Our children could be snatched from Hamilton school

Sep 25 2008 by Gary Fanning, Hamilton Advertiser

ANGRY parents fear that a child could be snatched from the gates of a new £6m primary school in Hamilton.

Families have been instructed by Our Lady and St Anne’s Primary not to drop their children off or pick them up in the school grounds in Hall Street.

They have also been told that children should not use the school’s main gate at the front of the primary.

Instead, parents have to wave goodbye to their kids at a ‘drop-off’ point at the main gate in Hall Street.

The youngsters then have to walk unsupervised a few hundred meters along a public lane – which has been used in the past by junkies – to an entrance at the side of the the school.

At home time, the children walk along the same path, which is strewn with broken glass and dog dirt, to be reunited with parents in the drop-off area. Scores of parents wait at the main gate while dozens of others congregate in the lane near the back of the school, beside the Somerfield car park in Mill Road.

Anxious parents claim that a stranger could make off with a child in the lane, especially if a parent turns up late at the drop-off zone.

Parents want the security to be tightened at the school and to be able to pick up their children at the edge of the playground to make sure kids get home safely.

And in the mornings, they want to drop kids off there to make sure they get safely inside the school.

But their concerns have fallen on deaf ears since the new school opened last month.

Anne Cullen (40), whose daughter Megan attends the school, said: “There was an incident a few weeks ago in Rutherglen when someone was trying to snatch kids away from the school. It is every parent’s worse nightmare.

“The same thing could happen here as the children are put out at the gate near to the lane at Somerfield.

“If their mums are not there, then the kids are left stranded.

“We want to take action now to make sure our kids are safe.

“We don’t want to stand in the middle of the playground; all we want to do is stand at the perimeter to make sure our kids are OK.”

Anne’s husband Dominic (43), added: “We just want to take our kids into school, see them in safely and then collect them safely at the end of the school day.”

Jim Lyons, (40) whose daughter Kara is a primary five pupil at the school, said there had been no consulation with parents about the changes to drop-off and pick-up zones.

He added: “Scottish guidelines state that when kids come out of school they are reunited with their parents. The teachers are meant to monitor the children until they are met by their parents.

“I have witnessed some very scared kids and parents who are frantically trying to find each other at the end of a long queue of parents in the public path leading to Somerfield car park. I feel the school are compromising kids’ safety.

“A tried and tested method is for the parents to be allowed into the school grounds and teachers to stand and watch as the children are met by a person known to them and for that person to be in a fit state to collect them. “If the person who is collecting the child has been delayed for some reason, the school might not know where the child is until it is too late.

A South Lanarkshire Council spokesman said: “We are actively engaged, in partnership with parents, in implementing various systems to ensure pupil safety at all times within the school campus.”