What company would allow child labor? No one is going to let a 14 year old code games for them or something. He wouldn't have had an NI at the time so they wouldn't make promsies like that. My first coding job was at 16 and even then I had to get my contract notorized and it was a whole process. Also, Oxford to Doncaster is like a 3hr and 20min train journey.
UK UK - Andrew Gosden, 14, Doncaster, South Yorks, 14 Sep 2007 #2
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Not many kids out there do what Andrew did. I know I never got grounded or yelled at and was a rule follower, but there's no way 14 year old me (who actively met boyfriends via MySpace) would take money somehow and go on a day trip or weekend trip to London. At that age I am fully aware my parents would be worried if I didn't make it home. I don't care about the getting caught bit. Andrew must've known the same. He must've known that if he didn't make it home before them that they'd find out. I once walked home from school with a friend instead of taking the bus. It was like a 30 mins walk and my parents caught me and I tried to lie about it and they were like no we saw you and I said oh just wanted to check out the neighbours new car down the street. They said okay and dropped it and I never walked home again. Why did me and my friend suddenly plan to walk home instead of take the bus? No reason. Just a spur of the moment decision with no thought. It's clear Andrew didn't do this spur of the moment. He had a reason. Maybe he was groomed, but there's no digital evidence or paper evidence. There's no evidence to say any theory is wrong. I just don't really know. It all seems odd. I can't imagine losing my perfect attendance record. I keep a habit tracker and I'm very meticulous about doing my habits every day. I get upset if I miss something. If I make a mistake at work I get heartburn and I can't sleep and I think about it. It makes me uncomfortable. Maybe Andrew wasn't the perfectionist that people make him out to be and that's okay, but why did missing a day of school not bother him? Why was he ok with his parents potentially getting a school fine for his unexcused absence? Why did he believe the school wouldn't know? I mean, if I skipped school my mom would be getting a call on her cellphone at just after 7am and you best believe she'd text me asap. Why was Andrew not thinking logically or was he and he didn't care?
There are many missing children, but very very few Andrew Gosdens
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The one in the making. Project that would pay off as it was done in a year or two.
Most companies allow child labor as long as its not official and called "helping with family business", entertainment industry allows it and working on inventions allow it as well.
Look, I understand the desire to find a scenario where Andrew is safe and successful, but this theory is completely detached from the reality of living in the UK. The idea that a 14-year-old—no matter how gifted—could be "utilized" for a secret project or hidden within a family business is essentially a movie plot that ignores every legal and social safeguard we have. In the UK, child employment is strictly regulated by local councils; even for a "family business," a child cannot work during school hours, and an employer would need a specific permit. For a company to secretly harbor a missing teenager for a "project," they would be committing serious criminal offenses, including human trafficking and kidnapping. No legitimate business or inventor is going to risk a life sentence to hire a kid who hasn't even finished his GCSEs when they could just hire a PhD student legally.
Beyond the legalities, you have to consider how impossible it is to live as a "ghost" in modern Britain. To be an employee, you need a National Insurance number and a bank account, both of which require identity documents Andrew didn't have with him. If he ever got sick or needed a dentist, the moment his NHS number was entered into any system in the country, it would have flagged him as a missing person. We are one of the most heavily documented and surveilled societies in the world; you can’t just disappear into a professional "lab" environment for nearly two decades without a single tax record, medical visit, or digital footprint ever coming to light.
Finally, the theory just doesn't match Andrew's actual behavior that day. If he was heading off to a prestigious "project in the making," he wouldn't have left £100 of his own birthday money sitting on his bedroom table. He didn't take a change of clothes, he didn't take a coat, and most tellingly for a "tech prodigy," he didn't even take his PSP charger. That isn't the behavior of someone moving away to start a new, high-tech career; it's the behavior of a 14-year-old who wasn't planning for the long term. Suggesting he’s just "working an invention" is a comforting fantasy, but it ignores the cold, hard reality of how difficult—and dangerous—it is to exist outside the system in the UK.
best post on the entire thread
Perfect attendance record? On september 14? Does it hold any value? Isnt it a thing you lose by getting sick?
Is it some sort of a big deal in UK?
Where I live there were like 1-3 people with perfect attendance. They got a congrats letter and a book at the end of the year and thats all.
What if a kid would go to school but felt sick on the way, went back home, fell on a bed and slept, feverish till parents went back home. Would that cause troubles at school or be completely explainable?
I can definitely give you some perspective on why this "perfect attendance" thing is such a massive detail in the Andrew Gosden case. Over here in the UK, maintaining a 100% attendance record is a pretty big deal, especially for a student like Andrew who was in the "Gifted and Talented" program. It isn't just about getting a book or a certificate at the end of the year; it signals to the teachers and the authorities that a kid is completely "low risk." In our schools, you’ll often see those with perfect records rewarded with things like gift cards, tablets, or "skip-the-queue" passes for the canteen. Some schools even do prize draws for big items like iPads or organize end-of-term trips to theme parks for the "100%ers." Because Andrew had never broken that streak, his school and his parents had total trust in him. He wasn't the type of kid anyone would expect to see "skiving" or "mouching" off school, which is why his decision to leave for London that morning was such a total departure from his character.
The reason it caused such a mess is that our school system is actually quite rigid about tracking us. If you don't show up for morning registration by about 9:00 AM, the school is supposed to call your parents immediately. We have strict laws where parents can be fined—usually starting at £80 and doubling to £160 if not paid quickly—or even prosecuted if their kids miss school without a valid reason. Beyond the prizes and fines, that "gold star" record is a massive part of a student's UCAS application for university. For someone like Andrew, who was a prize-winning mathematician destined for a top-tier school like Cambridge, a teacher’s reference stating he had "100% attendance for five years" would be proof of the "grit" and reliability universities look for. It’s essentially a guarantee to admissions officers that the student is disciplined and won't drop out when the work gets hard.
In Andrew's specific case, the school actually tried to call his parents that morning, but the staff member reportedly dialed the wrong number. Because they didn't get through and didn't try again, his parents didn't find out he was missing until he didn't come home at 7:00 PM. That reputation for being a "perfect" student basically gave him a head start because no one suspected he’d ever just walk away. Regarding your question about a kid feeling sick and going home to sleep: if that happened here today, it would cause a bit of a panic. If the parents weren't home and the school couldn't reach them, it would be treated as a safeguarding crisis. The school would likely send someone to the house or even call the police for a welfare check if they couldn't account for the student. In 2007, things were a bit more relaxed, but for a student like Andrew, disappearing for the day was unheard of. That's why that specific date, September 14, is so haunting; it was the one and only time he broke the rules, and he never came back.
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Do you have a source for his £100 being easily found on his table? Because I don't remember ever reading in an article or hearing in an interview with his father where that birthday money was kept.
It's always been my assumption that he just couldn't remember where he kept it hidden away, or maybe he even forgot about it.
I think it matters just a little, whether he purposely left it behind in an obvious place, though it's hard to say why. But he really thought he could need 200£ that day, and you have to wonder, Why? It's a lot of money for a 14-year-old to carry around on purpose, IMO.
I heard it on a podcast on Spotify, but maybe they got it wrong.
£200 is oddly specific. Even if he were going to trade in his PSP for a newer model that was released that day he wouldn't get a lot for it. I went to CEX to sell my husband's old Nintendo console and they offered me like £30. It goes for £70 on eBay. Maybe he needed the cash to get to another location, but even then train tickets would've been under £30 because he gets a discount for traveling under the age of 16. Maybe he left money behind so if he were ever asked in future what happened to his money he could say he still had some left?
We also have to remember that Andrew had a specific bank card that meant he could not swipe it at shops. He could only use it to withdraw money. at the time if you were under 16 you would be issued a 'cashpoint card', which could only be used at ATMs. It couldn't be used to purchase things in stores or online. According to another user who had worked at a bank, you couldn't get a full debit card until you were 18.
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Well, that sounds like a recipe for mental breakdown caused by flu. And a guarantee that highely motivated sick kid is gonna go to school anyway and make others sick. Sounds completely crazy to me.
Also... does that mean that if Andrew missed his bus or for example got chased away from the bus stop (so unable to make to school in time) his perfect attendance would be ruined?
Sorry, but Im completely unfamiliar with that concept. Doesnt it work as an invitation for bullies to do whatever to make a kid with perfect attendance unable to get for classes? Or is that somehow not an issue?
Where I live too much of good grades was a guarantee that some school project or homework is gonna get destroyed or stolen.
Does that happen often or more like on the level of super unique and unfortunate that it ended with just one single attempt? That actually sounds horrifying to me.
On one side SO MUCH in the kids life depends on that perfect attendance but the moment kid doesnt show up at school, even the kid who has no history of absence there is just one lousy attempt at investigating whats going on and done?
Wow. Just... wow. So that whole system was invented and cultivated just to terrorize the kids to force them to attend school no matter what cause their whole future depended on it and prevent skipping school by their own will, but NOT focused on their safety at all? I dont get it. Would it be a thing for a parent to call school in advance to notify that kid wont be showing up today cause of the reason x? or just oh, whatever, wait till school calls-maybe? I think that if my kid would attend a school like that I would call immediately the moment I'd learn that there is some emergency that stops my child from going to school on that day. And with such strict rules Id also expect to be notified immediately that my child is not there while he should & for them to assume that if I havent called them there is a risk that something is terribly wrong.
Thats a big school. 1500+ students according to google. Prior to 2007 it never happened that student got hurt/injured on their way to school and hasnt showed up with that reason so they didnt get the idea that child may be in danger and that requires some immediate actions? More of those actions than one single calling attempt?
May not have that much to do with Andrew's disappearance but... If that wasnt enough of a big deal for school, then why would it be for Andrew? Possibly he had reasons to assume that they wont be really careful and persistent with that calling.
I get why this sounds horrifying from the outside, but it’s important to separate what the system was designed to do, how it actually operated in 2007, and what we know for a fact happened in Andrew Gosden’s case.
First, yes — in the UK a child’s absence is supposed to be treated as a safeguarding issue on paper, but in practice in 2007 it absolutely was not handled with the urgency people now assume. The Department for Education guidance at the time required schools to attempt contact if a student failed to attend morning registration. It did not mandate multiple attempts, police involvement, or escalation on day one unless there were prior safeguarding flags. Andrew had none. He was categorised as extremely low risk: perfect attendance, high academic performance, no behavioural issues, no prior absences. That classification mattered far more than it should have.
Second, the facts of the case are clear and documented: the school did attempt to call Andrew’s parents once and dialled the wrong number. This has been confirmed by his family in multiple interviews. No voicemail was left, no second attempt was made, and no follow-up occurred. Because of Andrew’s spotless record, staff assumed this was either an administrative error or a minor, explainable absence. That assumption delayed everything. His parents only realised something was wrong when he failed to come home at 7pm, at which point the police were contacted immediately.
On the question of “would missing a bus ruin perfect attendance?” — yes, technically it would, unless the school exercised discretion. UK schools have always had the ability to mark an absence as “authorised” for transport disruption, illness, or family explanation after the fact. Perfect attendance was never meant to be punitive in isolation. That said, children absolutely internalised the pressure, and many did go in sick to protect their record. That cultural problem is widely acknowledged now, which is why post-COVID attendance policies have been heavily revised.
As for bullying sabotage: in theory, yes, that risk exists — but in practice it wasn’t common because attendance records weren’t publicly weaponised between students the way grades sometimes were. Attendance prizes were usually private or end-of-term acknowledgements. More importantly, Andrew himself was not known to be bullied, and there is no evidence from family, teachers, or classmates that attendance pressure or peer interference played a role in his decision to leave that morning.
Parents absolutely could and often did call schools in advance to report absence — and Andrew’s parents would have done so if they’d known he wasn’t going in. The problem here wasn’t parental negligence; it was a single-point failure in a system that relied on assumptions about “good kids.” That is exactly why Andrew’s case is now cited in safeguarding discussions: it exposed how dangerous those assumptions can be.
Finally, to your point about whether Andrew might have assumed the school wouldn’t act — there is no evidence he factored school procedures into his decision at all. What we do know, factually, is that he left home deliberately, withdrew money, bought a one-way ticket, and took no school materials. Whatever motivated him, it wasn’t a spontaneous “skipping school” scenario. The attendance system didn’t cause his disappearance, but it absolutely delayed the response once he was gone.
That’s why the “perfect attendance” detail matters so much in this case. Not because it pressured him — but because it blinded the adults who should have realised immediately that something was very wrong.
So it essentionally WAS designed and operating to prevent and punish absence not to put kids safety first.
Obviously understandable that it wasnt alarming for the person responsible for making that call if it wasnt the drill or expectation to worry about kid's safety. Possible endangerment is super urgent highest priority while possibly unexplained absence may be totally proceeded and dealt with later.
Extremely low risk of... skipping school without valid reason approved by parents equals to high risk of such an absent kid being in trouble. Accidents, abductions and health issues werent discovered in 2010 to make it really make sense as not considered in 2007.
Not that my school would assume anything but that kid is absent cause sick and there were next to no phones in the village anyway so there wasnt much of a tool to use and act on but as whole system was making such big of a deal out of perfect attendance its just outrageous that in all that, by default it was just all about the attendance not about the kids safety.
& yes, i get the whole mood now (I think).
But that just makes this one small point of the story seem really not that relevant.
If it worked like that Andrew likely wouldnt have to worry that much about parents being worried (if he knew school wouldnt be persistent with calls and almost certainly hed have time till at least late afternoon to come back and explain himself or call home).
... nor it would neccesarily ruin his perfect attendance. Cause if he thought that hes reasoning is important enough and it would be seen as such, and understood by his parents then his perfect attendance wouldnt be ruined, right? Possible to still kept i mean.
But that just makes this one small point of the story seem really not that relevant.
If it worked like that Andrew likely wouldnt have to worry that much about parents being worried (if he knew school wouldnt be persistent with calls and almost certainly hed have time till at least late afternoon to come back and explain himself or call home).
... nor it would neccesarily ruin his perfect attendance. Cause if he thought that hes reasoning is important enough and it would be seen as such, and understood by his parents then his perfect attendance wouldnt be ruined, right? Possible to still kept i mean.
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@beubeubeu I agree and think that making such a big deal about "perfect attendance" was never healthy or ideal. Mental health should be at the forefront, and anxiety, depression, and burn-out result from a society that doesn't let that happen. Teens and young adults are under too much pressure to "succeed." Some do fine and even thrive with that but some struggle hard, and some don't make it out.
To be clear, I don't think his family should have done anything differently, but I think the adults at his school didn't recognize issues there. There is a tendency to assume a kid who has good grades is okay enough.
To be clear, I don't think his family should have done anything differently, but I think the adults at his school didn't recognize issues there. There is a tendency to assume a kid who has good grades is okay enough.
I think you’ve basically grasped the core contradiction correctly — yes, the system in 2007 was primarily designed to prevent and record absence, not to immediately prioritise a child’s safety unless there were already known risk factors. That doesn’t mean staff didn’t care, but the operating assumption was exactly as you describe: unexplained absence ≠ emergency, especially for a student classed as “extremely low risk.”
At the time, safeguarding escalation was triggered by patterns or prior concerns, not by a single missed registration from a pupil with five years of 100% attendance. Accidents, abductions, and medical emergencies obviously existed long before 2007, but they weren’t baked into day-one absence procedures the way they are now. That shift largely came because of cases like Andrew’s.
Where I’d slightly disagree is on the idea that this makes the attendance detail irrelevant. It matters not because Andrew was being “terrorised” into attending, but because his perfect record created a false sense of security around him. It shaped how the school interpreted his absence, how quickly things escalated (they didn’t), and how long it took before anyone realised this wasn’t a normal situation. In that sense, attendance culture didn’t cause his disappearance — but it absolutely affected the response.
You’re also right that Andrew likely wouldn’t have expected immediate panic. Based on how schools functioned then, he probably knew there would be time before anyone reacted strongly — especially if he believed he could return later or explain himself. And yes, had he come back the same day with a convincing explanation accepted by his parents, his absence could very well have been authorised retroactively, meaning his perfect attendance might not have been lost at all. That was entirely possible in the UK system.
But the key point — and this is where Andrew’s case becomes tragic rather than procedural — is that he never came back. What looks, in isolation, like a minor administrative failure only became catastrophic because of that fact. The attendance system wasn’t built to protect a child who vanished on a single ordinary school morning — and Andrew exposed that gap in the worst possible way.
So I think your instinct is right: the system wasn’t malicious, but it was narrow-minded. It was very good at tracking compliance and very bad at imagining the unthinkable. And that’s exactly why this detail still matters in discussions of his case today.
I agree with you, and I think this gets to a real blind spot in how schools used to operate. There was (and to some extent still is) an assumption that good grades and perfect attendance meant a child was coping just fine, when in reality it often just meant they were compliant and internalising pressure. Andrew fits that pattern: quiet, high-achieving, never in trouble, so no one thought to look closer. That doesn’t mean his family should have done anything differently — by all accounts they were attentive and had no reason to suspect anything was wrong — but it does suggest the adults at school didn’t have the tools or mindset to recognise vulnerability in a student who appeared to be thriving. Pressure doesn’t always show up as acting out; sometimes it shows up as perfection. Andrew’s case is tragic not because attendance culture caused what happened, but because it helped mask the possibility that a “doing well” child might still be struggling and in need of attention.
Im not even going for "his school should have done things differently" in the context of that day and Andrew cause apparently whole system wasnt well thought through and that one person responsible for calling would probably get in trouble for making persistent calls about each absent student if that wasnt clearly stated as expected of them.
Its just that it got made into such a big deal like ruined attendance, not even a note left for parents, not caring that they will be horrified when school will call them... like it certainly means A LOT while in reality it could be not ruined at all + no reason to consider that parents actually will be notified + plan to came back or call home before they will notice.
And im super frustrated with myself. Ive probably first heard about Andrew 15+ years ago and each time something reminded me of him i was considering possible suicide cause no returning ticket or a ride back by car... but not once that he could be heading somewhere else and London was just where he switched train for a bus & no return ticket cause no plan of going back same way.
Not that its super probable or anything but... possible, mondain, simple explanation. People probably do that thousands on thousands times more often than buying one way ticked cause going somewhere with a plan to commit suicide.
I get where you’re coming from, and I think this is exactly why suicide has never been a strong or well-supported explanation in Andrew’s case.
First, on the attendance point: you’re right that it felt like a huge, irreversible thing, but in reality it wasn’t. His attendance was not automatically “ruined,” there was no certainty his parents would be called quickly, and there was absolutely room for retroactive authorisation if he’d come home and given a reason his parents accepted. From Andrew’s perspective, skipping one day didn’t necessarily mean catastrophic consequences. So the idea that he would be acting under a sense of “this is it, there’s no going back” doesn’t really hold up.
That matters, because suicide theories often rely on the idea of finality — that the person believes they’ve crossed a point of no return. Andrew’s actions don’t clearly show that mindset. He didn’t leave a note, didn’t get rid of possessions, didn’t give away money, and didn’t take steps that suggest emotional closure. He took his keys, his wallet, and his PSP — all things consistent with going somewhere, not ending everything. Even the cash withdrawal fits ordinary travel behaviour just as well as it fits anything darker.
The one-way ticket is also much weaker evidence than it’s often treated as. People buy one-way tickets all the time for mundane reasons: not knowing their return time, planning to return a different way, or simply because it’s cheaper or simpler in the moment. In Andrew’s case, we know he was offered a return ticket and declined it — but that still doesn’t imply suicidal intent. It just means he didn’t plan to come back the same way, or didn’t want to commit to a schedule. London is a transport hub; it’s entirely plausible he intended to go elsewhere from there.
And crucially, London itself is a problem for the suicide theory. If his intent had been to die, there were far simpler, nearer, and more private ways to do that than travelling alone to one of the busiest cities in the country in broad daylight. Going to King’s Cross, walking around, potentially meeting someone, or transferring onward all suggest openness to what happens next, not withdrawal from life.
I think your frustration makes sense because suicide became the default explanation for a long time, even though it’s built more on absence — no confirmed sightings afterward — than on positive evidence of intent. When you step back and look at Andrew’s behaviour as a sequence of practical decisions rather than symbols, it reads far more like a planned journey with an unknown purpose than a final act. That doesn’t tell us where he was going or why — but it does explain why, even after all these years, suicide still isn’t the most plausible explanation.
If Andrew Gosden was the victim of a crime, then the most plausible explanation is that the person responsible has proof and that proof has been shown to someone, even if it hasn’t been recognised or reported for what it is. I can’t say that as a literal, provable “100%,” but in terms of how crimes like this actually unfold in the real world, it fits far better than any alternative. People don’t make other human beings disappear cleanly, especially not in a city like London, without leaving behind something tangible — images, messages, objects, or stories. Silence for this long doesn’t mean absence of evidence; it usually means evidence that never reached the right eyes.
This is where Dexter is actually a useful cultural reference. One of the most unrealistic things about Dexter as a character is how perfectly he contains his secret. In reality, people don’t operate like that. They keep trophies, they document, they talk, they slip. Even Dexter, fictional and hyper-controlled, still leaves trails and eventually gets exposed because absolute secrecy isn’t human. Real offenders are messier. If someone harmed Andrew, they almost certainly retained something — proof for themselves, leverage, reassurance, or control — and at some point that proof would have been shared, bragged about, hinted at, or shown to the wrong person.
When you compare this to other theories, they just don’t hold up as well. Suicide requires assumptions that aren’t supported by Andrew’s behaviour: no note, no preparation, no finality, no known location, and no remains despite London being one of the most intensively searched and documented environments imaginable. Voluntary disappearance fails because Andrew had no documents, no sustained money, no online or paper trail, and no confirmed sightings in nearly two decades. Reinventing yourself at fourteen without resources simply doesn’t happen. Accidental death also collapses under scrutiny — accidents produce bodies, witnesses, reports, or at least unidentified remains that eventually get matched through DNA or dental records. None of that happened.
Once third-party involvement is on the table, the idea that proof exists becomes almost unavoidable. Crimes involving adolescents nearly always generate material evidence, especially when exploitation or control is involved. The 2021 arrests connected to images of Andrew — even though they didn’t solve the case — are crucial here. They confirm that material linked to Andrew existed somewhere, years after his disappearance. That alone strongly supports the idea that proof was created and circulated, even if it hasn’t yet led to resolution.
So the reason this case still feels solvable rather than unknowable is that it likely isn’t missing facts — it’s missing disclosure. Someone, somewhere, has seen something and either didn’t understand its significance, didn’t connect it to Andrew, or wasn’t able or willing to act. Unlike Dexter, real life doesn’t allow perfect containment forever. Secrets leak. Proof resurfaces. The unanswered question in Andrew Gosden’s case isn’t whether evidence exists — it’s who knows they’re holding it.
The bathroom stall graffiti is proof of this. Someone chose to post it on Reddit for karma rather than go straight to the police. Someone else had to report it because they felt it was serious enough. It's sad that something like his bag or clothes could've ended up this same way: ignored or in the bin or whatever.
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Which assumptions do you think would need to be supported by behavior? Suicide isn't predictable, because there often are no real signs, even in retrospect, baffling as that is to their loved-ones. So IMO it has to remain a possibility that's considered, even if not high on the list.
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