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#3462772 18-Feb-2026 19:19

Christchurch’s largest school forced to shut after contractor mistakenly cuts internet | Stuff

There's something very wrong with the world when a school can't operate without the internet.

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

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#3462774 18-Feb-2026 19:33

Article says some fire systems were not operational. Fire system failure. That will be the key issue. The rest is relatively tolerable for a day and mostly irrelevant.

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#3462775 18-Feb-2026 19:33

There's also something very wrong if the fire alarm depends on an Internet connection!

richms

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#3462779 18-Feb-2026 20:20

Behodar:

There's also something very wrong if the fire alarm depends on an Internet connection!

How else do you propose they work when copper is no longer a thing?

Richard rich.ms

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#3462783 18-Feb-2026 20:39

Radio or mobile data. Radio backups must surely still be a thing. If not, then I guess it's just mobile data.

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#3462792 18-Feb-2026 21:27

It's a requirement of some BWoFs and many commercial insurers require you to notify them, too.

richms:

Behodar:

There's also something very wrong if the fire alarm depends on an Internet connection!

How else do you propose they work when copper is no longer a thing?

Some have 4G backups, or work exclusively over 4G.

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#3462800 18-Feb-2026 21:49

^ What he said.

If such a failure is so critical that they need to shut down a school, give it redundancy!

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

ANglEAUT

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#3462939 19-Feb-2026 08:02

MadEngineer:

^ What he said.

If such a failure is so critical that they need to shut down a school, give it redundancy!

Redundancy comes at a cost. So the question becomes is it cost effective to have a radio / mobile backup for such an unlikely event. What is the cost of "not teaching children" for 1 day out of 5+ years of teachable days compared to paying the price of radio backup, regardless if it's a teachable day or not?

Being even more cynical, is that a cost the shareholders/stakeholders are willing to pay or is it simply easier to pass this cost on to the children by disrupting/not educating them?

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#3462950 19-Feb-2026 08:35

I would have thought the cheapest redundancy would be "someone in the admin office rings 111 if the fire alarm goes off".

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#3462952 19-Feb-2026 08:37

ANglEAUT:

MadEngineer:

^ What he said.

If such a failure is so critical that they need to shut down a school, give it redundancy!

Redundancy comes at a cost. So the question becomes is it cost effective to have a radio / mobile backup for such an unlikely event. What is the cost of "not teaching children" for 1 day out of 5+ years of teachable days compared to paying the price of radio backup, regardless if it's a teachable day or not?

Being even more cynical, is that a cost the shareholders/stakeholders are willing to pay or is it simply easier to pass this cost on to the children by disrupting/not educating them?

The "cost" of an unscheduled non-teaching day has a major flow on effect to the families that are left having to urgently find ways to looks after the kids that now need to be at home so that could include having to take leave (with or without pay) or paying for some form of childcare which can be well beyond the means of many families.

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#3462973 19-Feb-2026 09:53

Very strange response by the school indeed. I worked in schools for seven years up until about 3 years ago and have had a few internet outages at multiple school sites. We just carried on with activities that didn't require internet access.

Agree with the comments above that there are plenty of suitable alternatives - even the idea of just alerting staff that they need to call 111 in an emergency is more than a reasonable backup and is what anyone should be doing anyway.

I think it's a sad reflection of where we are now as a society that a school can't function without internet and said school obviously couldn't think of and implement a backup plan.

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#3462979 19-Feb-2026 10:27

KiwiSurfer:

Very strange response by the school indeed. I worked in schools for seven years up until about 3 years ago and have had a few internet outages at multiple school sites. We just carried on with activities that didn't require internet access.

Agree with the comments above that there are plenty of suitable alternatives - even the idea of just alerting staff that they need to call 111 in an emergency is more than a reasonable backup and is what anyone should be doing anyway.

I think it's a sad reflection of where we are now as a society that a school can't function without internet and said school obviously couldn't think of and implement a backup plan.

Burnside is Huge, 2600 kids, plus likely over 100 staff,

I get the feeling that there is an awful lot of cloud based teaching, along with digital checkins etc, -

Saying "go back o paper" is fine in small groups. but the time needed post the event to just put all the class attendance date back into the digital systems is likely significant

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#3462981 19-Feb-2026 10:36

According to Burnside's calendar Thurs 19th and Friday 20th are school athletics. I remember days of sweaty running about rather than books when that occurred. Do they switch to video games for that as well?

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#3463004 19-Feb-2026 11:47

Behodar: I would have thought the cheapest redundancy would be "someone in the admin office rings 111 if the fire alarm goes off".

This may be a case where some detectors or acutators were found to rely on an external service for reporting. No internet, no alarm activation. Alternatively it may be just the routing was found to be bad. Same result. No external internet no alarm activation.

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#3463005 19-Feb-2026 11:50

Behodar:
I would have thought the cheapest redundancy would be "someone in the admin office rings 111 if the fire alarm goes off".

That would probably be illegal.
If the school has a FENZ-linked "automatic" fire alarm system, that's because it has to - probably it has at least one building complex whose theoretical capacity is over the arbitrary limit (900 people?), and is therefore legally required to have a brigade-linked alarm.

No school put one of these in voluntarily, they are expensive to acquire, expensive to maintain and very expensive when they falsely trigger and cause a brigade call-out. I was on a school board and it was a nightmare.

This particular alarm needs a redundant connection, I'm not sure how that would work with an ordinary 4G cellular modem - it's not a "111" call, it's a specific function terminating at FENZ.

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