28th April 2010

BRIDPORT: Colfox School back to normal

A BRIDPORT school had to call in favours from ex-staff to cover the shortage of teachers when Iceland’s volcanic ash shut down British air space.

As the air ban was lifted last week, the Sir John Colfox School was counting the “significant” cost of the disruption with two staff having returned and others returning at the weekend.

Pupils were left to email work into the school, and the school forced to shuffle classes to minimise the disruption caused by the lack of teachers.

Nine teachers in total were stranded in foreign lands, with the amount of students still not known as the school continues to collate lists of these.

One teacher was due to fly back from Nepal and was grounded in Bahrain, two were in Bangkok, and one got as far as Lisbon from Brazil but was stranded there during the flight ban.

Headteacher Kay Taylor said they had used their own staff, but had had to call in favours from ex-staff as they couldn’t get enough supply staff from agencies.

Ms Taylor said: “It will be a significant cost to the school. But we have all the staff back now, with the last one arriving back on Tuesday.

“It was a challenging week but the students were very co-operative and understanding and the staff have been brilliant.

“Those stranded have been emailing work and were really concerned to still make sure their students didn’t suffer.”

The school was particularly focused on the exam classes due to go on study leave on May 14th and made sure they had specialist teachers, sometimes forced to split a class between several other teachers, getting more in or simply swopping classes around.

BRIDPORT: Colfox School back to normal

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