Snow and school closures.

None of the schools in our part of Lancashire have closed though to be fair we have not had weather as bad as reported in the rest of the country. My DGC found it very exciting as we have rarely had any snow in recent years.

I don't think schools closed at all when I was a child in Cumbria. I went to a secondary school 4 miles away and had to take a bus. I remember one time (probably 1963) the bus did not turn up so we walked there. We didn't have normal lessons though there were quite a few teachers. We were allowed to leave early to walk home! There was no communication then to tell us schools were closed. No phones, texts or emails.

We lived in a small village and actually loved battling to our small primary school in the snow. The teacher came in by bus every day from about 8 miles away. I only now wonder how she managed to turn up every day!! Good old Mrs Matthews!

DD2 has stayed with us till late Friday and has been collected on foot by her fiancé and doggies to walk the 1 ½ miles home as it looks like it may be some time till the streets are able to be negotiated by ordinary cars. Glad to say she is safely home and hope baby waits another couple of weeks at least to decide to make an entrance! I would like to thank all the local people who have helped push cars, dig out cars, clear pavements and roads and the health centre entrance, collect prescriptions for people , take health service staff to work, bring bread and milk from further afield to neighbours and all other help voluntarily given. You are all stars and it is so encouraging to see the community pulling together.

I don't think most people took the weather warnings seriously this time and were caught out. My DD1 is a teacher (Midlothian) and her council closed the schools on Wednesday am early via Twitter and local radio. By 1.30pm the snow was horrendous - Red warnings and people being sent home from work taking several hours to do a half hour journey. If the schools had not been closed many children would not have been collected till early evening for some the next morning . Public transport was badly affected - people may have seen on FB the Lothian bus driver (lady) swerving the bus to miss a sliding car. DD2 was made to go to work NHS by her manager for 2 hours, sent home at 1.30pm, we had to walk for 1 1/2 miles to escort her home to our house in a blizzard at 36 weeks pregnant having slipped and twisted her ankle because the buses terminated at Tesco 3 miles from her home. The snow started on Wednesday and today Saturday we still cannot get our cars out the street and it is still snowing. So please don't blame schools - protection of children is important and they are not a child minding service - and I have to admit weather forecasters did get it right this time!

The pupils at my grandaughter's school have been asked to write poems about the snow and put them on the school twitter account.
Some really good ones on there, and it adds to the excitement for them.

The whole system doesn't stink. Sometimes it works.
All the schools in Heaton have been open all the time because the pupils and staff live in the area.
Even schools like Slaley have been open because the staff live in the village.
It's not the system; it's the safety.

My youngest granddaughter's head has asked the parents to turn up with snow shovels on Sunday afternoon to clear the playground so it is safe for kids to go to school on Monday.
She must know something the rest of us don't.
My son has been round here today to clear a path of footdeep snow for me, so I can get to the bins.
Snow drifts up to the armpits round here.

If children could bloody well get into a school close to where they live it wouldn’t be a problem would it? As it stands they often can’t through no fault of anyone but the stupid system that allows parents to travel 20 mile plus to primary schools just to ensure they get into “the” best secondary school (where children are bussed in) .

The whole system stinks!

Most teachers I know have been putting work onto school intranet for pupils to do at home.
Lastly, if a pupil miss a week for holiday, their class carries on regardless. If the whole class misses the lesson, the teacher will incorporate what they all missed into subsequent lessons.

Chairman of governors and head teacher make the decision about 6am, with advice from site manager (caretaker). It is nothing to do with teachers.
Ice on school site, distance pupils are travelling, availability/not of school/local buses, problems with local A roads, proportion of staff unable to get to school etc are taken into consideration.
Some secondary schools will call in exam pupils if possible.

ankle?

socks with bare knees.
Knee-length socks with garters
But we did have liberty bodices which kept us warm.

We used to make wonderful ice slides in the playground. It's a wonder no-one fell over and broke their wrist/ankel/leg/arm/whatever.

DD uses her days off [she teaches three days a week] to do marking and lesson plans, but she's not been able to do that on the past two snow days because she's been looking after everyone elses children so the mothers can get to work.

It’s a problem.

My DGD2’s head teacher sent an email to parents asking for help to clear the playground and paths and more than needed turned up. Enough teachers. Class assistants, dinner and playground helpers all arranged to come in. All systems go. Then the police closed the school as the pavements outside were slippery. DD2 lost another days pay which she desperately needs.

‘Elfen Safety’ ? perhaps you can’t spell or perhaps you think the safety and care of children is a laughing sneery matter Hells?

It was more straightforward in the days when schools were run by the local authority. With academies and free schools and the like, education has become privatised, so teachers couldn’t just turn up at their nearest school.

So am I varian, glad that things have changed. I remember 1959 (I'm pretty sure that was the year) when my young sister fell in a snowdrift on our way to school. I took her home as she was soaked to the skin and crying. She stayed home and I was sent back to school, aged 8, soaking wet shoes, bare legs etc. At school, there was a huge fire in the middle of the hall. All classes were moved in there so the children could thaw out. Our various socks and coats were hung over rails to dry out. We had our morning milk and had to break through the ice or sit it on the edge of the fire to thaw that out. We wore our plimsolls and hoped our socks and shoes would be dry by home time.
M y mother had an old washer with a wringer. We had a fire in one room. I remember bringing in frozen washing to help mum, we had a tiny baby at that time.
Oh the good old days

I don't remember ever having time off because of snow when I was a child in the 1950s. We went to school in all weathers wearing our skirts and socks with bare knees. Our school was at the top of a steep hill and there was a hand rail to help you climb the hill but you needed woolly gloves to touch it.

I don't even remember our children having time off for snow in the 1970s. They had woolly tights and annoraks with hoods and walked to school in all weathers.

My grandchildren are having a lovely time today sledging, snowballing, snowboarding on tin trays. I'm glad that times have changed.

Yes, it must be a difficult decision. One school I know of didn't close first thing, some parents had to travel some distance to get there (rural school) then an hour later the HT made the decision to close the school.

I’m afraid, * grannyhaggis* that it’s not as simple nowadays for a teacher to turn up at their nearest school. In these days where we have to be so careful, a stranger, unknown to the head of a school, turning up and saying they are a teacher from another school would very likely be turned away. They could be anyone.
Actually, the schools nearer to me ( I don’t teach any longer, by the way, retired), were closed yesterday and Wednesday, so even if I was still working and turned up, I would have had a wasted journey!

Sympathise with everyone yesterday; in the morning I felt the schools closed far too readily; by the end of school day the roads were treacherous and full of people leaving work early. If children had been at school some of them would still have been there at 6 o'clock as parents struggled to collect them from relatively short distances, and staff would have to stay also. Difficult.
I have struggled through the snow to get into school (nearly three hours for a forty minute journey, to find only eight of my class of twenty four, (those were the days!) at school. Equally, I have held the fort whilst other teachers left early, because they had to battle through snow to collect their children on time.
The main problems are too many schoolchildren not within walking distance of their homes, and too many parents both having to be at work, (include teachers in that).
No helpful solution; fortunately we don't have many days like yesterday.

We have to listen to the safety reports. There have been red alerts. School heads have the safety of their children and staff as a priority. I’m afraid some people will complain if schools are shut and others will complain if they are open. We’ve all seen the news - would you want to risk the safety of your loved ones just to be able to say “ ah, but, the schools stayed open”.
There are a whole host of issues to be taken into consideration, and believe me, the decision to close a school is not taken lightly. The teachers will not be viewing it as an extra day or two’s holiday, either!!
In the “ good old days” when people were made of “ sterner stuff”, the children and staff were, by and large, local to the school. Neither was there the volume of traffic that there is now and neither were there so many children been driven to school. Roads were generally quieter. We’ve seen the pictures in recent days of vehicles skidding out of control - should we put the children walking to school, standing at bus stops in zero temperatures at risk just so we can say the school remained open, though?

I think one of our problems is we expect everything to carry on as normal when there is heavy snow. In other countries that have heavy snow every year they know that when the snow is tipping down, normal activities have to be suspended.

It has been reported that airports in both Switzerland and Norway and other countries have been closed for periods over the last week. The only difference is that because heavy snow is an annual event the snow removal equipment at airports in countries like Switzerland and Norway can clear their runnways more quickly because they can justify the purchase of bigger beefier more expensive equiment.

The same applies to the roads. It is just in this country drivers expect to go about as normal so hundreds are stuck in snow drifts and spinning off roads when they should never have even been on them. there is no virtue in running off the road and dieing from hypothermia.

As I walked through snow to the shop yesterday -not too bad here to be fair -yesterday a woman was shouting across the street to a neighbour that although school was open with normal lessons -its a five minute walk maximum -she wasn't sending her children as she thought they would like a 'snow day'
I'd just had a call from our DD, a teacher,to say she had finally got into work after much longer and tricky commute across city to her school.She can't afford to live in the area she works in.It must be much harder for heads to decide wether to close or not now with many teachers travelling further,parents often both working and disgruntled at closures and health and safety to factor in.I don't envy them.

Well said Iam64