So it’s been snowing a bit in London the last few days, and it’s been rather lovely. Snowball fights, Dunkirk spirit on Tooting Bec Common and all round frivolity. However, like many I have been alarmed at the way many of our systems broke down – tube, bus, train, travel websites! What I was most confused and annoyed about though was with something that could so easily be fixed…..the question yesterday morning was, ‘is my child’s school open or closed?‘ By 8am we really needed to know – should I go to work? Can Rachael get in to the V&A to sign some forms, who would look after Ruby?

So we started at BBC News online - sensible place as any. Lots of news about the snow, loads of stories about the travel chaos, and mentionings of school closures but no specifics. I went on to BBC News on TV – waited for the London section, and again, mostly travel news and a nod to the fact that schools will be closed, but no specifics.

So, I thought, let’s go straight to the source – I went to my local school’s ‘website’ (inverted commas are necessary) on the offchance that it had been updated, but it hasnt changed for over a year.

Well then, I’ll phone them – good old fashioned telephony. Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring – fair enough it is 8am – oh what’s this, no voicemail message? Just a beep? Hmm ok, well nothing of use there then.

Right – on to the local council site, Lambeth official governmenty professional-type site – they’ll tell us the score. As of Monday the 2nd Feb, there was NOTHING on there about the weather, the schools, anything useful at all. What a joke. (Today, the 3rd Feb, they do have a list of schools that are closed, which was actually useful this morning.)

OK what’s left? Aha the good ole radio, that’s we used to do when it snowed in the 80s. Tune in to BBC London….wow this snow business is big news. All Paul Ross and co talked about was the weather, how bad we all were at coping with it, annoying phone calls from panic-stricken commuters, the end of the world is nigh, blah blah blah. Oh what’s this? Schools are closed in Westminster? Oh good, some local news….keep listening…Lambeth? What about Lambeth? Nope nothing.

So after all avenues were explored, at 8.50 we strolled on to the school to see what was going on. Just outside the school, we bumped in to a fellow parent who had just been there, and told us it was shut. Phew, finally we knew. What a palavaa!

So how could this be done better? Is it the school’s fault that they couldnt communicate the information better, or the local council, or the media? We have the technology freely available to make this alot simpler, so here are some cheap and easy solutions:

  • All schools should have content managable websites – that actually get updated when important things happen. The head or administrator of the site can do it from home.
  • Schools should set up a twitter account with a feed pushed into their site. So yesterday, the head could simply text as soon as she/he knew anything, e.g. ‘the school is shut’ – and this would appear in the Twitter page and more importantly, on the home page feed for the schools site.
  • Local councils could get their sites updated before 9am.
  • Schools should sign up to sites like streetwire and encourage parents to do the same.
  • The BBC (and other portal sites) could bring in a feed of tweets or updates from schools, so you could filter by area.

We live in 2009, not 1989, and a heavy batch of snow shouldn’t cause widespread panic and uncertainty for parents. We could have all been in bed not worrying with one simple text message from the school.

Any other ideas to make it easier?