help the office staff. After all there is a limit to what can be achieved running a huge organisation on a shoe string budget.

Maysie

A parent started a facebook group for my sons class to remind of upcoming things and ask questions about homework as we felt info from school was a bit lacking in places. Anyway we quite often ask each other to check for x y z as ours has gone missing. Things have turned up this way. Its all very friendly could you start up something similar at your school OP. At least you won't feel so bad if you know if its happening to others.

Lucyadams184

All you can do is check the lost property box, my son recently lost his coat, luckily we found it. I wouldn't imagine schools take any responsibility for lost items as it would be a nightmare for them. Just buy cheap stuff and make sure it is very clearly labelled and then just hope for the best.

Person_one

Slight tangent, but surely the same snow boots from last winter wouldn't actually fit anymore even if you did still have them?