Coronavirus and bad weather: Should schools close? A Gosport headteacher's view

During the many years of me being a headteacher, the sense of dread of snow falling never diminished. When snow is forecast every school leader knows they are going to adopt the role of a prophet!

Everyone expects them to know whether inclement weather will justify closing the school or not. Some will be willing the school to be closed. Indeed, my own children used to receive messages from their friends asking them to encourage me to make the decision to shut the school.

It was a no-win scenario. For each person who thought the school should close there was another who did not think it should.

Generally, both those for and against had sound reasons, although there were those whose reasons were not reasonable, especially if they were driven more by a motivation to do something that a closed school enabled them to do, or were reckless in their desire to keep the school open so that their plans were not disrupted.

The biggest difficulty was judging when to make the decision to close the school or keep it open. It was a decision only you could make and it had to be made.

Making it too soon made it look like you were cavalier in your desire to have a day off, especially if the weather did not turn to snow or hardly any frozen precipitation fell from the skies. If you made it too late and snow was causing a risk to health and safety, you were damned for potentially leading people to be vulnerable in dangerous conditions.

The arrival in the country of coronavirus presents a threat of a different dimension and so my thoughts are with all school leaders in the coming days and weeks. I hope that they are supported in the challenge and not judged unreasonably as they manage the stress of making the right decision and judgement call.