How rural or urban are your schools?

[pete]

Prompted by having to warn a contractor that he must have N+1 people onsite, ideally using different phone networks, if he wants to work out-of-hours above shoulder height at one of our sites....

 

How rural are your schools, generally?

[dhicks]

How rural are your schools, generally?

 

We are very urban, but at the distinctly non-gritty end of the scale - we can see the back entrance of Harrods from our performing arts building. Parking for contractors and deliveries can be a problem - parking in the area is £50 a day, and there's a 2-hour time limit on the bays directly outside the school building.

[PotNoodleTech]

Prompted by having to warn a contractor that he must have N+1 people onsite, ideally using different phone networks, if he wants to work out-of-hours above shoulder height at one of our sites....?

 

Intersting. Did you have to tell him what shoes to wear and what type of ladder to bring too?

[E_G_R2]

Though we are in walking distance of the town center we get foxes and deer in the school grounds

[Andrew_C]

Though we are in walking distance of the town center we get foxes and deer in the school grounds

I see your foxes and deer, and raise you otters. Also on the edge of a small city (once capital of England).

 

Technically a city, but smaller than most large towns..

Edited February 6, 2025 by Andrew_C

[psydii]

Prompted by having to warn a contractor that he must have N+1 people onsite, ideally using different phone networks, if he wants to work out-of-hours above shoulder height at one of our sites....

 

How rural are your schools, generally?

 

Are you a MAT? I've noticed that operating standards have slipped dramatically for schools outside of "enforced" managed services. Those doing delivery (or contracting out the work) often don't realise or understand that they are operating below standards, because they've been hired or promoted to those positions without that knowledge by strategic/regional "powers that be" in order to keep costs down.

 

That said, I know someone well outside the urban centres who sometimes digs holes for special occasions in remote locations, he usually drags his wife along and they have phones on separate networks because coverage is patchy. Its a bad look if there is already a dead body in the grave when the funeral party arrive.

Edited February 6, 2025 by psydii

[LeMarchand]

I iz in da projectz.

[Rob_D]

Are we going by official city status? Because we're well over 100k population but technically don't have city status.

[pete]

For a contractor who only visits a couple of times a year I'm going to double-check they've considered the obvious and less-obvious risks.

 

There's no phone signal until you walk down the road and face the cabbage field to get 1-2 bars of 2G. There's no footpath, no streetlighting, big drainage ditch full of water with very slippery banks just outside the school.

 

Has my approach been coloured by finding an avoidable corpse in another job aged 22? Very likely. I'd rather mildly annoy contractors by double-checking than risk the alternative.

 

 

Are you a MAT? I've noticed that operating standards have slipped dramatically for schools outside of "enforced" managed services.

 

We are a MAT.

 

Most of the terrible things we discover in schools that're looking to join us were done (or neglected) by those LA-provided managed services.

[psydii]

Common Sense and Health and Safety are born from shared experiences or lack there of, depending on your perspective.

 

You experienced the worst end of things, and now you ask for what others might consider "health and safety gone mad". At some point managers above you will start to question why things cost a bit more when you are overseeing/responsible, and when you move on they will make sure they don't hire someone who is so intrinsically motivated to provide a safe/effective operating environment, or at least that's how it seems to have worked out in LA land. That and changing the contractors every year, with no hand over and no contractual obligation for the new team to review the O&M/H&S Manuals and logs.

[kennysarmy]

I see your foxes and deer, and raise you otters. Also on the edge of a small city (once capital of England).

 

Technically a city, but smaller than most large towns..

 

Can't quite match otters, but do have regular badger visitors which we catch on CCTV in the early hours.

[southhamster]

Working for the LA managed service many years ago, I visited a lot of rural schools down in the deepest darkest south-west. Barely any mobile signal and if it was late you'd need a torch to find your way back to the car. I've driven through floods, been held up by snow and had the car bashed by a herd of wandering cows (no-one has nice cars down here). Pre-GPS, a good way to find a hiodden village school was to head for the church as they were often built nearby.

[Zoom7000]

My Multi Academy Trust of schools is very urban. All six schools are based in the east end of London, in the London Borough of Newham.

[pete]

We get rabbits, pheasants, badgers, foxes, crested newts, buzzards, muntjac and fallow deer. In the school holidays a peahen makes the back half of the school her territory and stalks around like a cowardly velociraptor.

 

My favourite are still the seagulls who've learned when it's fish & chips day and that the Y7 and Y8 will abandon or spill their chips when divebombed.

 

Are we going by official city status? Because we're well over 100k population but technically don't have city status.

 

The population sizes were more to avoid indecision than any strict metric. Pick what fits best.

Edited February 6, 2025 by pete

[Rob_D]

My favourite are still the seagulls who've learned when it's fish & chips day and that the Y7 and Y8 will abandon or spill their chips when divebombed.

Our seagulls have learned the timetable. They mob the school at break and lunchtime and then disappear the rest of the day.

[NegativeKillDeath]

Our seagulls know the time table as well. If you see them flying particularly high it means the peregrines are out hunting and the gulls don't want to be between them and the ground.