The Educator Magazine U.K. Sept-Dec 2026 issue - Magazine - Page 56
The Lost Property Crisis:
four in five teachers say the volume
of lost property is staggering
New research has revealed that lost property has become one of the most
persistent daily challenges in UK schools, with teachers spending significant
time each week managing missing items.
A third of UK teachers say that searching
for lost items is a daily disruption to their
school’s routine, a study conducted by My
Nametags, the UK's number one children’s
name sticker and iron-on name label
brand, has revealed.
A further 36% say their school has never
had a single week without a parent getting
in touch about a missing item, with more
than a third dealing with pupils losing
belongings on a daily basis.
The study surveyed 500 UK teachers,
asking about their experiences dealing
with lost property. The growing tide of
unclaimed school lost property has proven
to be a burden on teachers and schools,
with 79% saying the volume of lost
property accumulated by the end of a
single school term is staggering, and
more than half of teachers claiming that
lost property is a bigger issue for their
school than it used to be.
Teachers also warned that a throwaway
culture is fuelling a mounting lost property
crisis in UK schools, with 75% of teachers
agreeing that lost items are treated as
"disposable", and parents would prefer to
replace rather than retrieve them. And at
the end of each term, nearly a third say
they have no choice but to throw away
large quantities of unclaimed property.
The survey also revealed the extraordinary
range and monetary value of items that
end up in school lost property boxes. More
than half of teachers (55%) have found a
single shoe or boot. Four in ten have found
an item of designer clothing, including
branded backpacks and expensive jackets,
a quarter have found phones, tablets, or
laptops, and 17% have discovered highvalue jewellery, including wedding rings,
unclaimed.
Most remarkably, 2% of teachers have
found a live pet or small animal, including a
tortoise, a hamster, and a turtle that “made
a break for it” during show and tell, which
was later discovered making its home in
the school pond. There were also three
separate accounts of prosthetics being
found, including an ear, a foot and a leg.
Our own previous research into the
environmental cost of lost property found
that school jumpers alone generate more
than 7,000 tonnes of plastic waste per year
in the UK, the equivalent of 455 million
plastic bottles ending up in landfill.”
The survey also found that an
overwhelming 89% of teachers say that
the volume of lost property in their school
would be halved if parents used nametags
or labels on their children’s belongings.
More than half (56%) say that nametags
actively help lost property to be returned
to its owner, however 37% reported that
the majority of unusual or expensive items
they find are completely unlabelled –
making reuniting them with their owners
near impossible.
“The findings from this research confirm
what teachers across the UK have known
for years – that lost property has quietly
become one of the most unnecessarily
persistent and time-consuming challenges
in schools. It is a real burden on schools,
and comes at a significant cost to families,”
says Lars B. Andersen, Managing Director
at My Nametags.
Lars B. Andersen concludes: “When
families get ready for the new school
year, our message is really simple – label
everything. Coats, jumpers, shoes, water
bottles, lunchboxes, bags. It is one of the
simplest and most effective things a parent
can do, for their own peace of mind, for
their child, and for the teachers who would
very much rather not spend their mornings
sorting through a lost property box.”
“What concerns me most is the sense that
lost items have become disposable. This is
an alarming trend for household budgets,
for the environment, and for the values we
are passing on to our children.
Read more of the unusual accounts of lost
property and full research at...
https://www.mynametags.com/blog/2026/07/
research-reveals-75-of-teachers-feel-thatlost-property-is-viewed-as-disposable/
