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Pedagogues reprimanded for letting Ikea watch kids in their care

TheCopenhagenPost
August 26th, 2015


This article is more than 9 years old.

Educators from several Aarhus SFOs sat children in Ikea’s playground while they went shopping in the store

“I got the plastic balls, teacher got the meatballs” (Photo: Larry D. Moore)

Employees from several east Jutland SFOs parked the kids under their charge at the in-store playground at the Aarhus Ikea while they went shopping or dining at the store cafe.

“We do not think it is right,” Mikkel Kruse Andersen, the head teacher at Skødstrup school told DR Nyheder. Andersen’s is one of the schools whose students were left in the playground.

In one case, it was reported that a pedagogue left 17 children under Ikea’s care.

Shop and drop…off those pesky kids
Jacob Mangelsen, the head teacher at Rosenvangskolen said that the children should have never been left unsupervised.

“Basically, it is not up to the SFO staff to drop children somewhere and then go shopping,” said Mangelsen.

Mangelsen said that it would be OK for the pedagogues to take the children shopping if they had stayed with them.

“If they needed something from the store for the SFO, that would have been fine,” he said.

Customer kids only
Andersen said that the pedagogues at his school have been reprimanded.

“We discovered the mistake and have corrected it,” he said. “We have told all employees that when they are supervising children, it is 100 percent their responsibility and not up to others.”

Ikea spokesperson Tina Lindhardt said that the store’s playground is reserved for the children of Ikea customers only.


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

Pill pushers
At the Børnehuset daycare institution in Silkeborg a meeting was called where parents were implored not to bring their sick children to school.

At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

Parents sick and tired
Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”