School closure due to heat

PamelaJ1

Baggs I went to school in both Nigeria and HK.
I seem to remember it used to get a bit warm there too!

Didn't school start very early in the morning so that children would go home before the hottest part of the afternoon?

GrannyGravy13

If schools can close (with minimal notice) due to heat or snow, is it any wonder parents feel entitled to take their children out in term time for family holidays 🤦‍♀️

To my mind, these are two entirely different things.

When schools close due to weather conditions, the reason is primarily the well-being of the pupils.

When parents decide to take holidays during term-time, this may be very nice for their family, although the children will discover when they go back to school that something new has been taught while they were away. The rest of the class is often disrupted when something they have already learned has be gone through again for the benifit of the child, or children who have been away.

Ifheatwaves are not just a one every ten or sixteen years event, 1960 was and then was f ollowed by years or miserable summers. schools will have somehow to find money to have sun blinds put up, inside or outside the classrooms, shady areas created in the school's playground and give children permisson to drink water during lessons.

If too many days are cancelled, children will either have to learn less in the school year or have longer school days during the cooler months of the year. Either way, there w ill be problems.

Everybody has to put up and manage with the heat. I'm working on the farm where is constant 31 degree. Loads of school are cooler than houses. Asking parents to take another days holidays to keep kids at home its not fair!!! Only because school staff wants it. They all will get pay for that day off. Government wont pay us parents for taking time off!!! There is no reason for schools closure. It can be a choice for people who want to keep their children off but not day off for teachers and school staff. Some parents cant take off. Its not fair. It is not an earthquake!!!

There are two primary schools in my road, I have GC at both.
One is giving parents the option to pick up early (lunchtime) the other is continuing as usual 🤷‍♀️

I think it most unjust to imply that schools are closing because staff want a day off. Teachers are hard working and conscientious, and it will mean extra work for them in the long run ensuring that the missed learning is made up.

Primary aged children are not noted for their ability to ‘just get on with it’ if they are hot and uncomfortable. Their well being would be the priority.

There's a red alert in my area of Berkshire. Can't stand this heat. It's still 31 degrees in the conservatory at 8.30 pm.
My grandchildren's school/preschool is closed for a couple of days. It says there could be temperatures in the mid 30s. Noooooo!!!!!

www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/26215899.berkshire-bucks--met-office-red-warning-issued/

Jo140618 I resent that remark about staff wanting the day off, my daughter teaches in a primary, we are in S Hants, her school is not closing, but they must keep the children indoors! Sounds like he’ll.

She is the same person, along with many others when Covid was rampant, went in to look after children who were vulnerable, or had no other choice.

Do the officials who make these decisions reckon the pupils will stay indoors at home, dutifully sipping tepid Vimto and responsibly staying out of the sun?

Not likely! They be out and about, very much IN the sun, having the time of their lives, playing, vandalising, starting grass fires "for fun", not to mention a little bit of light shoplifting.

And parents will be frantically trying to find emergency child care at very short notice.

Nope, I really think the powers-that-be don't think through the possible consequences of their snap decisions.

Padstow13

Do the officials who make these decisions reckon the pupils will stay indoors at home, dutifully sipping tepid Vimto and responsibly staying out of the sun?

Not likely! They be out and about, very much IN the sun, having the time of their lives, playing, vandalising, starting grass fires "for fun", not to mention a little bit of light shoplifting.

And parents will be frantically trying to find emergency child care at very short notice.

Nope, I really think the powers-that-be don't think through the possible consequences of their snap decisions.

Gosh what a positive view of your fellow human beings you have . How sad to think so badly and negatively of others

Our GC (primary) will be here having a great time in our spa pool with DH on the BBQ.

Many parents haven’t got such backup.

My primary school didn’t close in 76, but some definitely did. I work in a secondary school and the pupils can come in wearing PE kits - but they’re nasty fabrics that are anything but cooling! It’s been deeply unpleasant in the areas without aircon. My daughter was really poorly a couple of years ago through overheating in school. Neither of our schools is closing.

Dammed if they do, damned if they don’t.
Talking to a head at one of our local primaries today, he said the number of parental complaints. “Why aren’t you closing?” would probably be equalled by the complaints about closing if they decided to do that.
So far they’ve only moved sports day to start of school time, and offered parents the option to take their children home afterwards. The school will remain open to all other children.

Padstow13 oh dear, someone’s tired and grumpy.

Stupid comment

My granddaughter’s London school (secondary) is closing at lunchtime. No afternoon school. Better than nothing, I suppose.

It’s crazy closing schools due to the heat. I was at grammar school in the mid 60’s to early 70’s and I remember some boiling hot summers but school was always open. 75% of our school was an old building with small windows and thick walls so it was not too bad inside. At either end were modern extensions with huge glass windows and no blinds and it was really hot. I got sunstroke one summer as I sat next to the window. I think people were tougher back then.

Primrose53

It’s crazy closing schools due to the heat. I was at grammar school in the mid 60’s to early 70’s and I remember some boiling hot summers but school was always open. 75% of our school was an old building with small windows and thick walls so it was not too bad inside. At either end were modern extensions with huge glass windows and no blinds and it was really hot. I got sunstroke one summer as I sat next to the window. I think people were tougher back then.

... and if a child becomes seriously ill through heat-exhaustion or heat-stroke - Lord help the staff who will be accused of lack of care. Children's bodies do not regulate temperature as efficiently as adults. The effects of overheating can be serious.

I think schools will be damned if they do and equally damned if they don't, so they might as well ignore the noise and do whatever is best for their pupils / students.

We might well have been tougher 'back then' but I don't believe we had to cope with such high temperatures.

The "oh-we-just-got-on-with-it" brigade are relying on nostalgia rather than climate data.

""It's not a matter of kids being 'less tough'; it's a matter of basic physics. Met Office data shows that the five hottest UK summers on record have all happened since 2000. When we were kids, the average hottest day of the year was 4 to 7°C cooler than it is now, and heatwaves lasted half as long. We simply did not experience 38°C or 40°C days as children, and pretending we did ignores actual history."
from AI - which has no skin in the game...

I am sure that any schools that do decide to close will be providing a skeleton 'service' for those children who can't be looked after at home, just as happened during covid. However, having lots of experience of long stays in Turkey and Greece I know that school begins at 7.30 and ends at lunchtime before the real heat of the day, and at secondary level, there are two school shifts - one in the morning and one in the evening, and these arrangements are made precisely because it's accepted that neither children nor teachers can work safely in the afternoon temperatures of 30+, even with air con in the classrooms because air con units generate their own heat anyway. I wonder how teachers themselves feel - I think when we talk about 'schools' we tend to forget that teachers are human beings and are entitled to their opinion as to whether they want to be carers for 25+ children in unusually hot weather.

In my area children are still at school with temperatures of 33+ imagine small class rooms, packed with 30+ kids, no working fans as there was no funding to replace old and broken ones. The teachers were having to buy their own fans to help in classrooms. The blinds on the windows are so rubbish they do not reflect the heat. Large windows and sunshine streaming in. On top of this the indoor humidity is 63% which is not acceptable as at this level it will be providing a breeding ground for all kinds of air borne spores to multiply and affecting breathing and the ability to perspire effectively.
I would have thought, having notice been given with the heat wave alert that head teachers would have made executive decisions after risk assessing and applied common sense. Namely to open early morning and finish by lunch time.
Our councils have arranged for refuse collection operatives to start 05:00 and finish early to protect their staff.
Why as a country do we have to always have to make reactive provision whilst in the midst of a situation, rather than implement advanced planning. Have we not learnt anything from Covid. We have warning systems, organisations, advisors etc and still those in charge procrastinate. Not too dissimilar to the countries flooding events.
Equally parents of school children should plan ahead for different scenarios for childcare if schools should close, is that not common sense.

I was a student midwife in 1976, cycling miles on a bone shaker bicycle à la ‘Call the Midwife’ doing ante and post natal visits. I would start at 6am to try and get them done before it got too hot.

Why is it always the UK that makes such a huge fuss about extremes of temperature? The weather never seems to be right for some people, they moan about the cold, the rain, the snow, the sun whereas in other countries we just get on with it.

It is 37°C here today with 80% humidity but the schools are open and it will be the same in countless other hot countries the world over, and, no, they won’t all have a/c or shorter hours.

Common sense seems to have gone out the window. I usually sit on my hands and say nothing but I’m fed up of hearing about it.

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I'm in the hottest part of France, 43° today.

My friend's grandchildren's schools are closed, yet strangely enough, she is taking her DGS to his special Wednesday dyslexic school lessons in the neighbouring town. I assume that's because there will be fewer children in the building, so logistics will be easier, and it's only for half a day.

Our grammar school in the 60’s had a summer and winter uniform.

The summer one for the girls was a striped white and green cotton dress, you had to buy the material and someone had to make it. Plus white ankle socks and Clark’s sandals.

I think only the first, second and third formers wore them, the older girls just wore winter uniform, as did all the boys.

No question of wearing PE kit, navy knickers and aertex tee shirt. .

Well well well interesting stories in the Times of Malta over the years about the problems faced by schools in Malta with the heat. Parent groups, teaching unions campaigning for better measures, the government installing hundreds of air conditioning units, concerns about the strict enforcement of unsuitable uniforms I could go on but basically living in a country is no guarantee that you are a reliable source of information as to what is happening there - as we well know from countless posts from UK based posters.