Schools and snow

It was only when we got to the school and someone said "see you at two" to their daughter that I cottoned on to the fact that the school might be closing early. I don’t know how the other parents manage to get this information. There must be some secret parent society where they find things out which are not on the BBC etc websites that the school recommends. In fact, it turned out that the school was only closing early for one class, reception. This was bad news if you had children in reception and other classes in the school as it theoretically meant two trips down the snowy lane, which, being pregnant, was not something I particularly relished. In the end, there was a complex procedure whereby you picked up your child from reception and then told another teacher the names of your other children. The teacher then went to their classrooms and got them out early. The whole reasoning behind this seemed to be to stop the children from having to go into the playground without parental escorts in case they fell over in the slush. They let the small children out first in case the big children knocked them over in their haste to get to their parents.

It all seems to have got much more complicated than when I was young and growing up partly in Scotland. Snow was common there and everyone used to slip and slide on the playground for fun. I guess some children got injured, but it wasn’t a big deal. How did we come to this state of affairs? Every parent I spoke to seemed to think it was bizarre. They wanted their kids to have fun in the snow, not fear it. Later at ballet a friend’s mum was complaining that her son was a ball of energy because he had been cooped up inside for the last six hours because his school wouldn’t let the children out. Our school didn’t either. They watched films instead.

The good thing is that the teachers seem to have found the whole system a tad complicated too and are only going to let the reception children out 10 minutes early today. Progress.