Friday 7 January 2011

On the arrogance of head teachers...

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It snowed this morning - in fact it's still snowing now. It started while I was at the gym - about 9.30 - and has been pretty heavy resulting in the usual 'snowcoplypse' of traffic gridlock as everyone heads for home as that first snowflake settles.

One of the trainers at the gym gets a text message from her child's school telling her to come and pick up the child as they wanted to close the school. I must admit that, on hearing this, my blood frothed and boiled a little. Understand that this is one worker texting another worker telling that worker to stop work and make it possible for them to go home early because it is snowing.

The school had absolutely no right to do that - they cannot expect someone to leave their place of work in that manner. The children - I assume since this is a school - are safe and warm and will remain so for a fair while. What the school is asking is for parents to struggle through fresh snow to collect their children - for no good reason. Solely to facilitate the teachers making a quick getaway.

Such unforgivable arrogance.

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1 comment:

Uncle Bongo said...

I agree. We had the same here in Barnsley (although in the this case the text was that parents 'could' collect kids early and they would 'try' to keep the school open).

So we were invited to travel in the worst of the weather to a place where the kids were safe and warm, to put them in car and drive through snow. Writing now at 2.30 the snow has stopped and the roads are better than they were 2 hours ago.

If teachers choose to work at schools miles from their homes, it's their problem. Their contract, just like mine, is to be there and do their job. Not always a popular view at home, as my wife is a teacher...