Would you expect your children be sent home from school in this scenario?

[powerfail]

Named changed for obvious reasons.

Dc school had a power cut this morning. It was off for roughly around 40 minutes before a decision was made to send the children home. The children were in class at the time but I do understand why the decision was made. However the power issue was fixed quickly and the power came back on while the children were in class before the children were dismissed. They still dismissed them.

I understand that the power may have possibly gone off again although it was a specific issue and therefore should not have when fixed.

They sent the children home around half an hour before the text system from school worked.

One of the areas the children are going home to still has no power (they got the school area back on first) and therefore some children are going home to empty, dark, cold houses were they cannot heat or make food. Particularly those who might be on free school meals some of whom might not have easy eat none cookable food in the fridge at home.

They told those children who could not access homes to stay in school but I cannot imagine many of them did!

I cannot decide if IABU or not but honestly I think if the power came back on (and it is still on) then they should have been told they needed to stay.

None of the primaries have been dismissed from what I can gather and when this happened for a much longer period in primary they were not dismissed although I understand they do not move rooms as much in primary.

I know that my DDs have remained in school (both primary and secondary) during short-ish power cuts like this without me even being contacted. We live in a rural-ish area that has been fairly prone to them in the past (though seems better of late).

I guess there could be some health and safety issues with stuff like lighting (in some areas) heating and fire alarms, but 40 minutes is still a pretty short power cut.

Maybe they could have just bulk ordered from McDonald's to feed the kids.

There was a problem at our primary and lunch wasn't as advertised plus the wrong potato item was sent so the head went up the road and bought enough bags of chips for all the school lunch children. Initiative.

The trouble is the school won't have known how long the power would be off.
It wouldn't be safe to have a school full of kids with no power.

My kids' primary school had a power outage (along with the rest of the town) for nearly two hours one morning last week but they stayed in school. The dinner ladies drove all the food to the nearby secondary school to cook it and brought it back to serve it. I was very impressed.

"Maybe they could have just bulk ordered from McDonald's to feed the kids."
Who pays?

Maybe they could have just bulk ordered from McDonald's to feed the kids

I assume this is a joke, since we're talking secondary school so probably at least 800 students! Can you imagine the AIBU anyway - 'I AM FUMMING THAT SCHOOL FED DS MCDONALDS NOT A HEALTHY ALTERNATIVE'

i'm pretty sure I've seen that on AIBU before! I think it was a school trip late back?

oh....I may be the bad teacher!

Many years ago I was responsible for 30 happy meals on a coach....

Ok they have issued an email saying it was catering and because they were unable to test the fire alarms.

Will let them off. Their Facebook page on the other hand is kicking off.

Funnily enough I have just been working on some academic research in relation to risk and school resilience planning this morning, and statistically speaking, in almost all cases it is safest for children to be kept at school and not sent home before normal closing time.

Here they should have had a better back up plan to feed diabetics etc and the other children and teachers could have made do with energy bars and bottled water until home time, perhaps. The world would not have ended if lunch had been very basic and boring and out of a box rather than the kitchen. Schools are hopeless at prepping realistically for kitchen issues in such a way and are far too quick to send kids home. Once I arranged with a local chip shop for 300+ portions of fish and chips to be sent over to feed an entire primary school, which delighted the chip shop and the kids and kept the show on the road. Many things are possible if there is a determination to educate.

In terms of cold it needs to drop below a certain threshold before there's a legal issue and while I can't remember whether that is 12C or 14C, it's really cold and you would be wearing your coat in class (I have been in that position). It is still possible to teach and you would change your lesson plan to encourage more physical activity.

I have told one school off for having an (unplanned) fire alarm and sending a load of tinies out in the rain for nearly an hour without having made sure there were 150 foil blankets for them in advance, in a grab bag, and an arrangement to use the training centre next door for small children to wait in when such an emergency happens again. The head looked at the kids blue and shivering and agreed this was poor advance planning. You can get job lots of these foil blankets for schools for pennies each so there is no excuse.

With regard to water, toilet flushing is a realistic public health concern but that does not seem to have happened here. But no child should be sent home without the parents being made aware. Again, communications plans need to be in place in case the computers go down and so do the phones.

Our over-reliance on electric power in large modern buildings is going to present increasing problems for society in the future ... we need to be a lot more resilient. And assuming it is OK to send kids home every time there is a flake of snow or an interruption to services is just defeatist when you consider there are parts of the world where classrooms don't even have rooves.

And it occurs to me that, frankly, if a power cut knocks out the fire alarm then that is going to be useless in an actual fire, isn't it? When it's likely the electricity will cut out as well ....

You would change your lesson plan to encourage more physical activity
This would be chaos. GCSE maths or A level English do not lend themselves to physical activity.

if a power cut knocks out the fire alarm then that is going to be useless in an actual fire, isn't it?
Many alarm systems that are wired into the mains automatically set off the alarm if the electricity flow is disrupted (I assume using batteries). At my school they did.

Whatever, Claudia. Some teachers and head are happy to give in to problems, others work around them (and cause parents havoc). I am always interested to see which schools around here close on 'snow' days and which remain open. It says a lot about attitudes.

And yes, I have done cover teaching for many different subjects over the years, and I would find it perfectly possible to teach English like this. Maths I would also be able to think up a lesson plan that had the kids on their feet. I am an old-style qualified teacher where you were expected to do so.

I'm genuinely really interested in your ideas for a lesson plan that would keep students warm and actually deliver some teaching worth anything.

Would you have students jog on the spot as they took notes on how to use SohCahToa in calculations? Maybe Oliver Twist could be better taught if no one could move their fingers to write. You could really get across the contextual hardship of the storyline. Chemistry would be fun too; everyone huddling around a bunsen burner for warmth.

I went to a school in the north of England with unheated portakabins and a temperamental boiler. We just wore coats and gloves

To be fair Claudia, IT failure can happen at any time, and happens to most teachers sometimes. Teachers do need to be prepared for it, and it certainly wouldn't be impossible for one day.

Here they should have had a better back up plan to feed diabetics etc and the other children and teachers could have made do with energy bars and bottled water until home time, perhaps
That is quite an onerous expectation where power cuts are rare. There wasn't one the entire time I've been in school (7 years primary, 7 years secondary plus 4 years teaching). Giving any children food which is out of the norm is hard enough (allergies etc) but expecting to have a supply of food for an entire secondary school seems extreme given the likelihood of power cuts.

I agree that IT failure shouldn't stop teaching, but this situation is completely understandable.

I went to university outside the UK, where the weather would get down to -10 outside and I'd have classes at 8am with no central heating. Wearing a coat and gloves and sitting down for hours was horrible. For students who aren't used to/ are unprepared for this, I highly doubt the amount that they would be able to learn. Send them home for half a day, they'll be in a better mood for learning tomorrow if you do, compared to if you don't.

Our local secondary would probably have done the same and sent everybody home. The vast majority of the students come in by school bus (large rural catchment area) and so they would have immediately arranged emergency bus transport to get them all home, and it would have been a logistical nightmare to then cancel all the arrangements again - especially if they didn't know whether the power was going to be cut off a second time and have to do it all over again.

Bertrand - in the case I talked about the school paid.

Gosh! Love to know what the accountant made of that!

We are talking about less than 50 children a bag of chips each. And it was the head teachers decision. No one has a problem with it. Small children had hot food.

The idea that a school has the spare funds to pay for what could be 1600 dinners is laughable.

Laugh at me if you want. I hadn't realised it was secondary.

Where I am it is a given that if school meals cannot be provided then the school must close.

Would the chip shop have enough spuds for chips for a thousand teenagers???

We had almost this exact situation a couple of weeks ago. No power and no water for the main school building, but water in another block so there were still toilet facilities. We did not close.

I'm not saying all lessons were exactly the same as normal, but most teachers managed to sort out something suitable from books/ on paper.

School dinners were the big issue. They went out to a supermarket and bought bread and fillings to make sandwiches. Nearly 2000 teenagers were given sandwiches, crisps and fruit for their lunch that day. It hasn't done them any harm, its not ideal for long term, but for one day due to exceptional circumstances then it was OK.