School phone lines down for a week in term-time

[saadia]

Just wondered if this was acceptable. A week before the hols dss and I were ill. I was constantly trying to call the school to let them know but for a whole week the phone lines were out of order. Surely this is not right. What if a parent had to contact the school urgently. Should I query this when we go back (we are on holiday here).

Well telephone lines can be beyond their control, so not sure that there is much that they can do. Out of interest what would you have expected them to do? I went to a school where very few parents would have had a phone in the first place so most parents would have walked to the school with their message I guess.

Message withdrawn

I suspect all you can do is ask them to think about how they handle it if it happens again - perhaps an emergency mobile number only to be used if phone lines are down (although I suspect parents would be tempted to use it all the time...).

We had no phone lines for about ten streets around our school for a week as some thieving bastards tried to steal the copper wire out of the junction box. Didn't actually occur to me to worry about not being able to contact the school. Would probaly have just walked there or asked someone who lives nearby to pop up.

Yes it's a pain but what could the school do about it? I love it that the school automatically gets the blame when parent is inconvenienced in this way. Perhaps you could volunteer one of your dcs to run errands for them to keep lines of communication open? (Sorry - but really!)

Our main school line was also out for about a week recently - luckily we do have a second line for faxes, so we could get calls diverted to that one, but if the school didn't have another line there wouldn't be much they could do.

I don't think any of the teachers would be keen on giving out their own mobile numbers any more, they have done this in the past for parents going on school trips, but it has been abused - one parent rang a teacher at 11pm to get him to tell their son to go to bed!

It's not acceptable, but it's almost certainly not the school's fault.

A whole week is mad though - I remember when the lines were down at dd's school for the best part of a day - they were considered a priority over domestic landline failures.

If they shut the school because of this, people would be up in arms.

If they keep the school open, people are annoyed about that too.

can't win and it isn't even their fault

BT didn't seem to be giving our school much priority - though maybe that was because we had the second line.

I did go into the school on Tuesday, to let them know as they cause such a fuss about calling in when children are sick. I'm not blaming the school, I just find it odd that the lines can be down for so long.