School closures – revisited
After the emotional roller coaster of my DS wedding, I have decided to take a few days off from the blog. I can’t bear the thought of you not finding something to look at though Dear Reader so will post some guest posts from people that you may have missed!
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This post was first published by Ian Addison on his blog here. It deals with the ever-increasing problem of school clsures and missed learning as covered in my post Snow Closures. It’s snowing. You may have noticed. All across the country schools are closed and teachers are going to enjoy a day off. But how does your school inform the parents?
Many schools this morning had trouble getting to the LA website for school closures as it was creaking under the demand. I did tweet about the issue the Hampshire website was facing and to give him credit, as always, @dfearnley was quick to say it was being looked into. We have 500+ schools so listening out for them all on the radio surely isn’t an option? So why aren’t more schools stepping up and taking responsibility? I wouldn’t even consider the LA noticeboard an option.
For us, it is all about our school website. This is where we direct parents to for information all year round, so why not now when it is snowing? Within 1minute of ‘the phonecall’ this morning, we had a page on our website full of snowy activities and information. Our parents also received a text message and email via Parent Mail.
So why doesn’t everyone do this? One thing that shocks me is that so few schools are able to update their own website. I spoke to a school yesterday that have to phone a technician to get it updated, that is ridiculous! Surely when you have a website/VLE or whatever, you need to make sure someone (everyone?) knows how to update it.
Who should be guiding these schools about their school websites? Is it the LA or the website company? Does anyone guide them at all? Why are they not manageable? Come on…have a look at your school and your website. Does it deliver for your parents when it really matters?
We had a potential school closure the other week.The pipes had frozen and they were trying to get someone to fix. They sent a note home saying they would update the website – but what they didn’t do is update it either way so people were left wondering if it was open or not. They got it fixed and thought they didn’t need to update! In the end, someone put a note on a private Facebook group set up for the PTFA that the school was open so that people knew for sure. If you’re going to leave it as a possible closure, you’re going to need to give a clear indication either way.
Also, I have given the school my email address countless times and have never once had an email off them. Nor have I ever had a text. When school was closed for snow in January, I relied on a text chain from other parents. Luckily one of my friends has a connection to one of the teachers so I got notified fairly early and I passed on messages but still.