Schools and snow

[Digit]

according to their own rules all plows must be checked by trained technicians everytime they are fitted to a vehicle

With said technician arriving by council approved flying carpet due to the roads being snow bound! :roll:

Roy.

 

[heimlaga]

On the subject of how we others manage:

Today we have -25 degrees celsius and half a metre of snow. All roads are open. All schools are open. Business as usual with one exception. Outside work on construction sites and such ceases at about -15 or -20.

Some farmers are paid by the municipalities for keeping a tractor mounted snow blower and clearing smaller roads whenever there is too much snow on them. They get paid according to the number of times they do it in a winter. The municipality decides how many centimeters of snow is allowed on a certain class of road and when this is exeeded locally the farmers go to work.

The main roads and highways are cleared with lorries equipped with snow ploughs. This is run by government.

All cars must be equipped with winter tyres in winter. The police often check this. Studded tyres are generally prefered for ordinary cars and vans. Lorries use studless winter tyres and tyre chains when necsessary.

Most cars and trucks and tractors are equipped with electrical engine heaters. No motor will start cold in mid winter. You just plug in the cable and wait for half an hour or so and it will start smoothly.

Only once in my life I have heard of children not going to school for bad weather. It was in high school when the pack ice had piled up stopping the ferry. We mainlanders went to school but those from the islands stayed at home for a couple of days.

I remember going to school in -38 degrees and skiing to school as well. Driving to work through snow drifts as high as the bonnet is no problem.
It all comes down to being prepared and having good winter clothes and a snow showel in the car boot.

 

[Smudger]

Interesting.

Highlights the difference between Britain and a northern Scandinavian country, really...

It's a lot colder up north.

 

[Smudger]

Just been a total numpty on BBC news suggesting that if teachers can't get into their own school they could go to 'the school round the corner' and work there for the day...

That'd work. For paedophiles and nutters.

Can you imagine showing up unannounced at some random school, and then - with no knowledge of the school, the kids or probably even the subject being taught - doing a day's worthwhile work? And they can't check your List 99 or qualifications - just say 'here you are' and stick you in front of a class.

Of course what he meant was that teachers can provide a free childminding service for local businesses...

Mrs S has now told me off for shouting the Banned Word at the television.

 

[RogerS]

I can sort of see where he/she was coming from but perhaps they got their facts mixed up. I do remember when i was younger that when some schools were shut that children went to another one nearby. I can see how that won't work now given the points you made earlier but seems to me that there was more resilience in the system then.

 

[davin]

I am from Finland and my wife is from Poland, living here in East Sussex, school has been closed all week, why!
Neighbours have commented on the "bravery" of my wife for walking to school in 2inches of snow pushing a pram..(only to find it closed)
Gatwick has been closed for two days, why? it hasnt even snowed today
ok the roads are a bit dodgy, but just take care.
And I don`t agree that people are driving too fast, driving too slowly is the problem.
And when the snow has gone the roads will be full of holes, no doubt due to "severe arctic conditions", (lowest temp here has been -5 !, hardly arctic)
Council tax will go up..
And when people say that it rarely happens here, I can`t think of a year that the country doesn`t grind to a halt for a few days .

Just waiting for someone to say, "if you don`t like it here..." I do like it here, just dont understand it sometimes..
Saying that the Ashdown forest looked beautiful

 

[Digit]

just dont understand it sometimes..

Neither do the rest of us! :lol:

Roy.

 

[Smudger]

I can sort of see where he/she was coming from but perhaps they got their facts mixed up. I do remember when i was younger that when some schools were shut that children went to another one nearby. I can see how that won't work now given the points you made earlier but seems to me that there was more resilience in the system then.

Depends if your aim is education or childminding, I guess.
It would make as much sense to send all the kids to the local railway station and get a porter to supervise them.

 

[RogerS]

I can sort of see where he/she was coming from but perhaps they got their facts mixed up. I do remember when i was younger that when some schools were shut that children went to another one nearby. I can see how that won't work now given the points you made earlier but seems to me that there was more resilience in the system then.

Depends if your aim is education or childminding, I guess.
It would make as much sense to send all the kids to the local railway station and get a porter to supervise them.

You're missing my point, Dick. Where do I talk about railway stations? My point was that during my childhood, education did not seem to be as proscribed/SATurated with tests, this that and the other. Accordingly there was more flexibility in the system and also more schools available so that children could at least attend some form of formal education within a school environment.

As a further example of the lack of flexibility now in our education system viz. that the exams set for Monday are going ahead. The fact that few children will be actually able to take part and the sheer illogicality of that escapes me.

 

[Smudger]

I didn't mean you and railway stations - I was still cross about the twit on the news.

I think you are dead right about resilience, as well as people being closer to work - but even when I was at secondary school c1960-66 my form teacher drove from Brockham to Sutton every day - and if you've ever done that it's no fun in bad weather. We didn't expect to be warm and comfortable, we went by bus and made suitable arrangements. I don't even remember the bad winter of 1963! And I was still in short trousers. Shows how much it impinged on me.

So to all the other things I suppose we must add the growth of the motor car and the retreat from public transport, the 'comfort' lobby, a very strange attitude to risk (and that isn't some "elf 'n safety" Daily Mail nonsense, it comes from public and parents - especially parents, and may be connnected to the compensation culture) and somehow and idea that there has to be a single answer to problems. Why would a whole county close its schools instead of leaving it up to head teachers who know their local conditions? Probably risk-averse because of insurance and compensation implications.

It's all very complex!

 

[studders]

We didn't expect to be warm and comfortable, we went by bus and made suitable arrangements.

I still have some memories of infant school in the sixties; particularly the almost ritual drying of snow soaked socks on the cast iron radiators.. that was nice.
We had to walk to school but were given three pennies for the bus to get home. If we decided to walk home we could spend the money on sweets if we wanted to, now that was nice.

 

[Smudger]

We used to walk half-way and save 2d, which gave us enough for ¼oz of sweets!

 

[llangatwgnedd]

We used to walk half-way and save 2d, which gave us enough for ¼oz of sweets!

Or two Park Drives. Cough.

 

[Smudger]

Amazingly not! We were very good boys who never did anything like that...
In fact we must have been very boring indeed!

 

[BMac]

Quote: "Just been a total numpty on BBC news suggesting that if teachers can't get into their own school they could go to 'the school round the corner' and work there for the day..."

As a teacher in a previous life I was always aware that it is part of teachers' Conditions of Service that they can be redeployed in any school in exceptional circumstances and are expected to offer their services to a local school if they cannot get to their own in situations such as we have now.

I would imagine appropriate measures would be taken to ensure that people couldn't just turn up and march in pretending to be teachers.

This has more to do with ensuring that teachers fulfil their contracted teaching time than pupils being taught (based on a conversation with an Inspector who told me the Dept of Ed are more interested in teacher attendance than pupil and my own experience of 'teacher management').

Brendan

 

[RogerS]

They can't now, can they? Isn't there a question of transferability (not) of CRB checks or is that only between regions..whatever they may be. Bit in the paper today (but probably exagerrated) that children are having operations delayed because relief surgeons can't transfer their CRB checks between regions...or summat like that. I found my blood pressure rising so used the paper to light the fire.

 

[Smudger]

They can't now, can they? Isn't there a question of transferability (not) of CRB checks or is that only between regions..whatever they may be. Bit in the paper today (but probably exagerrated) that children are having operations delayed because relief surgeons can't transfer their CRB checks between regions...or summat like that. I found my blood pressure rising so used the paper to light the fire.

You can't transfer checks, they are done by each place you teach. In the case of supply teachers I believe that a separate CRB is held by each agency you work for. And they have to be renewed at regular intervals. In Wandsworth you were supposed to go for interviews as well, even if, as I had, you had been working for them for 30+ years. I never went to mine, and I don't think anyone noticed or cared.

 

[Smudger]

Quote: "Just been a total numpty on BBC news suggesting that if teachers can't get into their own school they could go to 'the school round the corner' and work there for the day..."

As a teacher in a previous life I was always aware that it is part of teachers' Conditions of Service that they can be redeployed in any school in exceptional circumstances and are expected to offer their services to a local school if they cannot get to their own in situations such as we have now.

I would imagine appropriate measures would be taken to ensure that people couldn't just turn up and march in pretending to be teachers.

This has more to do with ensuring that teachers fulfil their contracted teaching time than pupils being taught (based on a conversation with an Inspector who told me the Dept of Ed are more interested in teacher attendance than pupil and my own experience of 'teacher management').

Brendan

Which is why I said earlier that, until very recently, teachers were expected to go in even though the kids weren't.
Though the DfES aren't more interested in teacher attendance except as a number in Ofsted data collections. Pupil attendance figures are key performance indicators for schools, snow or not. Another reason to close rather than have to report 75% attendance!

I would be interested to know what 'appropriate measures' could be taken on a chaotic morning when half the kids haven't shown up, staff are phoning in to say they are stuck in snowdrifts, the office staff are late, parents are calling to ask if school is open, two kids have fallen over on the playground and Citizen X walks up and says "I'm a teacher, where's the kids?"

 

[jlawrence]

The CRB check system is the most stupidly designed system I've come across.
Don't get me wrong, it's a very good idea. But it is very very badly implemented.

What on earth is the point in having more than one check on a person. I know some people who actually hold 5 crb checks (one for working part time in a school, one for the cricket, another for brownies, another for helping out on school trips with another school and yet another for a local football team) which is ridiculous. One check should be enough and it should be renewed annually.

 

[big soft moose]

I would be interested to know what 'appropriate measures' could be taken on a chaotic morning when half the kids haven't shown up, staff are phoning in to say they are stuck in snowdrifts, the office staff are late, parents are calling to ask if school is open, two kids have fallen over on the playground and Citizen X walks up and says "I'm a teacher, where's the kids?"

I would think an itelligent first step would be to ask to see their CRB clearance (you are sent a certificate when this is granted) , and a second would be to ring their usual school to confirm they are who they say they are.

i could see this working for primary but for secondary it would be no better than child minding as there is little chance of a secondary teacher delivering an effective lesson with no preparation or knowledge of individual kids abilities