Sir – January 1982 saw really severe winter weather. Snow covered the county six inches deep, 40 centimetres across the higher ground. Some main roads were impassable due to rutted ice. Temperatures fell to minus 21C and even the daytime maximum was as low as minus 10C (lower than the minimums in February this year).

Your paper of January 14, 1982, nevertheless recorded that despite the sensational weather conditions, almost everyone had taken whatever steps were needed to struggle to work and almost everyone was open for business as usual.

You reported no major shutdowns — except that is for the schools. Noting that 80 had failed to open, your editorial expressed “a nagging doubt that the people who run our schools find it just a bit too tempting to take the easy way out”.

Did your reminding teachers where their duty lay have any effect?

On the contrary. This February, in conditions a fraction as severe as 1982, it was not just 80 schools, but 252 — over three times as many, and 86 per cent of all schools — which decided not to bother.

Children will have struggled to school only to find teachers hadn’t made the effort. Parents will then have been forced to take a day off to look after them, with consequent damaging effects on business.

Pupils may not have lost much by missing a few days of what now passes for education, but will certainly have noted the clear message that comfort and convenience must be put before duty and obligation.

Hopefully, by the next time we have a bit of winter teachers will have learned where duty lies.

Michael Tyce, Waterstock