To wish the head would decide tonight?!

[PenguinBear]

Our head doesn't like to close (fair enough) so staff are
expected to be in as normal unless he has a change of heart in the morning. All the other local schools are shut. 2 of us live in the same village so we are travelling in together at 7am as we think it could take a long time to get there, even though we've been told by colleagues in the place where we work that roads are dreadful!

So the DC will also be in, although would rather not put them in the car if we could avoid!

It has snowed continually throughout the day and there are no signs of it stoping any time soon. AIBU To want the head to decide tonight rather than wait till 7am?

[BigBoobiedBertha]

Somebody at DS2's school told me today that they are only going to shut if there is at least an amber weather warning so they can make the decision the night before based on what the Met Office are saying. That is fine but weather has a funny habit of not reading the forecasts and doing its own thing so even that isn't foolproof. You could decide to shut the school the night before only to find that everything is passable the next morning. It could also work the other way and you could get an unexpectedly heavy fall of snow which catches everybody out which happened in our town in December 2009 (thankfully it was the first day of the school hols so school not an issue). Then the only shut for an amber warning thing is too late.

I wouldn't want to be a head teacher making that decision. Must be doubly hard if you don't even live in the town where you work like the 2 heads of our local infants and juniors. How can you know what the roads are like in another town? Weather can vary so much over even 15 or so miles. I wouldn't criticise a HT whatever they decide. Short of giving them a crystal ball I think they just have to guess like the rest of us.

[Cerisepink]

www.education.gov.uk/a0064221/length-of-school-dayyear

Just found this on the Dept of Education's website.

Seems by law schools are required to make up lost teaching time to ensure pupils receive the 190 days or 380 sessions each academic year. This is also the number of days teachers are contracted to teach plus the 5 days for the ubiquitous Inset.

Perhaps as we'll as teaching our children life lessons in resilience, our children could be taught it's right and proper to uphold the law?

[ReallyTired]

"staff who are local come so it remains open for working parents and the kids watch DVDs etc"

Schools are there to provide education and are not childcare facility. The eduation of ALL children is important whether the parents work or not.

Prehaps we need to get long term benefit claiments to clear snow in schools and hospitals.

[Hulababy]

The trouble is though when you have just half a class in. You can't teacher the normal lesson plan really as half the children are missing it, so it would then need to be repeated when they were back. Or if classes are mixed - because then again you can't follow the normal plans.

We had two Y2 classes mixed, half from each came in. We had to go off timetable otherwise it would have been a real pain later in the week. We are y2 so just kept to topical stuff, along with snow work too. So our topic is space so we did additional space related work - some ICT - space research and report writing, some space craft, a space quiz and then also some creative writing about snow/ice - and then some extra outdoor snow play too, and an impromptu singing lesson. We also figured that those who chose to stay home were probably having fun in the sun all day too, so seemed fair to have ours outside to make snowmen and a quick snowball fight. I think at the end of the day we also showed a video - though was an iplayer one from stargazing type program.