Tag Archives: storm

SCHOOL CLOSED – Monday 1st February

CnES has confirmed all schools in the Western Isles will be closed to pupils on Monday 1st February due to the current forecast for strong winds as Storm Henry approaches. Staff should report to school as normal. We would advise that parents continue to check our website and social media accounts for the latest information, particularly in relation to circumstances for Tuesday morning.

School Closed – Monday 12th January

A press release this evening from WIEPCG confirms that all schools are closed to pupils tomorrow, Monday 12th January. Staff should attend as normal.

Although a significant number of trees have fallen around the pitch, the school received no damage during the storms. At the moment, we expect Sgoil a’ Bhac to open as normal on Tuesday. Please continue to monitor our website and social media feeds for the latest information.

The extreme weather over recent days has been very challenging and we are aware that many of our families will have suffered damage to homes and other property. We hope that loss and damage has not been too great and we look forward to welcoming our pupils safely back to school on Tuesday.

Update – Telephone Fault

15.12.14  3.00pm

BT engineers have now been able to restore service to the school’s back-up phone line, 820866. There is an on-going major fault on our main line that may take several more days to resolve. In the mean-time, we are working to now have all calls redirected to our back-up number.

If you need to contact the school office, please call 01851 820866 or e-mail backschool@gnes.net until further notice.

We would like to thank Tolsta School staff who have been receiving calls and passing messages to Sgoil a’ Bhac during this outage.

Update – Telephone Fault

12/12/14   11.30am

BT has now been able to identify the fault that has caused the failure of the school’s phonelines. A vital piece of equipment that manages the phonelines has been damaged in the recent powercuts and lightning strikes. 

BT engineers are unable, at this stage, to give us a timescale for the fault to be fixed. In the mean-time, the school’s main 820230 number will be automatically re-routed to Tolsta School and they will arrange for information to be forwarded to Sgoil a’ Bhac. Alternatively, the school can be contacted via e-mail backschool@gnes.net.

As our Cashless Catering system is updated with payments over the phoneline, we are unable to monitor pupil accounts during the period of this fault. Pupils will continue to have meal costs deducted daily and accounts will be fully updated when the issue has been resolved.

Our apologies for the inconvenience that this issue has caused and we hope to have it resolved as soon as possible.

Communication Problems

Following the power cuts over the last 48 hours, the school’s communications have been badly affected. We have been without phonelines and internet access for most of today. Late this afternoon our internet provision was restored, allowing us now to receive e-mails from parents (backschool@gnes.net) but we continue to have difficulty with both our main and back-up phonelines. We have been working with the Council’s IT staff and BT to resolve the issue and hope to have our phonelines operational again tomorrow.

Our apologies for any inconvenience caused to people who were attempting to contact the school today.