There have been so many conversations about the snow and the madness of the country coming to a standstill. Here are a few I’ve chosen to begin a bit of a debate.

This country’s so rubbish. Why can’t we cope with a little bit of snow!

The country wasn’t exposed to snow (of this amount) in the last TWO decades. They’re trying to cope with weather that was so infrequent but has since been experienced many times within the last 2 years! Am I right? This is what I recall: -

October 08 (life continued and some of celebrated a ‘white’ Diwali)

February 09 (we came to a standstill as the snowfall wasn’t expected)

December 09 (schools carried on as usual) and

Jan 10 (schools closed)

Looking at the dates above we need to get used to experiencing snow more often. Scary!

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School are naff. They’re closed. We have to arrange time off, childcare etc.

Employment changed from people living and working where they lived; to commuting to work. Thus if you live far away from the school you work in and can’t get in; it may be OK if this applies to one member of staff. However, what if half of your staff can’t get in? You have to close! There’s no other way. Or can you see a way forward?

Previously, before schools were under LEA control, they communicated more and helped each other out more. This co-ordination has now gone! Otherwise, teachers would have gone to work at a school that was local to them. For example, if they lived in Watford but worked in Edgware; if they couldn’t get into work because of weather conditions, they’d go to a school in Watford and work there for that day.

If we did that now, it would work as long as the staff lived and worked within the same borough. If not, there’d be issues around safety as boroughs only know about CRB checks done within their borough. However, many people don’t live in the borough that they work in so it wouldn’t alleviate the situation. Would it?

Additionally, some schools were closed on Wednesday 6th Jan and Thursday 7th Jan but opened on Fri 8th Jan. Parents who lived really close didn’t send their children in. It snowed again today, Wednesday 13th Jan and so many children were away. Is there much point in keeping a school open for only a third of the children to attend? If we close we get slated for it and if we’re open and continue teaching as normal, the majority of the class will miss out on the work. What to do?

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Schools are so crap. They won’t let the children play in the snow.

Snow was so rare; we used to rush to get the children out in the snow to experience it. Schools (even in England) have been sued for children breaking limbs in the snow. As a Head, would you take that risk? Especially, when all schools aren’t blessed with a budget for learning equipment let alone money to pay out in compensation.

I have only touched on a few issues that are being discussed recently. Also I’m sure I’ve not covered all the views in this post so feel free to share what you think using the reply button below this post.

http://www.heenamodi.com/2010/01/13/snow-getting-to-work-and-schools-a-debate/

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