to thonk 7.30am is too late to make the call on closing schools?

[k2p2k2tog]

Snow chaos here last night, loads of cars stuck on roads, crashes, more snow. Amber warning in force until 8, Police saying don't travel unless you have to.

Council being crap as usual and won't be making the call on whether schools are closed until 7.30. There is someone manning the council social media so it's not like they can't get a message out. Lots of people will have already left to try to get in by 7.30. They should have decided overnight.

Grrr.

Our school announced they were closed at 8:45am yesterday OP, absolute nuisance.

Then they can just have the day off, surely?

On days like today it's fair to assume that a decent number of kids won't make it to school for whatever reason - be it genuine or parents just letting them have a snow day.

No it's not ideal but surely as a parent it's your job to plan for things like this? You either take the risk of sending your child and knowing they'll be turned around/need collecting if the school is closed, or you decide not to send them/take them late until you hear on a decision.

Schools can't win. If they close too early, parents will whinge because they had to take a day off unnecessarily. Announce too late and they have no childcare in place.

They're not going to please everyone.

I'm in NI and i think following the debacle when schools closed for the "storm" for TWO DAYS last year when it was light wind at best... they are reluctant to do that again.

My flappy colleague was flapping all yesterday afternoon and asked to go home. I honestly think people have lost the ability to cope with life.

I hate the whole pathetic “parents see school as childcare” argument. No we don’t but school doesn’t operate in isolation. Parents need to work too just like teachers. If the school is closed parents need to inform work (starting at 9) to cancel the 9 meeting, that they will be wfh or indeed ringing round 20 other parents to get someone to look after their child where they have to go into work. Many people have no family close enough to provide childcare within 10 min if at all. Where the weather is bad enough so people are stuck on roads I would just keep DS off school anyway and would take that decision a lot earlier than 830) (although then I’d probably be hounded by school for making a decision about my child.

It’s not dithering. It’s waiting till you have the pertinent information from the roads crews and police.

7.41 is a full hour before opening for most schools and few children live more than an hour away from school.

In Scotland where all schools are in council control individual schools can close if necessary (staff shortage, heating problems) but the council can also blanket close if the police and roads dept say it’s not safe to travel and they need the roads clear of school related traffic for emergency travel only.

I don't see how it can be done any earlier. Schools can't be staffed all night just to give an early call. If they call it too early people go nuts.

North Lanarkshire has no school buses, including their own council-run ASN transport, yet they are insisting all schools are open.

My kids are very hacked off today, not only are my cousins kids off school for the day, but they have snow to play in.

I don't think of schools as childcare. It also doesn't particularly inconvenience me as I work at home.

I do understand though that there are parents who leave for work really early, and who just can't rearrange meetings and things because school closes at short notice. Deciding the night before that schools close, or at 6am rather than 7.40am gives people extra time to make alternative arrangements for their kids, or for work.

But often the night before looks nothing like the following day. I've gone to bed several times fully expecting a white-out and woken up to pouring rain. I don't think you can expect councils to decide the night before unless it's for something like a broken boiler or no heating.

As for 6am - is there really anyone at school at that time? Surely they need time to assess the roads, see whether the school grounds are safe, and see whether enough staff are going to be able to get to work?

Several schools in our area are closed this morning - further North than OP. The announcements are made as soon as they know about bus companies decision to run school transport (all cancelled here today), and staff availability.
I think 7.30 is perfectly acceptable time to find out. School doesn’t start for over an hour after that.
With regards to prelims we have been informed that they will be rescheduled for as soon as possible, and pupils will be given updated info when school reopens. Ds and all his friends have accepted this quite happily, and don’t seem to be spiralling into panic!

How often though have we gone to bed with a forecast for severe weather and then by next morning it’s just a normal day? Weather isn’t predictable enough to make the call anything other than within a few hours in the morning

We have regular snow closures and never hear before 7.30. Sometimes 8.

@k2p2k2tog

My husband and I both work in schools and have done so for nearly 20 years. I don't know if it is a completely different system where you are but in all the time we have been working it has always been the headteacher's decision although the council are often the ones to publicise the news.

The usual protocol is that one senior member of staff or the caretaker has to make their way to the site and declare it unsafe (i.e., snow/ice on school grounds as well as treacherous roads). Before now, my husband has had to leave several hours before he normally would, battle through traffic, road closures, snow and ice so that he can then, when he arrives, justifiably say that 'nope, we are closing.' It is slightly ridiculous but you can't make that decision from a distance so I would be surprised if the council are making the decisions for all of the schools in their authority when they may not actually be geographically anywhere near them. Another reason for closing a school is that a certain number of staff are not able to make it in, thereby creating a safety risk there in terms of inadequate supervision. They probably wouldn't have heard from all of their staff until then anyway. I've always felt (although it is not because anything is vocalised by senior staff) that there is a lot of pressure on teachers to get to school, even if it means travelling in quite dangerous conditions. A lot of people view other colleagues as weak if they don't make it in.

However, I do agree that the decision could be made the night before if the met office have issued a severe weather warning but headteachers are under a lot of pressure to keep schools open if at all possible. It is seen as quite a 'big deal' if a school is closed, even just for one day by the powers that be.

We have to make up snow days racked on to the end of the school year so they HATE to cancel.

Tacked

I made my own decision. I took my own experience of what it was like in school when there was snow and realised not a lot had changed. IE half the staff would be in, half the kids would be in and therefore you would be dumped in the hall for most of the day caged in like tigers till the bus got us home. Worse than that if the bus got stuck then we were waiting in the freezing cold in the country , no loo , no food , no drinks and once we were on the bus for 8 hours . So this has coloured my judgement and made me decide whether my dc went to school or not. I decide. No one else. So far I have made the right judgement, the schools have been closed at the last minute . l have a lot of local knowledge and know the way things are , ie the schools are useless at this sort of thing and we need do what we think is best for our DC.

The usual protocol is that one senior member of staff or the caretaker has to make their way to the site and declare it unsafe

That’s my understanding on how it’s done here too (Scotland) the council are ultimately responsible but make the decision based on info received from the head teacher.

We've easily had 20cm of snowfall here. I can't see even a tiny bit of my car - it's just one big white mountain. Everything has been turned into giant snow cones!

Bin collections cancelled. School buses not operating. Quite a lot of schools closed or starting later. All of the schools in our town are shut, except for DD's. It makes zero sense to me - it's the most rural and highly dangerous to get to in snowy conditions And there's more snow on the way, apparently.

Poor DD has been off ill so far this week, so I wasn't sending her in anyway. Not sure how I would've got her in though, had she been well enough. It's over a mile away, the roads and pavements are buried, neither of us have boots tall enough to deal with this level of white stuff and she is WAY too big to pull on the sled now! Eeek.

Our council was still updating school closures at 9.30. Unfortunately, things turn a bit chaotic with severe weather. It's just one of those things.

few children live more than an hour away from school.

Depends where you live. Maybe not in big towns and cities, but there are lots of smaller towns, villages etc, where it takes longer than an hour, usually because of crap public transport where the journey involves walking and bus/train changes.

Gah. We're on a two hour delay. Ridiculous. The snow's not even that bad yet and is set to get much worse throughout the day. We are literally the only school in a 40 mile radius that's opened.

I know I'll get a call to pick him up early so I'm not going to bother sending him.

If police say don't travel unless necessary, what does that actually mean?
Urgent trip to A & E, certainly necessary.
But school? Some might say that is necessary.

It is seen as quite a 'big deal' if a school is closed, even just for one day by the powers that be.
I think that is the issue.
Whereas people used to accept odd bad weather days or boiler failure etc were part and parcel of being in school, now lots of people bitch and whine if they can't send their child to school 10 hours after throwing up and closing the school for whatever reason is some horrendous thing to do.
Schools can't win on this one. There's always going to be people who are pissed off. Most are fairly reasonable thougy even if sometimes a bit irritated.

YY I agree with @MaisyPops

I don't see the big deal if schools have to shut for a day. Bad weather happens - instead of everyone getting all hysterical, why not just accept it as one of those things?

It happens what, maybe twice a year in the U.K.? I don't think it's such a big deal that people need to get so panicked about it!

We get a lot of snow here and they always inform us by 6am if school will be closed.

I don't see the big deal if schools have to shut for a day. Bad weather happens - instead of everyone getting all hysterical, why not just accept it as one of those things?

We have 5 snow days built into our school calendar - although last year we used 7. So you don't actually know what will be the last day of the school year till about March or April. Works fine.

Perhaps the Head could sleep on the premises so that a decision can be made by 6am?