School Emergency Closures

In certain circumstances that qualify as emergencies such as bad weather - snow or high winds, heating failures, power cut etc, schools can be closed.

Weather Disruption to Schools

There can be quite a number of days during the winter where the weather can cause disruption to both schools and school transport. During times of severe weather, Education, Leisure and Housing will:

• Endeavour to keep our schools open.
• Provide a good educational experience during times of disruption.
• Provide a mechanism by which as many pupils as possible can access work from home through GLOW or on school websites.
• Provide pupils with specific work for home study.
• Put in place ‘catch up’ work where feasible.

How to get Information

Throughout the winter terms, October to Easter, two members of the bad weather team are on duty early in the morning (from 06:00) to liaise with conveyors and head teachers.

In the morning, any reports if schools or school transport are affected are passed to Radio Orkney (93.7 FM) for broadcasting on their programme at 07:30. The OIC School Transport Facebook page and OIC Twitter feed are both updated as soon as information is available. These can be accessed from the 'Related Sites' section of this page.

During the school day, schools have arrangements in place to contact parents if the school is closing early or if school transport is operating early.  Please ensure that the school has up to date emergency contact numbers.

Disruptions to School Transport

In bad weather conditions it is very difficult to obtain individual route information, as this will depend on the local weather and road conditions, and the sheer volume of routes involved. We therefore are only able to advise whether there may be disruptions to school transport in general.

If there is no school transport due to bad weather, it is the parent’s decision whether or not it is safe to transport their children to school. We expect that parents base this decision on the condition of roads in their area – there is no expectation that all parents will be able to transport their children. If a parent decides it is not safe to put their child to school, then they should contact the school stating that the absence is weather related.

Where an ‘Amber’ warning is issued from the Met Office, this will automatically mean school transport will not operate for the duration of the warning (when any of the warning period includes school hours).

Further detailed information can be found in the ‘Related Downloads’ section of this page in the Winter Newsletter, School Transport FAQs and Kirkwall Grammar School Information on Barrier closures.