Schools as polling stations

[notedbiscuits]

For some parts of the UK, there are elections tomorrow (2nd). The school that my friend's DS goes to is closed tomorrow as its polling day. She is fuming to waste a day's annual leave as her DH is away for a week on a course and has no one to look after DS.

She said in the past, both the village hall and the church hall have been used. So why use the school which is then open for one day, Friday 3rd and not open again til Tuesday 7th as Monday is a BH.

Both the village and church halls are disabled friendly and have plenty of car parking.

When I lived 100 miles away, my polling station was a small mobile on a green area between two streets.

Do you think schools should be used as a polling station? Friend says they shouldn't unless the polling day moves and stays on Sundays which is the case for many countries around the world

They organize the elections at school because they don’t have to pay for a hire like the village hall. Feck the parents though, they will manage 🙄

@TangerinePlate schools get paid for being a polling station too apparently.
Edit : Google is a bit vague on this.....I might be wrong.

Well, sometimes.
But it's not just about the number of days. It's the constant disruption too. Aren't we still supposed to catching up from covid? And the teacher strikes?
I suspect making it inconvenient for parents to vote is a factor too though...

Schools should be the last resort option in my opinion, but there should always be an easy way of voting in person.

@AllProperTeaIsTheft @Icanseethebeach As I said in my post which you've quoted/ referred to. It is NOT an inset day. The school is closed (unfeasible design to remain open). There is no teacher training. I have no doubt some will be working, but it won't be in school.

To be clear, I am not a poster who has said they are fuming.

But I still think it takes the piss and is hypocritical when other venues, albeit requiring more effort, are available. Don't miss a day's school, don't you dare, nope, not even one. Oh, what's that? Polling data again. Too much effort and cost to sort something else out, we'll just tell the school we need their hall again.

@Kinshipug why would it make it difficult for parents to vote if their children are off school?
If you are stuck at home with them you just take them with you to the polling station.

It won't be dressed up as an INSET day it will be an INSET day although the staff might have done their required hours over several evenings instead.

Have you met small children? Of course it's more inconvenient than if the children were at school.

DS was always annoyed that as he went to a Catholic school he never got a day off for this reason while his cousin who went to a local authority school round the corner did!

Our local school doesn't close but sections off a portacabin in the playground so the school can stay open and be used as a polling station.

@Kinshipug yes I have met small children 😂
I took mine to the polling station from when she was in her pram.
Surely if you can get your children out the house to school, you can get them out the house to a polling station?

I believe I said inconvenient, not impossible...

Get a postal vote if its impossible for you to get to a polling station.

Do you never take them anywhere then? Voting only takes a couple of minutes. I took mine so they grew up always knowing what do do.

@Kinshipug I still can't see how inconvenient it is?
Thankfully we have postal voting as an option so I suppose parents who can't get out the house can do that.

Our local primary school manages it by having one room as a polling station, and this allocated room has an external door onto the pavement and a ramp.

The internal door is locked from the school side, and not even the polling staff have access to it so couldn't be forced to open it.

(I know one of the regular polling staff so asked! If they need a loo break they need to be replaced by a peripatetic senior polling officer while they go in search of a nearby loo. There's one in the supermarket a minute away.)

Schools get paid a tiny amount which is supposed to cover the extra cost of having electricity/heating on from 6:30am - 10pm. However, the amount paid is IME not enough to cover the cost of paying for a caretaker to open up the building extra early and lock up the building extra late. So it's certainly not a fund-raiser for schools!

As PP have said, all local authority-maintained schools in the UK must be open for 190 days a year. So if your school is shut tomorrow it won't make a difference to the total - it will still be open for the same number of days over the course of a year as a school that happens to be open tomorrow.

FoxtrotSkarloey

It is NOT an inset day. The school is closed (unfeasible design to remain open). There is no teacher training. I have no doubt some will be working, but it won't be in school.

So the school has given all staff a free day off?

If school staff are not in school it's because they have been required to make up the time during evening twilight sessions or off-site training. Either way the school would still be closed, if not tomorrow then another day.

But schools aren't babysitting services. It's fine to feel mildly inconvenienced but there could be a litany of reasons a school is chosen - like a pp said. And some schools can't facilitate both voters and children. It's really important people vote and it's just one day. It's not comparable to parents not being allowed to take their kids out for unauthorised absences either - this law wasn't introduced for the benefit of the teacher, but the wellbeing of the child.

At my old house the school was used, but it was the hall that had immediate access to the outside. There was no other building available locally. The other nearby buildings were used by people living in a different ward.

It is what it is. I remember having time off for voting, but it may have only been the infant side of the school.

Oh my goodness. I only said it was inconvenient. It wasn't even my main point.

Schools are open for pupils for 190 days-polling days don’t change this. The fuming friend of the OP would only have to sort a day of childcare elsewhere if it weren’t for this election!

Then help parents, make it a Friday so we can all have a long bh weekend, Thursday is utterly unhelpful

That day doesn't get made up by magic. It means something else might not get done.

I believe its due to access to the school grounds. When I was in primary school our school used to close for polling day, but then they built an extension of the hall, and had new internal lockable gates put in on the grounds. It then stayed open on polling day because they could lock certain gates and shut off part of the hall and funnel the public in and out with no access to the rest of the school. The only change was only one gate was open for drop off and pick up, to keep the other gate solely for voters, and so the internal gates could stay locked.

DS's school is closed for voting tomorrow too. All the school has done is moved an INSET day so it isn't really a problem for us. The school I work at is also used as a polling station but we use or separate nursery building so we don't need to shut the whole school but not all schools have a separate place they can make secure.