Was Birmingham right to shut its schools after the heavy snowfall?

BIRMINGHAM City Council was absolutely right in closing all the schools and stopping buses and bin lorries after this week’s bad weather. I live two miles from the city centre and even in the hard winter of 1962/63 I never saw anything like the snow that fell persistently for hours.

M. SPENCER, Birmingham. IT’S amazing that the Snowflakes are adversely affected by snowflakes falling from the sky. As a child of the Fifties in Manchester, I not only had snow and ice to contend with but thick smogs. Schools didn’t close unless the heating failed. We wore winter clothes and a smog mask and walked to school. I’ve never met a child who didn’t like playing in the snow — it’s today’s adults who are the problem.

B. S. SMITH, Felton, Somerset. WHEN I worked in education, there were often phone calls after snowfall asking

whether the school would be closed. We would reply: ‘If Tesco is open, then so are we!’

CHRIS PRITCHETT, Nottingham. AS A probationary teacher in Luton, there was a heavy fall of snow on the night before the first day of the January term. I walked four miles from my bedsit because the buses couldn’t make it up the hills and found myself one of only two members of staff with 300 children to look after. We each supervised four classrooms until the headmaster and other teachers arrived — they all lived farther away and had walked for hours. Did any real learning take place that day? No. Was it safe for two teachers to be responsible for 300 children? No! It would have been much better to have closed the school, but in the days before texting, that would have been impossible. So I believe the authorities that closed schools this week because adequate staffing could not be guaranteed acted correctly.

JOHN KNIGHT, Sleaford, Lincs. KEEP your child off school for a few days and you risk a fine for causing harm to their future GCSE results. Snow falls and schools shut but, apparently, this has no adverse effect. ALAN CARPENTER, Tingley, W. Yorks. MOST winters it snows in this country and every time we panic. ‘Chaos’ and ‘disorder’ was the description used by one TV news channel this week. The Scandinavians must be laughing themselves silly at us.

SPENCER BROTHERTON, Eye, Cambs. IN MY first year at secondary school, the bus could not get up a hill due to thick snow. So along with my mates, I walked the three miles back home. The next day, we were caned by the headmaster for not coming into school. Character building! PETER HENN, Maidstone, Kent.