Fed up with our school and their policies...can't win!

[Fliight]

I started a thread yesterday morning I think, about how long to keep DS1 off school as he had had some d/v symptoms on Tuesday evening.

Everyone without exception said 48 hours, and someone even posted a link very kindly to the HPA website and their guidelines, which also state 48 hours after last symptoms.

So I kept him off yesterday, and today I had a call from them demanding to know why he wasn't back. I said I wass ticking to their most recently published guidelines which were actually in the spring term, in the newsletter, saying kids should be kept off for 48 hours due to the widespread outbreak of whatever it was at the time.

Anyway - 'No' she says. 'It's 24, that was just for noro'. Ok then.

I asked if we would be in trouble but she said she thought it would be alright...I then suggested she check the HPA guidelines which say 48 hours. She said 'Oh, yes, during the norovirus we decided to obey the guidelines, but the rest of the time it's just 24 hours'.

I was and actually apart from feeling like a 5yo being told off YET AGAIN am now completely confused as to what the appropriate timescale is.

What do I do next time? And why don't they follow the official line? FWIW I think they have no business flouting it and had they insisted on 48hrs before noro took hold of almost the entire school, well maybe it wouldn't have. She said something about 'most parents are glad to be able to send them abck sooner!'

which didn't impress me much.

[BelleDameSansMerci]

Erm, isn't it up to you to decide whether your child is well enough to attend school or not?

[BelleDeChocolateFluffyBunny]

They don't like children being off school, it messes about with their attendance, in particular, it messes about with the attendance section of the league table and ofsted.

[TotalChaos]

DS's school have been similarly inconsistent (again due to attendance pressures/ofsted). Next time - do what you feel most appropriate.

[BelleDameSansMerci]

I wish schools would consider the children and their parents as "customers" or clients or something. I can't quite get to grips with how they seem to think they can talk to parents. DD hasn't started school yet. I can't wait for all this to begin...

[BelleDeChocolateFluffyBunny]

Thankyou Belle.

It's counterproductive to have a sick child in school, it passes the bug around so more of them are off sick, this would really screw up the attendance rates!!

[HeavyMetalGlamourRockStar]

Our school always had a 24hr policy till this year. 48hrs feels a little excessive, kids are running around healthy as horses but can't go to school.

[ProfessorLaytonIsMyLoveSlave]

I think ours is 24 hours for diarrhoea or vomiting, and 48 hours if they've had both.

[Quattrocento]

Am of the school of thought that everyone should go to work unless they are physically incapable of getting out of bed.

It is quite amazing how this impacts on the DCs as they grow up. They know that if they beg for a day off school because they 'don't feel well' or were physically sick the previous evening, then they can stay off school. But the price of staying off school is a day in bed with no TV and nothing but books. Their attendance records are quite amazingly good ...

And keeping them off 48 hours after being sick? What?? That's nuts. I don't care whose website recommends that sort of stuff. I don't care what contradictory messages the school have been sending out. Seriously, keeping them off for 48 hours after being sick is just a recipe for a lifetime of quasi-malingering.

Children need to contract a few bugs now and again to help build up their immune systems.

[BelleDeChocolateFluffyBunny]

Hell no Quattro, I'm into the "your bugs, you keep them because I don't want them thankyou very much" school of thought.

[ProfessorLaytonIsMyLoveSlave]

In contrast, I'm of the school of thought that if my colleagues come to work and infect me with something when they are blatantly ill then I'll be mightily pissed off.

But the person who infected me with whooping cough shortly before I had DS, so that I had to deal with whooping cough while recovering from a c-section and then infected newborn DS (who wound up in hospital on supplementary oxygen), probably agreed with you. So you're certainly not alone.

[Quattrocento]

FYI - having had whooping cough, you're at your most infectious before you even know you've got it.

You're all cotton-woolly, namby-pamby malingerer-rearers. And what's worse, you're playing havoc with your DCs' school-attendance records.

[BelleDeChocolateFluffyBunny]

I send ds unless he has been vomiting, has the poops or a hospital appointment. I wish people wouldn't come into my work when they are ill though, it's so bloody annoying. I have MS, if I catch 'stuff' then I end up with lesions on my brain. I need a new job I think.

[foxytocin]

[BelleDeChocolateFluffyBunny]

Don't worry foxy, there's a wax figure in my right hand, a pin in my left, where shall I stick the pin?? Mwuhahaha!

[foxytocin]

in its bum.

[ProfessorLaytonIsMyLoveSlave]

I totally accept that you're at your most infectious before you know you've got whooping cough, when you think you've just got a bit of a cough and cold. But you are feeling ill, just not all that ill.

I don't, actually, blame whoever infected me, because I accept that they didn't feel that bad, and I would have gone out and about myself with what I thought was just a bit of a cold. But the "you must go to work if you can physically get out of bed" attitude can and does have repercussions for other people.

[Nemain]

Ooh, this bothers me too. I took DS into school 49hrs clear of D&V.

His teacher did the face and questioned me if it had really been 48hrs since last bout of D or V.

I said yes, it was 7am Sunday morning. Now 8.30am Tuesday morning. He is fine and well.

"Are you sure?" she asks me.

Seems Dss school is very worried about attendance on one hand as they will not allow family holidays (goes as unauthorised absence) yet do not want children in if they show remote signs of illness or have 'just recovered'. Happened with others in Dss class too, not just him. Hmmm.

[Quattrocento]

I have a brilliant business idea and YOU are all my target market.

I am going to retail disposable blankets made entirely out of cotton-wool. They will be dyed your favourite colour and can be personalised with your DC's names. It goes without saying that the cotton-wool will be hand-gathered, organic and naturally sustainable. I'm going to retail them for £150 each.

Now, how many orders am I taking here?

[BelleDeChocolateFluffyBunny]

lol! Very funny. I refuse to take my child to school if he has the trots, it's not fair on him, his lovely teacher or his friends.

[ProfessorLaytonIsMyLoveSlave]

Feh.

DS has a perfect attendance record, and even considerately scheduled his recent bout of chicken pox for the first week of the Easter holidays.

Actually, there is a child in his year who is having treatment for leukaemia so we've all been asked to be extra careful about not sending sick children to school. But DS has a cast-iron constitution apart from the chicken pox, so it's not been an issue.

I do get the thing about bugs. My DCs eat stuff that they've dropped all the time, for example, unless it's actively dripping with something unspeakable. This may well be related to the cast-iron constitutions.

[Nemain]

I think you have a valid point professor wrt bugs and exploration vis the mouth!

[Fliight]

Ours allow holidays, NO problem...it's those of us with genuinely ill children who can't seem to get it right.

I have a feeling there is some financial reason why the parents who regularly book ten days of skiing in the Alps during term time have priority here - but of course I may be being overly cynical.

Anyway out HT is stuck in New York apparently which really means she can't swing a bat at us. Oh and ds's teacher is somewhere else, too...but they paid for it so that's fine. (forgets conveniently about volcano)

[gramercy]

This sort of discussion always reminds me of the father I saw carrying his dd into her class IN A BLANKET. She had a bright red feverish face. I was and

So was the teacher. She just ordered him out but he stood his ground for a while until the teacher said she was calling the head to make him take the child home.

[Fliight]

That's unbelievable. How could any parent do that?? He must have been off his rocker. Poor little girl.