A furious mother has demanded answers after her six-year-old daughter walked out of her school without anyone noticing. The Year Two student from Burrowes Public School spent almost an hour wandering around the busy streets of Logan, south of Brisbane, on Tuesday morning.
After crossing several main roads, a childcare worker eventually noticed the frightened girl alone and crying at a bus stop on Browns Plains Road, more than 1km away. The girl was taken to the nearby Edge Learning Centre, where staff contacted her mother.
'I was at home doing my uni work and I got a call from Edge Learning Centre in Marsden telling me that they had my daughter,' the mother told Seven News. 'How long has she been missing? Why wasn't I notified?'
It is understood the girl was marked on the school roll at 8.30am and went to the bathroom before walking out of the school gates, which are usually locked but were wide open at the time. Teachers eventually realised she was missing and began searching for the girl before they were told she was found 1.5km away.
Her mother has been left dumbfounded by the fact she wasn't notified when her daughter disappeared. When she returned to the school to drop off her missing child, staff were unable to explain how the girl was able to leave the school unsupervised, why she wasn't contacted immediately, and why the matter was not escalated to include police.
'I asked the principal why he didn't contact me or contact the police and he had said he was in a meeting,' she said. 'He told me that I was overreacting. If she had been hit by a car, if somebody had taken her, how long would it have taken them to say, "We don't know where your baby's at?"'
While the mother has reprimanded her daughter for her actions, she is yet to receive any assurance from the school that it won't happen to another student. The woman posted to a community Facebook page on the day of the incident to make parents aware.
'This response was extremely concerning given the seriousness of the situation,' she wrote. 'As a parent, this is deeply distressing. We all know the very real risks when a child goes missing, even for a short time, and how important immediate action is.'
The mother urged parents to speak with their kids about staying within school grounds, ask the school about their supervision and safety procedures, and hold them accountable and to ensure emergency contact details are up to date.
The Queensland Department of Education said the school has launched an investigation. 'Burrowes State School holds the safety of its students as its highest priority,' a spokeswoman told Daily Mail. 'Staff members were searching for the student when they were advised the student had been located outside a local daycare centre. The school leadership team have been in contact with the family and are reviewing safety arrangements.'
