Americans who live in the snow belt always laugh when the UK grinds to a halt because of an inch or so of snow. I was ready to do the same thing this week, but then I saw this satellite photo of the UK today:
There are a few places where you can still see green - part of Anglesey, and on the south coast in Devon - but not many! I grew up on the Wirral and we rarely if ever got any snow there, though we could often see it on the Welsh hills. It looks just as white as the rest of the UK today! I have no doubt that they really don't have enough ploughs, sanders and gritters to deal with this, even it is only a few inches.
My old secondary school is closed and will not open again until next Monday at the earliest. I don't EVER remember school being closed for bad weather when I was a kid, though my primary school closed once for a day because the boiler broke and there was no heat. I was intrigued to see this on the high school website though:
It looks as though they are trying to avoid the issue of having to make up the snow days by asking kids to login from home and complete work that's been assigned. (VLE = Virtual Learning Environment) I've never seen that done over here. Boy, I wish we could have done that last year when we had 9 snow days and ended up losing 3 days from our April vacation so that we could still complete 180 days of school as required by the end of June. (State schools in the UK have to put in 190 days I believe.) We have a VLE (Moodle) in my district, but relatively few teachers use it, and some of the towns in the district still only have dial-up internet access so it's not practical to require kids to use it anyway!
Only a few miles away from my hometown, the independent school my father used to work at also closed yesterday and today (in common with all Wirral, North Wales, Wrexham schools and most Cheshire schools) but will be open tomorrow:
There are a few places where you can still see green - part of Anglesey, and on the south coast in Devon - but not many! I grew up on the Wirral and we rarely if ever got any snow there, though we could often see it on the Welsh hills. It looks just as white as the rest of the UK today! I have no doubt that they really don't have enough ploughs, sanders and gritters to deal with this, even it is only a few inches.
My old secondary school is closed and will not open again until next Monday at the earliest. I don't EVER remember school being closed for bad weather when I was a kid, though my primary school closed once for a day because the boiler broke and there was no heat. I was intrigued to see this on the high school website though:
It looks as though they are trying to avoid the issue of having to make up the snow days by asking kids to login from home and complete work that's been assigned. (VLE = Virtual Learning Environment) I've never seen that done over here. Boy, I wish we could have done that last year when we had 9 snow days and ended up losing 3 days from our April vacation so that we could still complete 180 days of school as required by the end of June. (State schools in the UK have to put in 190 days I believe.) We have a VLE (Moodle) in my district, but relatively few teachers use it, and some of the towns in the district still only have dial-up internet access so it's not practical to require kids to use it anyway!
Only a few miles away from my hometown, the independent school my father used to work at also closed yesterday and today (in common with all Wirral, North Wales, Wrexham schools and most Cheshire schools) but will be open tomorrow:
I guess it's a good thing schools all seem to have websites nowadays to make these announcements! Here in New England, snow days and delayed starts because of bad weather are so common that most schools districts now have automated calling systems in addition to posting cancellations and delays on local radio and TV. I remember once driving most of my 60+ mile commute to work before hearing on the radio that school was cancelled for the day. At that point we didn't have an automatic calling system, and where I lived I couldn't get the TV or radio stations that the school posted its cancellations on. Where I lived the weather was fine so I set out for work! After that, I learned to log on to the school email system or website every morning in the winter just in case!The school will be open for all pupils on Friday 8 January.
Notes for parents
The car parks will still be very icy and potentially hazardous, especially after an overnight frost, so extreme care will be needed; please do not stay on site any longer than it takes to drop your children off. Staff will be on hand in the car parks to assist. For safety reasons and because of extremely limited parking, we are not allowing sixth formers to drive to school.Buses should be running as normal tomorrow, though buses will not be driving through the villages and so will drop pupils off on the way home on the main roads at the points where they were picked up in the morning.
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