School msg inset day tomorrow less than 24 hours notice

[JustJ18]

I have just recvd msg that my Grandsons school is having inset day tomorrow. txt msg arrived at 1.30 pm Sunday afternoon. There is no notice given on schools website, I have searched all letters info prior to Easter Holidays, no notice given. How can this be acceptable. I am now desperately trying to find cover, both sets of grandparents working, friends and other family members are working and can't do at such short notice. Any suggestions? Should I take him anyway as Teachers will be there?

Gobsmacked at the people on this thread questioning OP being the grandparent and where are the childs parents.

SURELY it isn't hard to understand OP must be the childs main carer and the parents are Not In The Picture - OR included in "friends and other family members are working"

Fuck me, use your brain.

You have been told your grandsons school is closed tomorrow, so why are you trying to sort out alternative childcare? Is that not for his parents to sort? Maybe mum or dad will have to take a day off of their work.

Not all children live with 'mum or dad'. Since OP is the one who gets text message notifications from school and is the one worrying about arranging childcare I think it's safe to assume that she is the child's primary carer.

I'm trying to think what kind of training could be so absolutely urgent that it could only be held with no notice.

Too late to be booking an external trainer and if it's being delivered by a member of staff it's highly unlikely that the school suddenly found out on a Sunday that it needed to be done tomorrow and was able to arrange it.

An emergency closure wouldn't be billed as an INSET day, though, would it? If it was a problem with the heating, or a staffing crisis, or something else that meant that the school was not safe to be in, the message would have said something about unforeseen circumstances forcing the school to be closed.

Are you sure its not just a reminder and you were informed of the date at the start of the year? Are any other INSET days on the website/social media?

Ridiculous short notice if not, considering that INSET days are set by the LEA

Not here they are not. Usually schools are able to set their own dates. these are, however, normally set well in advance with a lot of noice given, ime.

Schools usually start back on the Tuesday of each new term.

Also not the case ime. Schools only have 5 INSET days a year. IME they are not always set the for Monday after each half term/holiday. Often they are on other days of the week, esp a Friday, or some taken in 2s/3s at the start or end of the year.

Should I take him anyway as Teachers will be there?

They won't let him stay. They will send you away with him. Infact, the gates may be locked - ours are on INSET quite often, as staff can access with the code.

Have you been in touch with other parents? If it is really such late notice, surely there will be many parents in this situation and school may have a huge issue on their hands tomorrow!

I'm trying to think what kind of training could be so absolutely urgent that it could only be held with no notice.

I would think it could only be an issue with the building, so a last minute switch of dates, or a specific safeguarding issue with a member of staff, or a switch for reasons like I mentioned earlier - the death of a staff member (technically the staff did the INSET on the first day of the next holidays, but they got round the staff not being up to opening the school this way)

Never known a school do that. Dates including INSETs are set a year in advance. At the most, my old head occasionally closed an hour early (secondary) and let parents know a week in advance. There’s no way a school would do this even if OFSTED had just announced a visit.

An emergency closure wouldn't be billed as an INSET day, though, would it? If it was a problem with the heating, or a staffing crisis, or something else that meant that the school was not safe to be in, the message would have said something about unforeseen circumstances forcing the school to be closed.

It would depend if they could re-jig. If they could do the INSET tomorrow, depending on what the plan was for the next one, then they would and just open on the INSET day.

You would think they'd explain it better on text, but if it was an automated system then perhaps not.

Hopefully the OP will let us know what's going on tomorrow!

lalalalyra - the OP speciically says it's an INSET day so can only be training, any of the other issues would have been specified in the text

This happened at my old school a couple of years ago- we had to give such short notice as dodgy builders had nicked all of the copper from the inner workings of the building over the Easter holidays and we had no heating, lighting or water 😆 staff still had to come in for the initial meeting but we were swiftly sent off when the LEA told them they couldn’t make us stay with no basic facilities. Us and the kids got an extra week off 🎉 and everyone was so happy it did make me wonder if a kid had fasciliated the stealing of the copper.

Patti - It depends what systems they have access to on a Sunday.

Also, just going by experience, when the teacher in DS's school died it was sent out as an INSET day and then explained after all the staff had been spoken too.

Dates including INSETs are set a year in advance

Yet another wrong assumption - at your school they maybe but they definitely aren't always. I have had more than one occasion when the term dates shows the ones they know about at the begining of the year with a note to day that the others will be communicated when known.

You're right lalalalrya that it could be that the text communication system only has preset messages but imo it's not going to be very likely that one of the presets is "The school will be closed for an INSET day tomorrow" surely it would be "Reminder - the school will be closed for an INSET day tomorrow"

True Patti. Depends how the school normally word it. The high school mine go to have long messages - Dear Parents, Please remember blah blah blah. Where as DS's primary are really abrupt and always in caps CHILDREN IN NEED DAY TOMORROW. WEAR SPOTS. and SCHOOL SHUT TOMORROW DUE TO SNOW. My favourite was when the last head retired MRS MORRIS THANKS ALL FOR GIFTS & WISHES. It reminds me of my MIL's texting style.

lots of explaining to do! Terrible organisation!

Only if the school really has just decided to hold an INSET day tomorrow. Which WILL NOT have happened. So it's not terrible organisation on its part.

This is either a reminder text or a hoax.

I was a parent governor for 9 years. And we set all inset days in September for the following school year.

I already have all inset and holiday dates up to the end of the school year 2019 for both my children's school.

Less then 24 hours notice is not good enough.

Schools usually start back on the Tuesday of each new term

Here, only if the Monday was a bank holiday.

DS was back last Monday. And his school post inset days on their website at the start of the year (or earlier, depending on the days around the August Bank Hol).

I was a parent governor for 9 years. And we set all inset days in September for the following school year

A bit off topic but why were the governors setting the INSET days?

I imagine that the text message was a reminder. The term dates, including inset days will have been published ages ago.

Schools I worked at published term dates at least a year in advance and main dates more than that.

The only sudden unforeseen date changes I can recall in my career were boiler problems, snow/ice. Strikes and elections had more notice.

At one school we always started inset days in the Hall. It had a glazed wall alongside the main entrance. Every inset day we’d see a child trudge in at 8.45 (erring on the late side) 5 minutes later they’d be trudging out again. Why was it always the same sort of child?!

HT determines the Inset days - usually because some will involve external training - and proposes to Governors. Dates are agreed by the Governing Body. I am a Governor in a maintained school in England.

Does the school have a Facebook page? Our has a ‘parents of ... school’ pae and we would be able to ask things like this on there.

What did the text actually say? Was it a ‘reminder’ text or a ‘to inform you’ text? It could be an oversight that someone had perhaps forgotten to inform before the holidays (which is bad form, but does happen)
It could be an emergency, but in that case i would expect the message to read with sincerest apologies or the likes.

Have you checked the local authority website for school holidays and emergency closure notifications?

Hope you manage to get childcare sorted, but you would be very unreasonable just to turn up to the school knowing that dc shouldn’t be there, you would just be turned away again.

Because part of the governor 'job'is making sure that inset days are used for a purpose and not just a day off. It's about holding the school/head teacher accountable.

So holidays dates are set by the local council and inset days are done by the head/SLT and normally as when they can book the courses they need/want to do to improve area's of the school curriculum and these courses are normally book at least a year a head.

If this was genuinely a 24 hour notice inset day (which seems unlikely anyway) then there is no way that it would be announced with a simple text message (let's remember not everyone looks constantly at their phones). Plus the text would be full of apologies for short notice etc.

Either OP has missed previous communication(s) or (just conceivably) it's a mixup on the part of the school - they assumed they had sent out information about the inset day and actually hadn't.

DC's old junior school used to send out a paper copy of all term dates at the beginning of the year and then you'd get a reminder the day or two before (or if at the end of a holiday, the day they broke up) that one was happening. If you'd happened to miss or lose the paper letter, you would be in the exact position that OP is in now ... the school website was just static pages of (mostly out of date) information, no school Facebook page, no Twitter or any of the the things mentioned on here.