Should school be opening without hot water?

[potatooo]

Just that - our local primary school has no hot water due to broken system - heating on though. It’s freezing and snowing here, so at least they’re warm. BUT isn’t it gross to have not hot water and remain open? Proper hand washing/washing dishes surely needs hot water??

I thought it was just my child that washed her hands like this, despite me coaching her how to do it properly and wondered what on earth was wrong with her that she thought this was a good way to wash hands 😂

On any given day in my local authority area there will be 3 or 4 schools reporting no hot water broken dishwasher, heating not working. It would be very rare for a school to close due to this. Cold water is just as effective as hot for handwashing. 99% of children do not wash tbeir hands properly anyway. If you are lucky they turn tap in and wavebtbeir habd under for a second ir two. The kitchen staff have to wash up by hand. The kitchen usually have seperate hot water supplied via electric water heaters at the sinks so that they can continue to ensure a safe food environment. If the temp in the school drops due to heating not working then the school will request temporary heaters which can be arranged within a couple of hours. If schools were to close every time one of the above scenarios were to happen there would be several schools in every local authority closed every single day. That isnt going to happen.

Chances are the sinks in the kitchen have a seperate hot water supply via electric water heaters at the dinks. Yes, its a huge amount of washing up but it happens all the time and schools just have to get on with it. Menus will be juggled around to minimise the amount of washing up needed.

My car often initially reads lower than it actually is, but then levels out. If it was that cold I'd be under 6 blankets though, nowhere near outside. I don't think it's quite minus 18 where op is, thankfully.

We just has a broken boiler for a week. Would have been mad to close for a week for that.

It's coming up to Christmas the whole place ( and every other primary school school ) will be a festering petri dish of germs regardless.

Its water of any temperature, soap and technique that gets bacteria off hands.

The temperature needed to kill germs is so much higher than hands can tolerate, that we may as well all wash our hands in cold water.

If HSE says it isn't allowed, the school have no choice. But if it is open, it's no bad thing to learn some grit!

The hot water in my secondary school breaks regularly. We have a lot of kettles(at least 12) so that the cooking lessons can continue

No hot water taps in the children’s toilets in the primary schools I have worked in. Also the canteens didn’t have a dishwashers as it was quicker and more efficient to wash up in the sinks as the crockery and cutlery came back in. The only people affected would be staff having to wash up their own mugs and the poor TAs attempting to clean up after painting and glueing sessions.

edit, just realised that of course the kitchen staff would still need hot water to wash the dishes by hand!

We wouldn't close for no hot water where I work. There's lots of families with both parents working so the inconvenience is huge. And cold water hand washing is fine with soap.

We've closed for flooding which backed the toilets up, snow when more than half the staff couldn't get in and once a heatwave when the kitchen was approaching 50 degrees (it was 42 outside). Basically it has to be unsafe for the school to close.

Not now but it was then (we actually fetched a thermometer to check the car was accurate!). It was unusually low that year, but it regularly gets pretty cold here. The OPs point was whether it's reasonable to keep a school open. In those circs it wasn't yet school was 'requiring' attendance nevertheless.

Schools are damned if they do and damned if they don’t on things like this!

as long as they have heating I don’t see an issue staying open.

Children need resilience and adults need to be flexible and innovative as well. No hot water won't kill anyone and the dc can take packed lunches for a few days. Meanwhile the kitchen staff can deep clean the kitchens or be put on handwashing supervision.

Hot water for washing hands is purely a comfort thing, the water is not hot enough to kill bacteria and will scald you before it can reach temperatures close to killing bacteria

Even with washing up, the water that comes out of our taps is not hot enough to effectively kill bacteria. And again if you can put your hands in it it's not going to kill bacteria

Our primary doesn’t have hot water coming out of the taps anyway - apparently so the children don’t burn themselves. It’s a bitch trying to wash up paint pallets etc in cold water, but it is possible.

OP I think you are being a bit precious here sorry. And echo what the majority of others have said