Earlier this week, vast swathes of the country reported being disturbed by a series of sudden, loud noises.
No, not the violent storm that rocked so much of England in the early hours of Tuesday morning, but the sound of parents up and down the UK effing and blinding as they received messages saying their children’s school would be shutting due to the extreme heat.
It’s estimated that more than 1,000 schools across the country are closing or reducing their opening hours as a result of the weather.
And my phone is red hot with messages from frustrated friends, whose working weeks have been suddenly upended because of it.
One friend, a single mum I’ll call Sarah, was due to present a project she’s been working on for the past six months. On Monday at 3.50pm, as the temperature hit the high 20s, she received a notification from her son’s primary school to say that, as it didn’t have air conditioning, it would be ‘forced’ to shut from midday Tuesday until Friday.
‘It has a huge playing field surrounded by shade and trees!’ she messaged furiously from her third-floor London flat. ‘Whereas I’ve got a fan and some windows, but no outside space at all.’
So on Tuesday, she got on a sweltering train to her mum and dad’s in the suburbs, dropped off her son, got back on another sweltering train (delayed for half an hour because of the heat) and arrived late to work.
It’s always the mums, I find, who end up carrying the burden of the disruption caused by these sudden closures, while the dads swan about in the air con. My friend’s boss, male, wasn’t impressed by her tardiness. But then he has a wife who works part-time as well as a nanny to look after his two children.
It’s estimated that more than 1,000 schools across the country are closing or reducing their opening hours as a result of the weather
Every time we shut down a classroom, our children become a little less resilient, a little more lily-livered, writes Bryony
Another friend has had to take time off as ‘holiday’ in order to stay at home with her primary school-aged children at her home in Surrey. The worst thing about it, she says, is that she was actually looking forward to going to work for once, if only to sit in the office air conditioning.
Another, a work colleague, reports that her daughter’s private day school is offering ‘optional half days’, which, as she points out, is essentially a compulsory half day, and not at all convenient for her given that, like most parents in this country, she works a full day. It had ‘taken the decision to prioritise the wellbeing of pupils and staff’, apparently.
But does shutting schools really improve the wellbeing of pupils?
I understand that extreme heat is dangerous and there will be vulnerable people who need to be protected from it. But the vast majority of children are healthy, able to refill a water bottle, and easily smothered in SPF. Handheld fans can be bought cheaply on Amazon.
Every time we shut down a classroom, our children become a little less resilient, a little more lily-livered. What’s more, the structure of school is often the safest place for a child, even in a heatwave.
In France, where similar temperatures have been reached, 40 people have tragically drowned while swimming in unsupervised areas over the past week. ‘Most of the victims are young people,’ prime minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Tuesday.
There are other, equally serious implications of sending children home during heatwaves, and that is the issue of school refusal, or Emotionally-Based School Avoidance (ESBA). Now more than ever, children are not going in for lessons, with the most recent figures showing that 176,361 pupils were ‘severely absent’ during the 2024/25 school year, a 193 per cent increase from before the pandemic. Severe absence is classed as a pupil missing more than 50 per cent of classes.
The reasons for this are clear: lockdowns increased childhood anxiety, while simultaneously diminishing the ability to cope in school. The combination of both of these things has been catastrophic for many children – not to mention the parents who are left struggling to cope with the issue without support or understanding.
Add in an underfunded, overburdened Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), and you see why this problem is only getting worse.
One friend, whose teenage son has not been in school for more than half of this term so far, tells me that these closures will make the job of getting him out the door even harder next week.
‘On the one hand, I feel a weird sort of selfish relief that he’s not missing quite as much school as he would in an ordinary week,’ she told me.
‘But on the other, it sends a message that going into school is optional.
‘There isn’t much support from schools when it comes to persistent absenteeism, and now the very people who are supposed to encourage attendance – the heads of the schools themselves – have just shut up shop and sent everyone home.’
So far, I’ve been lucky. My daughter’s state secondary school has remained open, but it has just sent a message (at 5.20pm on a Wednesday) cancelling classes for years nine and up from Thursday morning.
My daughter, who is in year eight, tells me that this is ‘pathetic and unfair’ and I’m now going to have to spend the rest of the evening explaining why she can’t have the rest of the week off like everyone else.
Because I cannot for the life of me understand how my daughter will be better off at home with me in this heat, as opposed to at school in it. Unless, of course, I’d planned to bunk off work and head to the lido (no chance: the slots sold out days ago).
The few in favour of these sudden closures argue that children aren’t learning anything anyway in these conditions, and it’s unfair on teachers.
What about all the other professions, such as doctors and nurses, having to work through the heat without air con?
And what lesson are children being taught when the adults in charge shut everything the moment the mercury inches above 32C? If it’s OK to opt out of school, why shouldn’t they opt out of work when they’re older, too?
You do not need a degree in meteorology to know that we are likely to encounter more of these heatwaves in the future. Already this summer term there have been two, and with July still to go there must surely be the possibility of a third.
Schools need to be supported to adapt to rising temperatures, instead of feeling they have to close because of them. Air conditioning must surely now be prioritised in classrooms. If that isn’t possible, we must seek advice from countries such as Spain where, according to the European Environment Agency, only 1 per cent of public schools have air conditioning.
They have longer summer holidays on the continent, breaking up in early June to avoid peak temperatures, though this of course causes a different kind of headache for working parents. But it does, at the very least, allow them to make plans.
And as parents, it’s time we put our foot down and pushed for contingency plans beyond closures.
We need to be tough: for the sake of all our children, schools must remain open, whatever the weather.
