School closures

In an emergency, schools and early years centres may have to close suddenly. Find out more about preparing for school closures.

Any current school closures will be listed here as soon as we are able to add them.

If you are looking for school holiday information please visit our school term dates and holidays page.

Other ways to check whether a school is closed

If you think that a school may be closed and cannot find it here, there are other ways to get the information you need:

Visit your school's website
Most schools operate a phone tree or a text-messaging service which enables them to contact parents easily. For more information please contact your child's school
Our @LearningInSoton profile on Twitter is currently not providing updates. Please refer to this page for up to date information. Thank you for your patience while we look into this
Like our Southampton Parents page on Facebook

All schools will try to open, but they may find this impossible. Schools that are initially able to open are sometimes forced to close before the school day ends if the weather gets worse. This is to make sure that pupils and staff can get home safely.

Reasons why your child's school might be closed

The most common reasons for enforced school closures are:

Severe weather – heavy snow, ice or strong winds which may cause structural damage or disruption to safe travel to and from the school, or in some cases around the school site
Damage to buildings – caused by strong winds, fire, flooding or criminal damage
Utilities failure – a burst water main, issues with the toilets or a heating failure
Shortage of staff – this will only happen if circumstances have meant that there are not enough staff in school to ensure the safety of pupils
High levels of illness – significant illness amongst staff and pupils may lead to closure if there are insufficient staff to open the school safely, if the school requires deep cleaning or if public health advise closing for a short period of time
Industrial action – there may be rare occurrences that unions call teachers to take strike action. If enough teaching staff choose to strike, the school may have to close