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School’s Out – part two

February 4th, 2009 · Posted by Skuds in Life · 1 Comment · Life

Still on the topic of school closures, and after reading the Guardian’s story more closely I realise that I missed the opportunity to ride one or two of my hobby horses, so let’s try again…Bearing in mind that the problem, as stated by Ed Balls is…

They were closed because teachers could not get into schools to open the schools and it was going to be really dangerous for some children trying to make the journeys when there weren’t buses or tubes or trains available and it was very hard to drive

…I asked my department of wacky ideas to come up with some possible solutions to the perceived problem of closed schools, and they came up with these:

Encourage people to live near their work

Or failing that, encourage people to work near their home.  Apparently it amounts to the same thing.  Note the word ‘encourage’.  You can’t force anyone to live or work in a particular place, that would come under the umbrella of being a ‘nanny state’ or Soviet-style centralised planning, but a touch of social engineering is OK.

Half of all government policies are social engineering to some extent, and reducing the overall geographical separation of home and work (I had the jargon department make some input too.  And it shows) has many benefits to society – fewer journeys, mostly shorter, leading to reduced congestion, lower carbon emissions, less reliance on imported fuel, less pollution, less household income spent on fuel, more walking leading to improved health, etc. etc.

No need to try and move everybody overnight, just introduce some incentives so that it becomes more attractive to live nearer work and gradually those distances will decrease.  No need to resort to negative incentives like petrol rationing: I reckon positive incentives would do it just as well.   How about tax breaks or tax credits based on the distance between work and home (or proof of a public transport season ticket)?

When I was at primary school all the teachers seemed to live within 5 miles of the school.  Now half the teachers in schools I am familiar with here seem to live down on the coast.  That changed over time, and it can change back over time.

Encourage children to go to the nearest school

One reason why the state of roads concerns Ed Balls so much is that so many school pupils use them because they don’t live within walking distance of their school.  For some reason the entire system actively encourages parents to try and get their children into the C of E primary school twenty miles away instead of the one next door.

Let parents make the decision

A blanket closure of a school is presuming all children will be unable to get in, but some will have less trouble than others.  Let the parents decide whether their own children’s journey is dangerous or not and keep them home if they think the risk is too high.  We bow down to the idea of ‘parental choice’ when it comes to picking a school but not for whether they can make it in on a particular day.

If a child’s attendance record shows too many absences because their parents keep deciding the journey is too dangerous then maybe it just shows the initial choice of school was a bad one.   And maybe the initial choice of school will be affected by taking into account the number of days a child will be absent from their chosen distant school while their classmates are in there getting educated.

Flexible staffing

When I worked for a railway company it was assumed that everybody was coming to work by train because a) it was free for us and b) there was absolutely no parking available.  On days the trains were disrupted the company recognised we would find it hard to get into work, but we could avoid being forced to take a day’s holiday by reporting to the nearest station or depot that we could get to, booking on there and offering to help.

OK, for those of us in the IT department and not in possession of all the various safety certificates and training there was not a lot we could do, but it was a good principle.  Some large companies with lots of branches do the same, why couldn’t schools do the same?

An ad hoc arrangement could be a bit risky, but every teacher who lives more than a certain distance from their workplace could be allocated a school near their home, to which they could go in extreme circumstances.  With a bit of work you could have a decent contingency plan so that all schools would have at least 75% of the teacher numbers they need – and that would be plenty if 25% of pupils don’t make it in.

Thinking about it, you could even do the same with pupils and schools…  not good for continuing with ongoing curriculum work but pupils would end up mixing with different fellow pupils in new surroundings and having different teachers.  It would be education of a different nature. They might even find that the local school is not as bad as everyone said.

So there are three ideas which nobody seems to be promoting.  Instead the suggestions I hear are:

  • Just accept it and stop moaning.  Its only the odd day.
    Has the merit of simplicity.  Not sure how well it would work if weather continued for a whole week or more though.
  • Buy loads of snowploughs
    Not very cost-effective but it would work.

I’m not saying my suggestions are perfect, or even feasible, but why not take a lateral approach and look for less obvious and reactive solutions?

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One Comment so far ↓

  • skud's sister

    Very green, well suggested! (Although I know a number of teachers who don’t want to live anywhere near the school they teach at because they really, really don’t want the kids to know where they live. Whether that is a reflection on the kids or the teachers I couldn’t say)

    My employer has a bad weather policy that allows us not to lose pay/not use up holiday if we can can either get in to our nearest store or, after making every effort to get in, contact our manager to let them know we can’t make it in at least an hour before our shift begins… This is either a typo, which should have read ‘an hour after your shift begins’, or they have made the policy for those who live in London. The oddest thing is I went to a meeting in York today, travelling via Leeds, and there was no snow in either place but we still have loads in Bradford & Halifax (and a double helping in Queensbury!)