This page contains important information concerning the safety of your child when the weather causes transport difficulties or the school has to be closed in other circumstances where health and safety may be compromised.
Adverse weather can make travelling dangerous to and from school, especially as Haslingden High School and Sixth Form is one of the highest secondary schools in Lancashire and on the edge of the Pennines. As many of our students and staff travel considerable distances to the school by car and by public transport, we are heavily reliant upon passable roads.
There are three main ways in which we will attempt to notify you as soon as possible if we need to close the school:
- We will send an email to all contacts listed on our system who have parental responsibility. Please make sure the school has up-to-date email addresses for all relevant contacts
- There will be a message on the home page of the school website
- We will inform Radio Lancashire, who regularly broadcast details of schools which are closed. Radio Lancashire broadcasts on 95.5, 103.9 and 104.5 FM
Please note that we will only notify you in the event of a school closure; if you are not notified then you should assume that the school is open. Please do not telephone the school to check, as the lines soon become overloaded.
If the school has to close early during the course of the school day, the following options are available:-
- You can pick your child up from school
- Your child can make their own way home
- With your permission, your child can go to another student’s or relative’s home
- If none of the above are possible, your child can stay in school until the end of the school day However, it will be the responsibility of the student to report to the school office
Please ensure that your child is aware of your wishes with regard to school closure procedures. The forced closure of the school will, by necessity, be done quickly and students will be made aware of the options open to them (buses available/unavailable, and that the school will remain open until all students have left safely). If bad weather is expected, please ensure that your child is adequately dressed and has emergency money for the journey.
If school does close early and you have requested that your child makes their own way home or to a friend/relatives house, students should be advised to make their way home in pairs or small groups wherever possible. In such circumstances, please stress to your child the importance of responsible behaviour, as the conditions can be treacherous, especially when crossing roads.
The Covid pandemic challenged us all to think of new ways of living and forced us to make changes to the way we work; the most obvious adaptation in teaching was the implementation of remote learning. Subsequently, this does mean that we are able to continue to provide good quality education provision if students are unable to attend school due to closure. However, we are also firm in our belief that education stretches beyond the confines of the taught curriculum and we remain passionate about giving students the opportunity to leave us with a whole host of wonderful memories. Simply put, this includes being able to make a snowman, an igloo, a snow angel, or just to play outside in the winter weather when the opportunity presents itself! For this reason, no remote learning will be set on the first day following a school closure.
For days following this, teaching staff will provide remote learning as per periods 1-3 of the normal school timetable. Wherever possible, this will include a ‘live element’ and will be communicated via the Edulink homework function. However, it is important to note that severe weather closures can also impact teaching colleagues, presenting issues such as childcare, which result in live learning not being possible in some instances. Students are expected to check their emails and Edulink regularly throughout the course of a school term but particularly in the event of a school closure.
Our current Year 7 and Year 8 students will not have used Zoom for remote learning whilst at Haslingden High School, which is our preferred platform for delivering the live element of a lesson. We will be supporting students with being able to access this prior to the Christmas break, however, should we have to close the school before Friday 16 December 2022, Year 7 and Year 8 students would be asked to engage with their work via the instructions given to them on Edulink. It is important to note that based on the current weather forecasts we do not envisage this being the case.
We hope that we will not need to close; we managed to get through the last academic year without this happening. However, should this be necessary and the arrangements outlined above need to be employed, we will review the effectiveness and consider any possible changes that may be necessary to support our students and their families.
Thank you for your continued support and understanding.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash