Question: What procedure do you use to ensure that the community works together when the school has to be closed due to bad weather?
The first thing I am going to say is that you cannot win over snow closures. When deciding whether to close or not, you have to accept that you cannot please all of the people all of the time and so you must simply do what you feel is right to ensure the safety and wellbeing of your pupils and your team.
Having said that, in this internet age there is absolutely no reason why you cannot continue to educate children who are at home should a closure or partial closure occur.
Of course, some families might not have access to the internet at home – but this can be overcome by encouraging all families to put in place preparations in advance.
How about writing a letter to parents long before the bad weather hits, perhaps including a section in one of the school's newsletters too. This letter could provide information about how you will handle snow closure days.
In terms of continuing education during closure days, you could suggest that families link up in their own roads or areas, forming groups to allow children to access school work and to work together on snow closure days.
This may also help to reduce the number of parents who have to give up a day's work as they can share the responsibility of looking after the children. If families cannot or do not want to link up physically, then encourage them to find friends or neighbours who might be able to print off set work for children.
Once all families have access, schools can use their websites to set appropriate work for each class on the day and then completed work can be sent either to an admin email to be forwarded to the teacher or emailed directly to the teacher – depending on the school's policies.
Continuing education this way also helps to reinforce the role of the parent in building a strong culture and expectation of family involvement in learning.
In practical terms, I used the following action plan to handle possible closures.
- Try to make the decision the evening before as this helps parents to plan their childcare for the following day.
- A text/telephone cascade between staff will help the senior leadership team to make an informed decision.
- If the decision is that the school must close, we notify all staff and parents through a texting system and an email follows telling them what to look for as regards their child's school work for the day.
- All staff immediately access the website and/or learning platform and remotely input their classes' work.
- Throughout the day they monitor this and where appropriate begin marking the work. Remember that for your staff this is still a working day so you are not asking them to do anything that is over and above what they would normally do.
- Parents and children have access to the website or learning platform and during the day will work remotely on tasks that have been set (as well as submitting work online, pupils can also bring finished assignments in when school reopens).
The nice thing with working online is that the headteacher is also able to be involved, dipping into the conversations as and when necessary.
Ask Brenda
Brenda Bigland CBE is an education consultant, trainer and coach and a former primary school headteacher. Visit www.askbrenda.co.uk. If you have a question that you would like Brenda to advise on, email Headteacher Update at pete.henshaw@markallengroup.com