Latest school closures on Twitter
Parents and carers are being reminded that during this week’s cold snap they can keep in touch with emergency school closures through Twitter.
Twitter is the internet social network phenomenon where followers will be able to follow Warwickshire County Council’s school closure updates, or ‘tweets’ as they are commonly known, at twitter.com/wccschoolclosed
The site provides an invaluable service for parents of county pupils if schools are forced to close due to severe weather conditions or through other emergency circumstances such as a flu pandemic.
John Betts, Warwickshire County Council’s Head of Resources for Children, Young People and Families, said: “As temperatures have dropped significantly this week, we are encouraging parents and carers to log onto our Twitter site for the latest updates on school closures.
“By following Warwickshire County Council’s Twitter feeds, they can monitor up-to-the-minute information if schools are affected by bad weather or any unforeseen emergencies.”
The public can still receive updates through text and email, by visiting the county council website or tuning into their local radio station.
Using Twitter is the latest of a number of innovations the county council has implemented to make this vital information as widely available as possible.
Warwickshire’s free school closure text message service has approved popular with parents in previous years. The service automatically issues a text message to all users of the service when schools have had to close. It only takes a couple of minutes to sign up online at http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/schoolclosures and up to three schools can be selected by each user.
There are currently more than one thousand people subscribed to the service which runs from September to July. Last year more than 4,000 text message notifications were sent out.
Subscription to the service expires at the end of the summer term each year, so parents and carers need to sign up at the start of each academic year to continue receiving updates.
At the same website, people can also sign up to receive email alerts and link to the school closures RSS feed – a simple way of displaying text and importing it into other computer applications.