Parents hit back over school heating failure (From Southend Standard)

Parents hit back over school heating failure

8:00am Friday 1st March 2013 in Echo News By Luke Lambert

Courtney-Louise Gregory is one suffering children withdrawn from the school.

PARENTS are boycotting a freezing school which has been left without heating for more than two weeks.

Angry mums and dads have been pulling their children out of Cherry Tree Primary School in Church Road, Vange, claiming their children are having to shiver through lessons.

The heating first broke on February 12, but the school fears it might not be repaired until the summer.

Nicola Skidmore, 28, from Redgrave Road, Vange, says her son CJ, aged six, and daughter Courtney-Louise, aged ten, came home on Monday complaining of the cold classrooms.

Mrs Skidmore said: “I felt I didn’t have a choice but to take them out of the school. The children are cold and their health and safety are the most important thing to me.”

Electric heaters have been brought into classrooms to try and raise the temperature, but on Monday the sheer amount of extra electricity needed overloaded the system causing a two-hour power cut.

Essex County Council is trying to put in place an external generator from today in a bid to improve the power flow. The school did issue two newsletters to parents this week explaining the problems, but parents remain angry.

A mum of five at the school, who asked not to be named, added: “It is problem after problem and I am getting very tired of it. I will be contacting other schools this week to see what can be done but for the school to have failed to fix the problem and not properly notify parents until now is not good enough.”

Parents had hoped the problems would have been fixed during the half-term break, but in a newsletter the school said major work was needed to repair damaged pipes under Year 2 classrooms floors which could not be carried out until the summer holidays start on July 24. The school confirmed it was using electric heaters to deal with the issue.

Executive Headteacher Bozena Laraway said: “Parents have been given all the information in a newsletter and will be updated once we know anything further.”