[Closed] School closures why....

Teaching (especially at primary) isn't really about what you know, it's about how to get/help kids to learn how to find out for themselves. A constantly moving target (well, usually 25-30 constantly moving targets).
Just teaching facts gets nobody anywhere useful, skills it where it's at!
But anyway, I thought this thread was about why I am at home with my wife (also a teacher) because of a bit of snow? I was lucky, only tripled my journey time to get home again, her 25 minute journey took 2 and a half hours, without any extra end of day traffic.
In our cases it was issues of staff being able to get home (well, in her case she was the only teacher who made it in). We don't operate an emergency service and don't always have the option to live near our school if we wanted to.
As with any profession, some will make an effort to get there, some won't or can't make the effort. Don't forget that on here people generally enjoy the great outdoors and a bit of a challenge, they aren't all like us/that.

Staff child ratios are pretty set in stone though, can't be bent. May be unavoidably broken, but if closing the school avoids breaking them, then schools will close as well as a heads responsibility to their staff as well as the children.

I'm a late-comer to this thread, but I've only just got back home having had to go to work (as a secondary school teacher) only for the dithering headteacher to decide to close the school at lunch-time. On the way home, driving with due care and diligence (high gears, low revs, etc) I nearly had 3 accidents due to the conditions and other numpty drivers. Scariest drive I've done for a long time, if not ever. I was home in 50 mins as opposed to the usual 30 mins for the 10 mile journey, unlike colleagues coming from other directions who took three hours when it's usually half an hour. The notion that most teachers wake up, look out the window at a dusting of snow and roll over and go back to sleep is nonsense. We do resent putting ourselves and our cars at risk of damage - we don't have company cars and sure as hell wouldn't be able to claim on work's insurance if we had a prang. Whilst at school today, with about 3/4 of students in, it was a complete waste of time - I teach at a grammar school with bright, well-motivated kids but today they just so weren't bothered and kept asking when they were going home, I would say about 30% of usual 'learning' happened at best.

tails: Just because you're clever at something - in your case we used to call it Technical Drawing/Woodwork/Metalwork 😉 - doesn't mean you'd 'walk it' as a teacher. I've seem many 'very clever' student teachers get eaten up and spat out by groups of students. Personally, teaching was not an easy way out. Whilst doing my Economics degree I had an epiphany of sorts, where I realised its not all about how much you earn, that I enjoyed working with kids, and truth be told, having 1 week in 4 off was a sweetener!

I'm not going in to school tomorrow mainly just to wind up my non-teaching friends.

That and I need a little bit more time to get over the two week xmas holiday

Headfirst - how does your drive to work with the risk of damaging your car differ from anyone elses? None as far as I can see.

What happened to the policy where if your school was closed, you reported for duty at the school who's catchment area you lived in? OK, you may not be able to teach, but you would be able to look after the kids.

[i]OK, you may not be able to teach, but you would be able to look after the kids. [/i]

Teachers teach you're thinking of babysitters

Sorry, but for kids who need supervision because they are too young to be home alone that's a significant part of a school's responsibilities.

Sorry, but for kids who need supervision because they are too young to be home alone that's a significant part of their parent's responsibilities.

It is not the authority's decison to close...it is down to the individual headteachers.
I know this cos I've just had a row with someone from the authority about the reporting to parents procedure for closure. I had 3 schools to listen out for on the radio; my own, and my 2 kids.
Some heads phone the radio station nice and early and some don't bother until after 8.15am by which time a lot of kids are on the way to school! Trying to get myself and 2 kids up and ready for work/school while trying to listen to the radio for 3 different closure announcements was a barrel of laughs, on the first day back with a stroppy 8yr old who didn't want to get up!! 8)
And my firefighter husband phoning me from work telling not to go to work as the roads were bad!
I got in OK but the drive home was treacherous.
My headteacher decided to stay open. There were 5 car crashes outside our school this morning as the road was so dangerous!
Now most of the snow has melted she's made the decision to close tomorrow!! 🙄

What happened to the policy where if your school was closed, you reported for duty at the school who's catchment your in

That would be a policy the peado's would love.

What exactly do schools do if they can't contact a parent when they want to close early?

lets say the kid is under 10

uplink - Premier Member
What exactly do schools do if they can't contact a parent when they want to close early?

lets say the kid is under 10

Keep them in school, I would assume it is the heads responsibility to make sure they are supervised and whoever can leave latest would stay (staff that is) Our head lives within walking distance so would probably do it herself. When they don't turn up after school after a certain time we are supposed to hand over to social services, but that hand over never seems to happen...

uplink...we had to close 3yrs ago as we had no water due to damage to the water main by engineers down the road.
We started phoning at 10.00am and didn't contact the last parent until after 3.00pm. It was total chaos. Kids leaving classes a few at a time until each class had about 3 kids left and then they were all put together in the hall.
The staff stayed in school until all the children had left.
We were brought in bottled water.

All i know is it's unlikely i have school tomorrow... and right now i like that.

It's safety thing for kids-give thema day off or be sued by parents as Joe has fallen over injured.

Talk about jealous Mail readers lol.

rightplacerighttime - my post was not a personal attack on your wife, so I hope you don't think that.

It's not about the job you do. It's about what difference you make in the job you do.

Come on there is no point being the best teaboy in the world, if your ambition is to be an actor.

Conveyed and assessed? In 360 hours? (And not many places get the 360 hours per A level - we get 270 hours per A level.)

I believe it could be, but not on top of the existing subjects being covered. Why have you only been given 270 hours, that is unfair on both students and lecturers?

headfirst - It was called Design and Technology in my day 😆 I'm sure I would not "walk it" but I can count the good teachers I met on my fingers, they were the ones who made learning more interesting and digestible.

Conveyed and assessed? In 360 hours? (And not many places get the 360 hours per A level - we get 270 hours per A level.)

I believe it could be, but not on top of the existing subjects being covered. Why have you only been given 270 hours, that is unfair on both students and lecturers?

That's per subject. Exam boards recommend 180 hours per subject per year for A level, but it's down to individual establishments to choose how long to give - we manage to get some of the best results in the country on that time.

Bet when they do go back they`ll need another day of for teacher training.Great work if you can get it

Tails,

I didn't take your comment as a personal attack, but like I said, I think it highlighted a common unconscious attitude problem (likewise, I'm not making a personal attack on you now (not this time 🙂 )).

But the implication of you saying that you would think yourself a failure for having to resort to teaching your subject, rather than pursuing it in its own right, is that teaching is a second rate profession. To quote the old cliche "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." Which I'm sure most of us know is a crock of $hit.

Everyone has to learn and everyone needs teachers. I'll admit that I had some shockingly poor teachers at school. But luckily I also had a few good ones and I think that the good ones made more difference to the way I turned out than the bad ones did. Maybe what we need though is for a few more people to realise that being a good teacher might be more important and more fulfilling than being a good designer (say), although you could say that about being a teacher versus most other professions too as far as I'm concerned.

I wouldn't want to be a teacher myself as I don't think I have the right temperament to do it well (far too grumpy), but I have every admiration for those who do do it as a true vocation.

OTOH I think that anyone who does do it as an "easy" job is likely to change their mind pretty quickly and will either get out or end up pretty miserable.

mine is shut tomorrow - work from home 🙂

Most of this thread seems to be about schools not opening in the morning - just a few posts on schools deciding to shut in the middle of the day. What's all that about then? All the schools round here seem to have decided to send their kids home late morning or lunchtime (there was no snow at 9am - loads came down mid morning), with the seeming result of putting lots of cars on the roads just at the point they were struggling anyway. Given the kids and teachers were all there anyway, what exactly was the problem with having a normal day and picking up as normal - at which point the roads would actually have been a lot clearer than they were when they did shut, and most of the numpties (apart from the school run numpties obviously) on the road would have made it home?

"What happened to the policy where if your school was closed, you reported for duty at the school who's catchment your in"
That would be a policy the peado's would love.

my girlfriends uni is closed, no staff/student ratios there I'm fairly sure, she made it over the mountain road to get there, where is everyone else? not even the building is open

I dont carry a card that says I'm a teacher and have been CRB checked, those checks would be done by who if none of us can get to our right place of work. Face it that is a stupid idea.

Think you find its all down to insurance
and also health and saftey.
Have found out the caretaker at my daughters school
will not clean away the snow on the paths etc incase
he/she hurts themselves and claims?

Countrys gone made

I dont carry a card that says I'm a teacher and have been CRB checked

Most of this thread seems to be about schools not opening in the morning - just a few posts on schools deciding to shut in the middle of the day. What's all that about then?

If the head thinks that conditions will make it more of a problem to get the kids home later then they shut the school. They might not always be right, but they only have a [i]forecast[/i] to go on - same as anyone else.

As all those people stuck in Basingstoke overnight could attest, sometimes it might be better to be cautious.

My daughter spent all afternoon doing nothing at school because several teachers were sent home early by the head just in case the Severn bridges were closed ffs.

The school is in Bristol and the teachers live in South Wales. IIRC both the bridges are on motorways and they can drive the long way home through Gloucestershire if necessary.

Why should my kids miss out on schooling because the teachers CHOOSE to live 40+ miles away. Their choice surely.

Of course you could home educate, then you'd never have to put up with any of the disadvantages of the state system and the weather could never cause your kids to miss a vital minute. Your choice surely?

I dont carry a card that says I'm a teacher and have been CRB checked, those checks would be done by who if none of us can get to our right place of work. Face it that is a stupid idea.

Utter pish - the local education authority could easily set this up again. School heads would then know which teachers lived in their area and who should turn up.

It's what many geographically-distributed companies do and there's no reason why the schools shouldn't do the same.

Schools closing is one of the fundamental cornerstones as to why this country can't deal with 1/10th of the snowfall our european neighbours have: Children off? Then bus drivers, train drivers and guards off = more people can't get to work = other services not working etc etc. It's the beginning of a vicious circle which brings the country to it's knees.

However, I'm not saying that if the kids are off tomorrow then we won't go sledging as a family.

I remember seeing an old film documentary on British winters.
The difference in attitude is astounding compared to today.The people they were interviewing all stated they made every effort to get to work in the morning,but none of them were concerned about how they would get home afterwards.
😕

Please dont knock teachers. 8)

My school is open, my wife who works in Aberdeenshire...shut.

To answer the points above;

The authority has to decide if a school can close DURING the day, heady takes decision in am depending on forecast.

School must have teacher/pupil ratio to agreed min.

Distance;I started off living six miles from my school, local authority moved me 30 miles, to a school I cannot afford to live near/will not uproot kids from school for. Anyway, living near your school means you WILL get grief sooner or later.(My car done by a 15 yo who told me that it didn't matter as when he was 16 the slate was wiped clean)

We have kids bussed in from outlying villages, dangerous in these conditions when minor roads blocked.

Getting approaches and entrances safe (2 weeks of freezing/thaws during holidays=slippy)

The legal action for unathorised holidays issue is a blanket reaction to the number of parents who take their kids away the two weeks before the Easter/Summer break because it is cheaper.Couple of days for snow is not exactly two weeks of missed work, is it?

I would be suprised if many teachers wanted a day less with their senior classes, I don't, we have lots to do and time is running out before exams.

Finally;Blob were you aware school is [b]not[/b] a big child minding service? Thought not. Of course, if the school was open and your kid slipped on ice and was hurt it would be "just one of those things" wouldn't it? Oh and could you link how schools being closed makes train drivers stay off?

I would suggest the % of teachers who do not make it in to work is lower than a lot of professions.

An amusing thread. Even more amusing that a fireman started it.

You lost any moral high ground before you began typing, bruneep.

TT
Nope none lost, and WTF has my Job got to do with this? I have never had a day off due to the snow.

As I said previously my 2 sons go to different schools 1 at primary the other at the academy(secondary school "council" not run by a business or the church) They are less than a mile apart 1 is fully open the other is closed.
During the day a.m went to Tesco (still within 1 mile of school)to do some shopping and I meet 2 teachers from the shut primary school. If you can get to the shops you can get to school.

Away to try and get to work, then again if I have to scrape the windscreen clear of snow I may just give up and go back to bed.

Be careful out there you don't want me cutting the roof of your car today.

I'll only attend your emergency if I'm not to busy sitting on my arse doing nothing watching tv, playing snooker etc. etc............... yawn

😉

Couple of days for snow is not exactly two weeks of missed work, is it?

we were refused permission for 1 day - the last day of the summer term
Reason? the response was the he could not afford to miss a day & it would be reported as unauthorised absence if he didn't turn up

"School is not a child minding service" and "Can you link schools being closed with drivers not turning up"

Sheesh! Do I really have to explain that to a teacher? Who looks after the kids if they're not in school?

Closing a school affects ALL of the families where both parents work.

A significant proportion of school's responsibilities during school hours is the care of the child and it should be recognised that closing a school has far wider implications on the community in which it is based.

bruneep, unless the same staff work at both schools of course there could be differences. If enough people cannot get to the primary then it will shut, unless the school only has 2 classes seeing 2 teachers means nothing other than two of them could have made it. Don't know the forecast for where you are so don't know about concerns about getting home again at the end of the day.
Schools provide an important service, could argue an essential service but it is not an emergency service and a couple of days out of the whole year will not make a significant difference to their education.
As for the teachers having a day off, rescheduling your work to fit in everything you need/want to achieve does not happen on it's own and that, for me at least, is not the fun, rewarding bit of the job by any means. Maybe not a full day but some work will need doing.

edit-sounds like I am over egging that particular pudding, not looking for sympathy for the work I will have to do today (yep, I am a teacher at home) but working from home is still a possibility, even without a class in front of you.

A significant proportion of school's responsibilities during school hours is the care of the child

Neep, one day is small beer,however schools have to be seen to be providing education until the last bell summer time.I would add that nobody cares about an una at the end of term(as the reg code shows)

I think we're the only educational place open in the area today (FE college). Mind you, how many of the students bother to turn up is another matter. No snow at all, but they won't need much excuse.

Let me rant about the services that I expect to be there, no matter what happens:

Police - yup
Ambulance - yup
Schools - not in bad weather
Fire - nope - we'll strike

I have expectations of certain professions being professional. I just find the irony in a fireman complaining that someone isn't at work amusing.

if the school was open and your kid slipped on ice and was hurt it would be "just one of those things" wouldn't it?

yes it would

This whole teacher bashing tone of this thread is completely ridiculous.
It is the local authorities that allow headteachers to chose to close their schools.
If, as parents, you are not happy, then stop whinging on here and complain to your local authority.
I am a teacher and a parent.
My school was open yesterday. I live the furthest form school and managed to get there at my usual time of 8.00am. My head has chosen to close today, presumably due to health and safety.
I have just taken my son to school this morning. The area around his school is in a lot worse condition than mine!

Bruneep...MrFC is a firefighter so I'm well aware of how he spends his time. He does not watch TV, play snooker etc.
However, the way the fire service is managed is a complete joke. If I had a problem with the my fire service I would not be so stupid as to blame my local firestation/firefighters.

Stop blaming schools/teachers and get onto the local authority who allow schools to be closed at the first sign of snow.

It's what many geographically-distributed companies do and there's no reason why the schools shouldn't do the same.

Except children are vulnerable thats why teachers are CRB checked you muppet.

. I had 3 schools to listen out for on the radio; my own, and my 2 kids.

Mothers are getting younger & younger these days 😉

It is the local authorities that allow headteachers to chose to close their schools

so what about late opening? why can't everyone just get up earlier - does everyone have to watch their fav' breakfat tv before thinking about putting on warm clothes and wonder if they can get car out without a bit of manual effort?

our school open this am, one of the few round here, after head rang up at 6am to ask if road was looking ok - where there is a will

What's really boiling my piss is the 'it's not a child minding service' comments. No it's not it's a school and parents are legally? bound to get their kids to school, which in most cases they can do, but it seems that's not the case with the staff.
I think someones missing the point, the kids aren't there for your benefit, you are there for their's.
Why is this happening in 2010? we have good heating and lighting, and surely there must be some teachers without work that could actually be reliable over winter. When is something going to set in place, we've had winters for years now.
I'm sick of this attitude that it's the parents problem if the parent can't get the kid to school, and it's the parents problem if teachers 'won't go to school.
The simple fact is that you the teachers/local authority are failing us.