Featured Image (from left to right): Alec Marshall, Lakeisha, Star, Destiny, Mirren, Alexander and wife Kirsty. (Credit: Alec Marshall)
A school has scrapped plans to turn off its heating all day in a bid to try and conserve energy after a father told the school it was ‘child cruelty’.
Alec Marshall, who has two children that attend Wolsingham School in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, said the original idea would have stopped children from learning and risked the health of the pupils.
In an email to sent to parents and carers on Monday, Wolsingham School announced they would be turning off the heating all day at the end of the week for ‘Blue Nose Day’ – believed to be a play on words of the Comic Relief charity fundraising event ‘Red Nose Day’ – to ‘help reduce our carbon footprint.’
Speaking to Metro, Marshall, 36, said: ‘This is child cruelty.
‘When the heating goes off the school usually send the kids home, yet now they want to turn it off intentionally.
‘There are children whose families cannot afford to put the heating on and the only place they have for warmth is school for six hours.’
He warned that children left in the cold all day could end up being off sick and miss out on lessons.
The father-of-five said his children in Year 9 and 10 came home concerned that the school would be freezing on Friday without heating or being allowed to wear warmer clothing.
Mr Marshall added: ‘This sounds more like blue lips day. You need heating on at this time of year.
‘Go and tell prisons to turn the heating off and see how long it takes until they riot.’
In their initial email, the 400-year-old school, which was rated ‘good’ by Ofsted last year, recommended that students wore ‘non-visible’ layers of clothing underneath the school uniform but said wearing hoodies to keep warm would not be permitted.
Parent Alec Marshall was left annoyed and concerned by the email from the County Durham school (Credit: Alec Marshall)
The Met Office forecast for Wolsingham showed that the ‘feels like temperature’ would reach only 12 degrees during the day, and was predicted to be 8 degrees at the beginning of the school day.
Following backlash from parents, headteacher Mr Mitchinson confimed in an email on Tuesday that the energy conservation initiative would not go ahead in the winter.
The initiative was being been spearheaded by Wolsingham School’s Climate Action Team, which has so far taken measures to reduce single use plastics by introducing filtered water coolers.
The head of the coeducational school told parents: ‘As you will be aware the students involved in the Climate Action Team have been planning a Blue Nose Day for this Friday 18th October 2024.
‘The event was designed to raise the importance in our school community of being more sustainable and in a small way reduce the schools carbon footprint.
‘The date was carefully chosen by looking at average temperatures by month and short-term weather forecasts, indicating a temperature in Wolsingham of approx. 15C on …read more
Source:: Metro
