Children are rowing with school secretaries over takeaways, the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals has warned.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, NAPD Director Paul Crone warned that the phenomenon has become a “bit of a problem” for many schools.
“I suppose we want our students to be innovative and creative and find solutions to problems,” he explained.
“This is one of those situations where they find a solution to a problem that don't have to, they want to go down to the local shop for a roll at lunchtime.
“If they preorder it and get it delivered, they can avoid the queues and all of that.
“But the unintended consequences of that are causing a little bit of disruption in schools.”
Mr Crone urged any parent listening to Newstalk to talk to their child and consider the impact ordering a delivery to the school has on staff and other students.
“Many of them may preorder this delivery on the way into school or while they're outside,” he said.
“If the delivery comes early, the delivery driver goes in and interacts with the school secretary and they're asked to mind the food for the student, which could be more than one.
“If the order is not correct, it can lead to a little bit of an argument between the secretary and the student who ordered the food.
“Secretaries are very busy; we don't have enough of them, they don't have the time for that.”
Some children arrange to meet with the delivery driver, which he described as a headache teachers would rather do without out.
“Now you have a safeguarding issue where you have unvetted adults being invited onto the school premises without the knowledge or permission of the principal or the school teachers,” he said.
“In the greater scheme of things, if it's one person meeting a delivery driver, that's straightforward.
“But when you have potentially five or six hundred students and a delivery driver coming in and around a school looking for a particular student, somebody says, ‘Oh, that's me, that was my food’
“They take the food and it leads to a row and it leads to an unsavory altercation.”
Main image: A takeaway delivery: Picture by: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.
