The end of school ‘snow days’?

As reported by the South Wales Argus, the director of education for Blaenau Gwent Council in Wales believes that improvements to IT could mean school snow days come to an end

Lynn Phillips believes that technological developments to home learning since the COVID pandemic, have ensured “meaningful education” is now possible and ready for when bad weather causes schools to close.

“We don’t just want to go back to where we were pre-pandemic.”

“Where there is appropriate access to IT devices in the home, when we have adverse weather conditions it does mean that meaningful education can continue as opposed to what is known as a snow day,” said Mr Phillips.

Councillor John Hill commented: “We’ve learnt a lot, particularly around IT, and I’m concerned there is a danger we’ll throw that away.”

A working group made of headteachers has been set up by the council to assess how the lessons learnt during the pandemic can improve general standards of education.

Mr Phillips believes ending snow days is “an example of the type of thinking we are putting in place.”

The Covid Hardship Fund from the government in Wales ends at the end of March 2022. From then, the full burden of managing future costs will fall on individual schools’ budgets for the first time since the COVID pandemic.

Mr Phillips said that the education budget for 2021/22 forecast a £177,000 surplus position at the end of December, but that schools were still paying pandemic costs such as specialised cleaning.

“There will be an expectation that those additional costs are met from school budgets.

“The council did take the opportunity of uplifting the individual school budget by 8.4%”, Mr Phillips stated.

This 8.4% is the equivalent of a cash increase of £3.91m.