For a child, there are few things more exciting than a “snow day”. When a school announces that its gates will be closed due to inclement weather, a child can feel momentarily that God and the fates are with them; that an otherwise illicit freedom has been permitted; that pupils are winners and teachers are losers.
Once upon a time, we would huddle around the radio, listening to the local station announce lists of schools that were shut – scarves and gloves at the ready so we could hit the hills the moment our school was read out. Today, emails and texts have made the process somewhat less romantic, but that doesn’t seem to lessen the excitement.
For a parent, however, there are few things more aggravating than a snow day. The prospect of arranging unforeseen childcare or trying to work at home while a child throws snowballs at the window is not fun – it is merely a massive inconvenience.
But more than just this, in 21st century Britain, snow days shouldn’t even be a thing.
You may think I’m being both a killjoy and overly optimistic. The UK is, after all, a country in which trains stop running for rain, wind and too much sun – let alone for blizzards. We are a nation beset by potholes, faulty property cladding and uncontactable GPs. Little works, so to assume schools can battle against a coating of snow and freezing temperatures might appear to be asking a lot.
Yet surely, we can do better. Local councils are under huge pressure, but gritting roads in the immediate vicinity of schools ought to be happening as a matter of course. Similarly, every school should have sufficient stores of its own to be salting pathways, playgrounds and any other necessary surfaces. Icy access routes or slippery paths should never be a reason for closure. And if children need to wear wellies or walking boots around the school, so be it.
Frozen pipes or broken boilers are admittedly harder problems to resolve, though they are largely a symptom of a lack of investment – by water companies or by school authorities. The simple fact is that boilers in municipal buildings should be robust enough to cope with even severe British winters (which are not at all severe compared to Scandinavian ones, for instance). Pipes shouldn’t crack in a hard frost. Then again, if a boiler does break down for a day or two, learning in coats and hats is hardly the end of the world. And who needs running water when every child these days carries a water-bottle 24/7?
In short, we should be able to keep learning establishments open. Yet even if we really, really can’t get schools to open in person when winter weather strikes, then for goodness sake did the pandemic teach us nothing about remote teaching?
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I would be the first to say that home-schooling during the Covid era was utterly bleak. Endless days of logging on for brief class chats before trying to engage my then five-year-old son with the tasks set by teachers were pure misery for everyone involved. However, it did enable a degree of learning to continue.
Some teachers have heeded the lesson. A 2022 survey found two thirds of British schools moved to virtual lessons when physical opening was made impossible by winter storms. But that suggests a patchy picture, even allowing for possible improvements in the years since.
Sad as it may be for children dreaming of their sledges, every school should have a contingency plan to avoid lost learning hours – and it should be a plan that can be rolled out straight away. Even for a one-off snow day, some element of online teaching is better than kids being left to their own (probably screen-based) devices.
Build in tobogganing time with pleasure, but please stick it between spellings and algebra.
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