School explains why they charged students for cups of water

As we all know, a heatwave has hit the UK and Ireland, and it's rather gorgeous out.

However, when you're sitting in a stuffy classroom for hours, it's safe to say you might get a bit warm and thirsty. So, you can feel for the kids in this school for wanting water. There was uproar during the week as parents on Facebook commented that Onslow St Audrey's School in Hatfield was charging its students 5p for a cup of water. Parents wrote things on Facebook such as, "None of my kids have money on them today, they better not be refused water," and the likes. However, the school principal has now come forward to say that they did not charge the kids for water, they were simply just charging for the plastic cup to stay in line with new regulations at the school. Speaking to the Hertfordshire Mercury, the school head, Dominic Richards said: "Water is freely available throughout the school and this is free for students to use. "We encourage parents to send their children to school with reusable water bottles to ensure they have access to water throughout the day," he explained. "We changed our school meal deals at Easter to bring them in line with a number of other schools in the local area. "Rather than increasing the cost of our meals, which would have increased them for all parents, we made the decision to stop providing the free bottle of water with them. "We made that decision to save our parents money and we also want to encourage parents to help save plastic."