Keep the schools open - Telegraph Alongside the sledging and snowball fights and beautiful winter vistas, the recent bad weather has brought the usual toll of strain and suffering. Schools have been closed, flights grounded, trains delayed or cancelled. Two people have lost their lives - a woman from London who froze to death overnight, and a man from Essex who died in a car crash. Elsewhere, millions of people have battened down the hatches and steeled themselves against the cold, or tried their best to make it into work through the snow and ice. At such times, there will always be companies and parts of the public services whose performance fails to meet expectations. For commuters and travellers, it will have been inordinately frustrating to be directed by National Rail Enquiries to use services that turned out to have been cancelled; for those with flights to take or appointments to make, there will have been equal frustration. It is, however, worth saluting those people and organisations who did their job: who shovelled the snow, cleared the tracks, gritted roads, helped keep the country moving. Some flights were cancelled, but many more were not. However, where state schools are concerned it was a different and depressing story. Some classrooms were opened especially for exam candidates, and most independent schools managed to keep going. But more than 5,000 schools, many in towns where the snow was light, closed their doors. The reason seems to be a combination of health and safety worries and the convenience of teachers. Yet it is a source of great annoyance to parents forced to tear up their plans or stay away from work. By and large, most people were determined to get on with the job. It is a shame that those head teachers and local authorities whose first reaction was to close schools did not do the same.