Rachel Williams, Guardian
Hundreds of thousands of children enjoyed an extra day off school yesterday, as icy conditions prevented pupils and teachers from travelling and damaged school heating systems and pipes.Areas hit hardest included Hampshire, where at least 410 schools out of a total of 536 were closed, and Hertfordshire, where more than 320 of the county’s 520 schools were shut. In Surrey 365 did not open.Business leaders raised fears that head teachers might be closing their doors too swiftly, warning that companies with few staff suffered particularly badly when parents were forced to stay at home to look after their children.”There is a concern that heads may be closing schools unnecessarily,” said Stephen Alambritis, of the Federation of Small Businesses. He called for the introduction of a universal policy on what factors should force a school to shut, so that this could only be in “exceptional circumstances” .

Margaret Morrissey, of the campaigning group ParentsOutloud, said local authorities should overhaul their contingency plans so that if a teacher’s own school was closed, he or she could offer their services to a nearby school instead to help keep classrooms open.”We all accept that schools are not babyminders but today parents are expected to work and their life revolves around schools having the children at certain times. We can’t keep disruption like this going, especially in a time when the economy is struggling,” she said.

Teachers’ leaders dismissed the idea, insisting heads were doing all they could to keep schools open where it was feasible, while weighing up the risks to pupils.Chris Keates, general secretary of the teaching union NASUWT, said: “School leaders agonise over whether to close a school and do everything possible to keep it open, but they are going to be governed by the safety of their pupils — getting there and in the school building. If you’ve got hundreds of children and only four members of staff that’s a health and safety issue as well. That has to be balanced.”On the Guardian’s website, teachers and their critics exchanged angry posts about school closures. “Here on the south coast we have around 1-2 inches of snow and main roads are fine,” wrote one reader. “But still all the schools are closed. Don’t teachers have any pride in getting to work and opening?”One teacher said he would happily be at work but had been told not to come in. “I have several exam classes with module exams next week – I desperately need to be teaching them!” he wrote.”This is a case of damned if you do damned if you don’t – you would not believe the criticism we face if a child is injured or put at risk in any way.” His students, he added, “had better be revising”.