Explanation of Planned and Emergency Closure
Planned School Closure
- Where you have advance warning of a situation which causes your school to close.
- For example, advance warning from a utilities company that the electricity will be switched off for a day during winter.
Emergency School Closure
- Where you have no advance warning of a situation which causes your school to close, for example extreme weather conditions.
Access to School Issues – gritting and exams
Please see the link below for the list of schools priority requests to support them to stay open.
Any problems?
If you experience problems with school closures, please refer to the School Closure document below.
What happens next?
- Once you have followed these procedures (once planned closures have been approved and emergency closures automatic), your school will show as closed on the county council’s website.
- The local Radio stations will have access to the Schools Directory which reflects these closures on a separate server, enabling them to access the information without any problems, even when there is a substantial amount of traffic on the council's website.
- Don’t forget to contact the Transport Team if you have any kind of home to school transport service.
Your school website
- Make sure you highlight the closure whether a planned or emergency closure on your own School Website.
- Ask parents to visit your School’s website first when querying a school closure.
- This will ensure that the county councils website does not experience high volumes of enquiries and will allow other schools to log school closures effectively.
DCSF advice for head teachers
The DCSF has emailed head teachers about keeping schools open where possible in the current adverse weather conditions, including the need to plan for the start of the January examination period which begins on Monday 11 January.
‘If the school is open, and some pupils whose homes are not within walking distance of the school get to school by transport provided by the school or a local authority, and that transport is not available because of adverse weather conditions, those pupils should be marked using code Y (Forced and Partial Closure). Code Y does not count as absence in the statistics’.
To access this information please use the following link: