AIBU to think school closures ignore parents' work commitments?

Eh? Eavesdropping? I didn’t mention Welsh education once, but if I did I have 26 years of experience of it as a teacher including 12 as a parent as well, and a further 10 in England.
I know the school didn’t say that because fines don’t work like that. You don’t get fined for a single day absence, and even if the absence was long enough the school could only say you ‘might’ get fined, as they don’t make the decision.

OH were you eavesdropping? Haven't seen your username for a bit. But here you are defending Welsh education, without a spit of knowledge or evidence. So predictable.

Pp should say pick them up

The school didn’t say ‘unauthorised absence you will be fined’ because nobody is fined for one day. Plus schools don’t decide on fines anyway - they pass on details of those reaching the threshold to the LA who decide. And no. Schools dont get the money. Nobody is fining absent kids as a money making exercise.

What happens when a school says you can luck them up at lunchtime if you want?

Is it less work then open or shut?

Yesterday the school phoned my DIL. Come collect your son he's very unwell in the heat. She did. They have a mobile air con unit in the bedroom so he went for a nap there. In the evening he played in the paddling pool.

She didn't send him in today. Phone rang, why isn't your child in school? She explained that the school had sent him home yesterday. Today it is hotter so she kept him off after a bad night.

Schools response unauthorised absence you will be fined.

FFS the school was half empty yesterday before grandson keeled over.

DIL lives opposite the school cars park outside and all the way down the road. Not today, between the parking and her WhatsApp groups half the school are missing.

She's said is this just a money making exercise? Will the school get the fine money or will it be lost within the education authority

Schools should absolutely be closed. It’s 35°C here and I’ve been sent home after fainting in front of 130 pupils! Injured my shoulder on the way down too.

Another member of staff had to leave due to a heat-triggered migraine. All because some parents and the Trust insist on staying open for the sake of… childcare?

The kids did not learn anything.

Where did I say anything about offices or office jobs? I’m talking about chikdren home from school in hot flats. I’m pretty sure you know that and are just being argumentative.

This. We waited for the local authority announcement with gritted teeth, not knowing what would be worse; staying open or closing. Closing the school means all sorts of safeguarding considerations and monitoring, supplying meals-on-wheels lunches for pupils entitled to free school meals, setting online learning, informing contractors such as cleaners etc. Staying open puts teachers and children in far-too-hot spaces for long periods -my classroom was 37°C on Wednesday midday, pupils' hands were too sweaty to hold their pencils. The playground offers little solace -we're in the city with little shade or cooling greenery. If we had trees and a breeze, I'd move the children outside with clipboards to complete their work. None is ideal.

However I don't think that the poster was suggesting that you strip off to your underwear in the office yet you responded like she had.

Optional is such an easy solution idk why it has to be shut or everyone stay at this point.

Primary here can go home at lunchtime here and many have, it’s fine. In secondary maybe none would go in if it was the option not to.

Indeed. But the thread of quotes it was responding to referred to offices as well

The post said homes, not offices.

You clearly don't realise how hot some offices are. And it is also somewhat astonishing that you think people in office jobs "don't have to think too hard".

And I think my colleagues would be somewhat astonished if I stripped down to my underwear

That’s not what I said. Yes, some people’s homes will be very hot. They can still strip off, have cool showers, drink cool water etc and not have to try to think too hard. None of that can happen in school.

It suggests that if you want to hear what it's really like in schools, don't talk to your friend who works in your kid's school.

If teachers told parents what it was actually like in their school, parents would probably be horrified.

Schools put on an extremely positive face to parents - of course they do. So parents who believe the school email that says 'teachers are keeping classrooms cool and well ventilated' are not seeing the teachers crying at their desks because the conditions are so awful.

And this heat isn't even half of it.

And this post says it all.

I don’t know any Primary Schools in the UK that are air conditioned! It’s not a case of ‘get on with it & stop complaining’. Of course it doesn’t help working parents but it’s a reluctant decision made for the health & safety of your children.

Our school, like many, many others, is like a bloody greenhouse with tiny windows that open a couple of inches & no through draft whatsoever. No fans. No shade outside. Playground tarmac so hot you could fry an egg on it. Classroom temperature well over 30 all day with 30 sweaty, unhappy, listless children crammed together, not able to learn a thing.

As a teacher, I cannot tell you how awful it is to be stood in one of these hotboxes, with a raging headache, desperately trying to ignore the rivers of sweat pouring out of you, conscious of how much your children are struggling, worrying about which one of them is going to throw up next, whilst simultaneously trying (& obviously failing) to teach them how to multiply fractions!! It’s just not worth it.

People are certainly able to be more honest on MN than in real life. I know many teachers who have to hold their tongue when talking to friends with children at their school.

We clearly see things differently here, and I would not expect you to agree with me. Anyway, the teachers I know irl, including one from my children’s school who has become a good friend, seem more balanced when discussing issues.

I'm not sure many other professions get as many threads about them as schools do on Mumsnet. Not sure why teachers aren't allowed to offer their viewpoint from the perspective of working in a school either. I've seen plenty of valid complaints about schools get helpful responses from teachers explaining who to complain to and how to phrase it.

But there are appropriate complaints too. I have seen posts on here that do show poor behaviour from schools, and the defensive teachers immediately swoop in en masse to defend the school. I don’t see that as much in other professions.

The word 'appropriately' there is doing a lot of heavy lifting. There are many, many inappropriate complaints being made to schools by irate parents which are now taking up so much time, money and resources to deal with that the government has had to tell parents to pack it in.
https://www.parentkind.org.uk/assets/parents-resources/Parent-Guide-to-School-Complaints.pdf

Sounds like a considerate headteacher.

Is it not possible that one person in the country is living in a hellish hot small flat that might be hotter than the school? Or is it that just because a classroom has 30 kids in it, it’s scientifically proven to be hotter than anyone else’s home or workplace in the country? Why do some teachers always think they have it the worst?