Schools

It was much easier walking and catching the train today, due to the shops being closed. However there were loads of young people returning from their ski holidays, and they were clogging up the trains with their snow boards and skis.

The sorting out of the house is coming along at a very fast pace with the downstairs looking very tidy and homely.

Riding bikes in the woods behind the house.

I took Mia and Abi for a walk to their school so that I could take some photographs. It was lovely to see children playing in the playground plus a family kicking a football on the paving at the front of the school. Mia's teachers (job share) were working in the front classroom and gave us a wave and a smile.

This is all so different from English schools, where there is such a paranoia about security and people entering the school playgrounds during the weekend as well as school time. Schools here have low fences and during the week the doors are open. The Director of the school told me it was more important that parents feel welcome in the school rather than to worry unnecessarily about people walking off the street into a classrom. This is also true in NZ and in Australia - the openness and lack of high fences around schools is very evident in all countries.

Is England the only country that is so paranoid about security? Probably America too! I think I need to enlighten those of you who do not live in England. In England, schools are tightly shut when children are in school, and if you wish to enter you need to ring a bell, be admitted, sign a register, wear stickers stating you are a visiter and be generally escorted around the school. The reasoning is that everyone in the community might harm the children and therefore they need to be protected. Also in many schools, parents have to wait in the street and children are escorted to the front gate and delivered to parents there. Then the gates are locked! As a Headteacher of a primary school I found this obsessive attitude towards security very disturbing and often worried about the long term effect it would have on children.

Part of the playground at the school.

Mia and Abi swinging on the gate at the front of the school.

And standing in front of their school.