Schhols closed again

My local primary school is closed today. The conditions are OK for getting about and I'm surprised it's shut. The playground as been cleared, but the reason given is that not enough staff can get in. Most support staff live locally, but some teachers live a long way and drive in. Of course, they don't put themselves out and get the train/underground which are working fine.

Don't get me started about the winter of 1963 (I can't remember if the schools were open or not)

Barkles wrote (see)

carterusm and Caravan Dave - surely you are not suggesting that any staff who work from home shouldn't get paid?  or do you just mean school staff who work from home shouldn't get paid?

I dont believe I said that teachers, or anyone, who works from home should not be paid. After all, I'm at home right now. The roads are bad where I am today but if I really wanted to I could get into the office 40 miles away. However, I am in the position where I am not customer facing, or team mates needing me to be in the office etc so I am working from home where I will be more productive (I'm having a break at the moment as I do when I am in the office) rather than be sat in my car for 4/5 hours of the day. However, in my view, anybody who works in an environment where they need to be there, should try their very best to get into work instead of looking out the window and thinking that they couldn't possibly make it in this weather

cartersum - are you really more productive or are you alternating from this site and more adult sites?

Maxpower North West wrote (see)

cartersum - are you really more productive or are you alternating from this site and more adult sites?

As I said Max, I am currently on a break for a few minutes. So whatever sites I chose to be on is irrelevant

Interestingly... years ago it was policy that if you could not get to your own school, you had to present yourself at your nearest school and offer to help. This policy stopped as soon as it became OFSTED policy to ask for CRBs of all staff - even volunteers and , critically, it became an issue that would guarantee to fail the inspection ( and the subsequent sacking of the head)....

cartersum

Sussex Runner (NLR) wrote (see)

That's not nice MPW. You just CarterMSU look like a right idiot.

And you just made yourself look like one, CarterMSU ?

Having defended schools in this thread I have to hold my hands up - several schools shut in Derby today for about an inch and a half of fairly wet snow - even a couple of secondaries.    I'm just off to order a daily copy of the Daily Mail.   

My boys school (high school) is close again today so that makes 5 school days in a row. They are going ahead with year 11 exams and encouraging those pupils to try and get in.

I know I'm lucky as mine are big enough to take care of themselves during the day although the food bill has gone through the roof.

This done mean that between illness, school trips, christmas and snow days my eldest who is in his first year of GCSE's has been to school for a total of 1 day in the last 5 weeks!

But it's happened we'll all be fine and the snow will go.

Schools close at the drop of a hat because they can.

So do libraries.

The public sector skives off as soon as opportunity arises.This is how Britain is.

No snow here since friday........but pavemnets are all lethal and the roads are still causing problems.....

Schools were closed Friday but as no more forecast today they have all opened.....

But if you see in the news a school bus with young children in skiided off the road in the ice and went ove r the edge over an embankemnet...all kids safe as the bus stabilised by a winch................

Parents moaning about schools closing might be putting pressure on schools to open when its safer for the kids to be home

'lethal'..? 'A bit slippy, surely Seren?

And 'school bus slides, noone hurt' is a fair summary of the other incident?

No, I'm still seeing no reason for schools to close; I guess it's just a fundamental difference of opinion; some people want risk to be reduced to zero before something is undertaken; I'm quite happy for risk to be reduced to 'reasonable'.

I think getting up 30-60 minutes earlier on a snowy day then carrying on as normal is reasonably safe for any adult. I'd open (and more importantly, close) schools at normal time as that's reasonably safe too.

I;;m not argueing about adults.......,My point is purely for the kids......

If you chose to drive to work and get stranded .. you can walk the 10 miles home.or book into a hotel and stay there........

these are not options for young kids......

 but if the school is closed ... it seems a waste of time and money to get the teachers in ... thye might as well work from home and save heating, lighting and any injury that would then cost more long term

Schools do close at the drop of a hat and teachers don't try hard enough to get in to work............if they had a different job and lived in the same place they'd probably try to get in, and would more than likely have to as 'snow days' are generally frowned upon in the private sector.  It annoys me intensely that a few inches of snow renders our country useless!

How on earth would we cope if we had snow like they do in Europe or Canada!!!!!!!!

Rant over......

If I were organising things, parents would be free to not send their children to school on snowy days, but it would also be their responsibility to sort out childcare. If they sent them to school, they would be secure in the knowlege that the children would be in school to the normal finishing time.

There would be no uncertainty. as to whether or not schools were open.

There is no need to blame teachers, unless its just a hang up from your own educational experience. Teachers are not the decision makers in these situations, nor do they want to lose teaching days as this just adds to the pressure and pace of work required to make up the time. Many teachers are actually in the schools working or arrived at work to be sent home.

Blaming teachers for school closures is like blaming soldiers for wars. Easy to kick teachers but try and look beyond the obvious

Beth Roberts wrote (see)

How on earth would we cope if we had snow like they do in Europe or Canada!!!!!!!!

I think that's partly the point (not specifically to do with school closures, but the more general inability to deal with snow in this country).... we DON'T have the severity of snow that the likes of Canada and mainland Europe do, so we don't have the infrastructure in place to deal with it that they do i.e. huge amounts of grit, snowploughs, dedicated teams of labour, snow tyres etc.

To put that in place, for the relatively few days of snow that we have, would be disproportionate and costly to all of us.

I'm not a teacher and I don't have kids, so no real axe to grind either way, but I'm not getting too hot-under-ther-collar about schools closing for a small number of days for snow.

Lets be clear on one thing . Schools do not close at the drop of a hat. At least mine don't. It is very very easy for people to moan when they have almost none of the facts. As usual the public sector is the easy target.  Some seem to think it is an easy lazy day. You have absolutely no idea.

How long will it be before someone asks the Head of the school in Wales why he chose to open, when the coach has gone into the ditch? Won't be long.

Having said that, those who do close easily can defend themselves... I don't condone that.