So how come schools always shut and teachers get the day off, but...

I don't know - nearly all the schools are shut round here. Maybe it is because by shutting them it takes 100's of cars of the roads. I guess that is a good thing?!?! Hope your husbands day is not to awfull.

Suppose its to do with next to no kids turning up anyway.

I guess there's probably a health & safety reason behind it.

To be fair, my boss has closed our workplace today and told everyone not to come in. We're def not a school.

Strictly speaking, teachers are supposed to turn up. I always did when school was shut, even if it took me until 10am to get there. The schools are often full of staff even if they're shut to pupils. In the schools I've worked in, it's been about the conditions being unsafe for children in terms of it being too cold to sit in rooms for an hour at a stretch and a pragmatic thing about the likelihood of injuries in snow/ice. If anyone thinks they could stop 1200 teenagers running amock in the snow they're welcome to try but I've not seen it done ?

Last time I went to school in the snow, I was met by a deputation of 16 year olds booing every teacher who got as far as the driveway, throwing tennis ball size lumps of ice at my car windscreen then pelting me with ice/snow as I got out. This was the usual greeting after a long, difficult journey in the snow!

The tendency is for schools to employ staff from a wide area; if staff who live 30+ miles away can't get there or are very late you run into trouble with ratios of staff to children and you might not have enough to keep everyone safe.

My school (a rural comp) has a MASSIVE catchment area and kids are bussed in - often it is too dangerous for a double-decker bus to get in and out of the little villages. Last time kids were telling me how their buses were nearly skidding off the road. Not worth the risk!

Also, teachers live up to 40 miles away from school and the weather near them might be much worse. It has taken people over three hours to get in sometimes, and a lack of staff has obvious implications.

And seconding what PL said - it's often downright dangerous once you get there. Kids are not careful and the roads leading to school aren't gritted, so they're wet, cold and often bruised by the time they get here, as well as running the gauntlet of snowballs every time you cross between buildings (it's a five minute walk from one end of school to the other, at the same time as 2000 other people).

Hmm, well that explains it a little. I might not fully understand it until someone tells me all doctors should stay home as not many patients will come anyway ?

H has just rung me from London to tell me he's turning round and coming back. He's been travelling for 3 hours and only now do the rest of the team meant to be at the meeting think to tell him it's too snowy for them to get there.

(Do you think lack of sleep and a hefty cold are making me bitter? ?)

That's a big issue around here. My husband remembers getting snowed in at school when he was in Primary. It's one thing on a day like this getting everyone there, but if it snows all day there's no way the busses will get out to the villages by 4pm.

Zoay, if you can arrange a staff ratio of 1:30 patients at one time and encourage them to riot, bring snowballs inside, make ice slides and push the smaller patients onto them and pelt you with ice every time you ask for order you might be in luck ?

Bummer for your husband having got all that way. Hope he has a safe journey home.

Yeah, on days when we have been open in snow it's been a complete write-off - kids are anxious about their buses, parents end up telling kids to come home or coming to pick them up and you get nothing at all done all day because everyone's in a weird, half-excited, half-nervous mood.

Well this has to be a first in medicine but I've been told not to come to work: they've closed our walk in clinic.

Not that I could get there if I wanted to: no buses at all in London, hardly any tubes and the roads don't seem to have been gritted and half of them are shut.

Sure, if you can arrange for your pupils to arrive drunk complaining of potentially life threatening rectal bleeding and falling around the waiting area dramatically, we have a deal ?

Anyhow we have a ratio of about 2000 patients per dr. (Happily they rarely all turn up at once. The waiting room would be a little crowded.)

This is not normal snow conditions though - Last time it was this bad was 20 yrs ago.

Have to admit numbers 2 and 3 should be at school today - it is open - but i made the decision not to send them as it is a longish walk and i have the two littler ones to take with me - and with how ill the baby has been this year there is no way i am risking her getting worse again. Plus the snow has got much worse since we got up - and is forcast for worse this afternoon - so i would have to be trekking out again with a pushchair and toddler thru snow.... sorry - not doing it.

i felt horridly guilty when i rang the school to tell them tho ?

This is the first snow day I've had in my 7 years of teaching. Our school is closed to students because enough staff can't get in that the student:teacher ratio would be breaking the law if we opened. All buses and trains are cancelled, all but two tube lines are down, and we're being told not to drive. Walking 10 miles into school doesn't seem feasible either ?

I could actually really do to be in today, but there's enough snow outside that we can't open our front door!

Yet again the media create huge hysteria. fark me. the local news this morning (lancashire) said "do not travel unless absolutely neccessary". yes, there is snow, but i just took madam to work (40 miles each way inc 10 miles of side roads) and there were no issues apart from packed snow on side roads. some people are pathetic, crawling at 3 mph, yet still tailgating one other. it makes me really angry. we got to madams office and there were THREE cars in the car park. this is an office with over 500 people ffs. pathetic.

For teachers (my parents and sister are all teachers), I've always believed it to be do do with teachers travelling from far afield so it being quite likely that there will be teachers unable to get to work and therefore no-one to teach.

I know my mum has also had to go to the nearest school if hers is closed, which is only a 5 minute walk away so snow days aren't days off for her.

I'm not going in to the office today because I'm ill, but we've just had an email saying that secretarial cover is going to be low because a lot of secretaries can't make it in - most of them travel in on the train from Essex so sounds like the trains are down as well the tube and buses.

Nick, my husband took no notice of the weather reports either but I suspect he'll be the only one in. I do worry a bit though, he's out until 10.30pm and they've forecast snow and ice for tonight.

I think death on the icy roads was preferable to spending another day with us ?

I agree with Nick. There's quite a few people not in work today and we're in Birmingham so nowhere near the worst affected. The only bit of my route to work (non motorway or dual carriageway so small roads) that wasn't gritted was our road, and that was fine with a bit of caution. My biggest worry is what happens through the day - about 4 years ago Birmingham was gridlocked and it took me 4.5 hours to get home because snow had melted and then frozen over the grit. OK it was slippy but if people had driven with a bit of common sense there would have been no problem. I had a near miss with a minibus that journey which slid towards me, revving as it came. Nothing I could do but hope it didn't hit me. It shocks me how few people can drive in icy/snowy conditions as most of it is basic common sense.

Well there's over 80 schools/colleges shut in our county. We're still open though as we're being OFSTED inspected this week! (if the inspectors can get here!). I'm a pretty good driver and not afraid of bad weather conditions but it still took me 2 hours to do a 45 minute journey this morning. The city isn't too bad, or the A roads but I had to come through a lot of rural villages and they were treacherous. I dropped my son off at my mum's and it took me 20 minutes to get to the end of her road due to the ice and bad driving.

Another reason some schools shut is that they're afraid that even if the kids get there they might not be able to get home again and nobody wants to spend all night in a school with several hundred students!

Nick - We are near Junction 28 on M25 & it's bad here. The motorway is shut, so is the QE2 bridge

Nobody gritted the road I guess in the south east, but a little dusting & it's gritted like a kitty litter tray

Too true. I've just had my mum on the phone asking if H is ok. He's an HGV driver and she'd heard that lorries were turning over on the mways! He has been from Goole to Northampton and back and is now on his way to leeds with no problems. I'd be a nerous wreck if I listened to what they said about bad weather and lorries on the news!!!

Oh and the school closing thing is down to the laws about pupil to teacher ratios if staff can't get in. We've always been told that in the event your school closes make your way to the nearest school to you. In reality who'd want a class of children they didn't know who are all hyper because it's snowed ?

Where we are main roads are likely to be fine but we're snowed in down our road! They never grit down here and we live down a sprawling mass of country lanes!

I'm not going in today - I would be fine going in, but more is forecast for this afternoon so would be worried about getting home again. Also like Nick said - its not me that would be dangerous - but the other idiots on the road! My OH is working though and is in a mainly driving job!

Its not the getting in to open the schools that is normally the problem. The problems occur at hometime when lots of parents can take hours to get home from work to collect their children. You're then stuck with lots of children at a school that closed hours ago.

Jmp, i didnt say everyone was like that, and i appreciate that its worse in some places than others, but when the media says "dont travel" and in fact, its perfectly ok to travel (where i am, and within 40 miles) then it costs the economy money it can ill afford to lose. its irresponsible, and done for the shock factor rather than anything else.

I'm driving to the lakes later on today, and apparently there is a lot of snow there, but i m doing a job tomorrow, i cant just say with a high pitched whine "but its snowwwwwwing".

the other issue i think is that many people just seem not to know how to drive in snow, no idea whatsoever. i saw some utterly horrendous sights this morning, eye poppingly amazing examples of such bad driving, i wondered how those people got their licences. there was NO snow at all on the M6, and for a monday morning, a drive which usualy takes madam an hour took us 45 mi n utes, and that was with all the snow on the side roads. what happened to "just get on with it"?

My H has the day off today as his job involves a lot of driving and I think that's fair enough , it really isn't safe on the roads around here. Although that is mainly caused by panicked southerners who have never driven in snow before and think it's fine to try and drive at 70 on the m25 when you can't even see lane markings or the hard shoulder.

I'm working from home but it's very quiet , all of my contacts must still be in bed.

When my LEA close schools they do it en masse to keep the roads clear. It's a fairly new policy that's come about as a result of the gridlock that happened in Birmingham about 4 years ago. I suppose it also makes sense to keep teachers and school run traffic off the roads, as a lot of schools are in residential areas not on main roads.

That said, we're in today.

I'm a teacher and off today because I can't drive my car off my road. I live 25 miles from my school as well. Was panicking about being off about 6.30am then got a phone call from the deputy head saying that the school was shut anyway.

My daughter's school is in today. We're in Lancashire and, although bad on side roads, main roads etc. seem fine. That said, my husband drives a 4x4 and so he took her in this morning. He is now out and about now in his Merc Sprinter van though, getting on with it and I will go out in my wee Yaris later if I need to. I hate how some others drive in the snow, though. I am far too intolerant on the roads at the best of times.

As an aside, I have a friend from Fiji who joined the British Army many moons ago. One particular winter's morning in Catterick, his senior woke him with a rather gruff "are we not getting up today?" to which my friend replied "but it's snowing, surely we don't work when it's snowing?" ? He had never seen snow before and felt for sure that if it ever did snow in Fiji then all work would be called off (any excuse will do really ?) and figured it must be the same here. He was never able to live it down and had a weather-related nickname for the remainder of his years in the forces.

My office is now officially closed.

R's having to drive to work in "hazardous driving conditions" (travel news on the road he has to use via BBC online) because his boss has said they have to get in. If he gets snowed in there, I will not be happy.