School closures due to snow

[tobyaw]

The news is full of stories of schools closing due to the weather conditions. It must be hard if parents are depending on schools to look after their children during the working day; I would have thought that schools should consider it their duty to be open and able to look after any children who can get to school through the snow.

Beth’s school reiterated its adverse weather policy in today’s newsletter: “As we are always able to ensure a skeleton staff will be present, the school will not close. However, we do appreciate that it may not be possible for all pupils or staff to travel to school in certain conditions. We therefore cannot guarantee that there will be a full timetable under these circumstances, but children can be looked after during normal school hours.”

Which seems sensible.

Comments

[meepfrog.livejournal.com]

Well, my high school served 13 villages, and the teachers also lived throughout the area.

I don't think any teachers lived in the two villages that usually lost about a month of school each winter as thwey were totally cut off.

But, in bad weather (And living over the road from the school we often had 3-4 foot of snow), we gradually lost pupils and teachers as people headed home, until there were just people who lived in the same village as the school left. While pupils /could/ have stayed in school at that point...no-one ever did....

As I said, I lived just over the road from the school, and lost around 7 days a year from snow.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I could write more or less this entire comment, except that I didn't live in the same village as my school (technically school was in a town but it was half the size of my village, being a very old market town rather than an actual functioning modern town). I think we worked out once that no more than 7% of pupils were able to walk to school, and that included those coming from half a mile outside the town along a major bridleway.
My village primary, before that, closed very rarely because the deputy head lived on the grounds, two of the teachers lived 20 yards from the gate, and most of the rest could walk in unless it was very bad. smallclanger's school - while open today unlike many in this county - suffers rather from half the pupils arriving by bus or car and all but 2 of the teachers unable to walk in because they live at such distance.

[tobyaw]

I think you’ve hit on the solution there — headmasters (and some of their staff) should live on the premises.