Here in the last village in Wales the snow has been falling for a couple of hours. On the grassy bank outside my kitchen there is, perhaps, half an inch of global warming. On the road down to my house and other roads in the village it is yet to settle at all. But, quelle surprise, the village school has already cited ef ‘n’ safey reasons for a full shutdown.
Nearly all the kids at this small school live within the village confines. A few are on farms a bit outside the main settlement. There is no ‘elf ‘n’ safey threat to them nor to the teachers even if they have to drive a few miles to get here. But now working parents have to figure out how to juggle childcare as the teachers sit at home watching daytime telly and planning how they will give the kids yet another lesson on how the planet will soon burn to a crisp. This pattern in state schools is replicated across Wales and England. I do not blame the teachers here who, to be fair, are not taking part in current strikes and are good folk, it is just part of the state school culture.
Over the river in the last village in England, the private nursery which my youngest sometimes attends is open. It is outside the village boundary but there is no change there because of the snow. In Chester, the big fee paying school, Kings, which educates kids from 4 to 18 and helped make Matt Hancock the man he is today, not that it boasts of this, is open.
After school clubs at Kings are not working as the forecast is for snow all day and its pupils come from a far widespread and, often more rural, catchment area than those here in our village. But while teachers are monitoring the situation, as things stand Kings will be open all day.
And thus as greedy state school teachers, who are already very well paid consider more strikes for even more pay, parents across the land will today be working out how to cope. As is always the case, state schools often shut at the first sign of snow while public schools invariably stay open. And folks wonder why State schools underperform…