School head apologises after five-year-old unlatches side gate to walk back home

A headteacher has apologised after a five-year-old pupil managed to leave school and walk home on her own.

The girl is believed to have climbed up a side gate at Owler Brook Nursery Infant School in Sheffield and then unlatched it during the break period.

She then walked to her home in the same road as the school – Wensley Street.

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The school said the walk would take an adult around three minutes.

The girl was unaccounted for for about 15 minutes – the time it took her to walk home and then for her mother to inform the school.

Four staff members were on duty during the break period, supervising 150 children – above the recommended ratio of staff to pupils.

Children are never allowed to leave the grounds unsupervised and yesterday headteacher Sue Bridges apologised to the girl’s parents and said they were already taking steps to improve safety.

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She said: “The safety and well-being of pupils at Owler Brook Nursery Infant School is our highest priority and we take this incident very seriously.

“Immediately after the incident we arranged for a health and safety specialist to visit the school to provide advice about how we could improve security further.

“For the time being we have installed a combination lock on the gate until it can be fitted with a permanent lock operated by intercom.

“Understandably the incident was very alarming for the child’s parents, and I apologise that it could happen in a school where we take such rigorous child safety precautions.

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“We believe that the parents of all our pupils deserve to be totally confident in their child’s welfare at school, which is why I have arranged a series of meetings to discuss the improvements in security we are currently making.”

Yesterday, Wendy Lindsay said she was shocked when daughter Anesa Qasim arrived at their front door on Monday.

She said: “She’d come from the bottom of Wensley Street to the top where we live, crossing Hinde House Crescent where cars come from four different ways and there are buses on the road.”

The incident comes only days after Mark McCullough was threatened with further action if he continued to allow his seven-year-old daughter to walk 20m to and from her school bus stop alone.

The family lives in from Glentham, Lincolnshire.

Lincolnshire County Council later admitted that its letter could have been phrased better and said it would not be taking any further action.