Across the country, hundreds of school children’s faces lit up as they saw a layer of fresh, crisp white snow covering every surface when they woke up. However, this joyous atmosphere of children playing in the snow, making snow angels or having innocent snowball fights was soon put to an abrupt stop when a considerable number of schools decided to not just ban their students from playing in the snow, but went to the extreme lengths of forbidding them to even touch the snow.

Snow days don’t occur very often, therefore, children as well as adults should take full advantage of this freak weather in the UK. Headteachers across the nation claim that the ban was enforced to avoid students being injured from getting whacked in the face with a lump of snow or slipping to the ground on a piece of ice. On the other hand, many students and parents are outraged by these new rules which are seen to be over the top. One parent exclaimed that it was ‘causing all the pleasure to be sucked out of a harmless snow day’.

Many people strongly believe that it should be part of one’s childhood to experience the ecstatic feeling of hurling snowballs at your best friends or staring up at the sky mesmerized whilst trying to catch snowflakes on the tip of your tongue.

So, are we depriving children of a fun-filled childhood full of snow or is it that we are putting their safety first?