When I was at school, even if there were hardly any staff in attendance something useful was done. They may have sent home some kids if their parents were home but for those where both parents worked, the staff recognised that they had a duty to care for them until the normal end of the school day. There was no question of demanding their parents down tools and collect them.
It's just an excuse for a day off for the staff now, not to mention 'elf and safedee not wanting to take any responsibility for little johnny getting a snowball in his face in the playground.
We will have a whole generation who are a waste of space if we're not careful.
Kevin
Too late.
Our school had the most unreliable boiler ever made (or maybe it was reliable in the 19th century :-/), but that was OK, we had coats. When we went up to secondary school, we were in terrapins, with their crappy heater that never worked. Oh well, coats again.
Up to the age of 11, I used to mainly get lifts in, or cycle, as school was 5 miles away. Think I only walked a couple of times (excluding punctures etc when I cycled). But from secondary school (about 1.5 - 2m), walked/cycled every time.
In all my days at school, we never, ever had a closure. Nor a "Teacher
skiving Training Day". We had a couple of months when we couldn't use the science block (after we had a mishap in a fume cupboard, got the sequence wrong making Salt Gas iirc
, but only 1 had to go in an ambulance), but were still taught as best we could in a an unsuitable classroom until the builders had fixed the classroom we blew up.
Last winter I had to nip over to Reading to build a couple of servers during that heavy snow. I made a realistic call on what the road conditions were like, and off I went. Only to get non-stop phone calls all the way from colleagues and managers about how I must turn around and abandon it. These people fully represent the generation we have bred. I was 39yrs old, I'm big enough and ugly enough to make a sensible call on what is and is not possible, and what is and is not safe. So I turned the phone off, and continued on