To be outraged most schools in Queensland Australia have no airconditioning.

[Mammasmitten]

I live in Queensland, Australia and for most of the year it is an average temperature of 30 degrees celsius or higher. Summer is insanely hot. My DD is due to start school next year and I am seriously researching homeschool options as I just can't make her sit all day in a stinking hot classroom risking heatstroke and other heat related illnesses. AIBU to be angry that despite a decade of petitioning, teachers and students are denied cooling for their classrooms and are expected to work in extreme heat. Our prisons are air-conditioned, why the hell aren't our schools.

I think people overlook the amount that Europe spends on infrastructure - the public infrastructure in Australia is horrible even if the elite have to use them.

There were a lot of schools in California with no A/C too, my kids were lucky with a new school but friends kids weren't so lucky. Temp in summer close to 40 often.They switched from 3 months off over summer to year round school. which didn't help.
They did a few things, classes started at 7.30am school finished at 2pm and the old schools were built with most windows on the shaded side, so they could open up and not cook. Still not comfortable all the time.
Kids get used to it, mine still got turfed out at playtime in the heat and all of them learned to play in shaded parts of the yead, under trees and canopies. They survive just fine.

I live in Queensland. One of the reasons I chose our children’s school is because it has aircon. Even some of the private schools don’t.

Yes kids survive it, but how can they possibly concentrate as well? I couldn’t work effectively or learn in a 35 degree classroom!

We’re lucky to be able to choose the private sector but I agree with the OP - this should be a fundamental right during education.

Must be a Top End problem.

I work in a bog standard government Victorian school and it has air-conditioning in all rooms.

Doesn't always work.

Thank-you for the supportive replies. GnotherGnu I agree, school is supposed to be a learning environment, not just an experience that we managed to survive. It would be hard to concentrate in the extreme heat it would be difficult to teach in extreme heat too. As for those trivializing the situation, the article I linked describes children coming home from school flushed and vomiting. I find this outrageous and not acceptable. I also think our teachers who put in a lot for our children deserve better working conditions and a great deal more respect for their profession. In one of the comments in the article a parent suggested solar panels. Good suggestion that would offset the costs and environmental impacts of using air-conditioning. Also, a good learning opportunity for science. Another comment brought up the millions of dollars wasted on a set of lights beside the M1 that spelled gold coast but can't be seen by anyone because of the way they are positioned. Good point. If we can throw money at poorly planned unnecessary projects I think it's about time we got our priorities straight. If it continues to get hotter every year eventually we'll have to spend money on infrastructure and it would be more affordable to implement sooner over a period of time rather than the last minute all at once.

@specialsubject what a ridiculous and ignorant comment

I went to school in Melbourne 20 years ago. I had to really think if we had aircon. The library definitely did, along with the science labs that were newish but most of the classrooms didn't.

I kept dd1 off school one day the year before last as it was really hot in London and the school wasn't built to deal with heat.

Are you Australian, OP?

Write to your local newspaper, OP. The local and State MPs. The Premier. That’s the right audience, not MN, that is composed largely of people from the UK.

How many children do you actually know that come home from school flushed and vomiting though? You are using a piece of likely sensationalised journalism and making out it’s the norm. It’s not. I’m not saying the heat is great by any means but if kids have grown up with it they are pretty well acclimatised and manage. And again, as you can see by many responses, if the school community seems it a problem they generally raise funds for it via P&C and negotiate a way forward with the school.

I too live in Qld. I think that many schools are now air conditioned. All three of my children (at different schools) have ac at their schools.

Keep in mind that local people really don't notice the heat as much as cold climate expats.

At home we only use our AC in Dec, Jan & Feb. Of this time the kids are on holiday for most of Dec and Jan. March - Nov is just lovely, fans are perfectly adequate.

To add, I have never once heard of sny child vomiting from the heat. AC or no AC.

Kids just don't notice the heat. They are more likely to complain about the cold. My kids ask for jumpers and duvets when it drops below 23c.

No you're not being unreasonable - ref the attached link for workers outside in Victoria where 35 degrees is the maximum - then they need to relocated out of sun and have air-conditioned sheds available to cool off in - it's just QLD and NSW govts not fulfilling their duty of care - at the expense of the kids and their parents.

vic.cfmeu.org.au/news/35°-c-that’s-enough-cfmeu-hot-weather-policy

Absolutely, at one point my kids spent several months in far north QLD including over the summer. Hot as fuck. Never once complained about the heat. We went down to the Gold Coast for a short break/family meet-up with people up from NSW. The kids complained bitterly that it was cold and were begging for jumpers/tracksuit pants. It was 30c, and in air con it may as well been the arctic ad far as they were concerned. They were more than happy to go back to 40c heat. They had far more problems acclimatising once back in Sydney than staying in the far north, took them a few months. Kids are weird. Seriously though, if they grow up in it they don’t have problems, it’s their normal. Same for a lot of teachers.

Thanks for the link womanformallyknown. I grew up in Queensland, went to school in Queensland. And have returned to Queensland. The heat affects me and my health. I have seen how the heat affects my daughter. I know other locals who are affected by the heat too so it's not just expats from a colder climate as one pp commented. I have lived and worked in Victoria for a few years and came to appreciate the benefits of Vic's workplace health and safety practices. It is well established that babies, children and the elderly are at higher risk from heat related illnesses. But this is also about valuing education and wanting a good quality learning environment for our children. I posted this on mumsnet as I was interested in how another culture would perceive this and because I like mumsnet.

My sister in law teaches in Brisbane and they close schools at 40 degrees.

You're not unreasonable at all. A lot of the posts on this thread are ludicrous. I used to be an education reporter in Australia and your concerns are well founded.

South Africa here. When I was at school there was no such thing as air con, but we did get sent home when it reached 40 degrees.

In my dc school some classes have aircon, but only computer lab, kitchen, library etc.

I don't think that they feel it as much as we do. I certainly don't have memories of my school days, as in oh, remember how hot we got on xyz day. I think you just get used to it, dare I say.

But school starts at 7.30am and ends at 1.30pm, so the worst heat of the day, they are not in class. Yes, probably doing sports, but that is a whole other issue. (they cancel sport if its over a certain temp as well).

I find it mad that schools don't have air con it would be like schools in my part of the world (Ireland) not having heating which is standard in all schools because we can get cold weather. Surely schools in hot countries would have air con as standard

I think ALittleBitOfButter has a very good point on page 2.

Temperature and weather extremes are getting wider and wider, because of climate change. It will make things worse, not better, if our "solutions" to these temperature and weather extremes mean that we make climate change worse, because all we are doing is throwing energy-hungry technology at them.

I think whatever our climate, we are going to have to be creative about it, whether that involves designing architecture (insulated roofs, large verandas, ventilation, building materials, etc) that make the inside as cool as possible without just sticking on aircon, or whether that involves shifting the school times to the cooler parts of the day, or shifting the terms so that kids aren't in school at all during the hottest seasons, or whatever.

Respectfully suggest OP that if the heat affects your health that much, that you have chosen to live in a place that simply does not suit you. You can't rant and rail against the establishment simply because it doesn't work for you.

The Southern Highlands or Tassie might be a better bet.

My kids attend a small beachside school in NSW. No aircon except for the library so when temps are in excess of 40 degrees, it's off to the library to watch a movie.
We are fortunate enough to have a sea breeze but on scorching, high humidity days that wind can be like a hairdryer.
The only thing my kids complain about is sweaty, limp cheese sandwiches that have festered in their school bags until lunchtime. I bought bigger ice bricks last year and froze the sandwiches but nope, still soggy and sweaty by 11am. Warm Vegemite sandwiches are more palatable apparently.

Golden, the Highlands gets very hot in summer as it tends to take on more of Canberra’s weather than Sydney’s. Bitching cold winters, scorching hot summers.

I'm amazed at this. I went to school in the Northern Territory in the 1980s and all our classrooms were air conditioned.

Surely it's an OH and S matter for the teachers as well as the kids.

GoldenMcOldie there is nothing respectful about your comment. We have our own personal and valid reasons for living here in my home state. We deal with the heat the same way all of my neighbors and most of the community do, air-conditioning or going somewhere that is air conditioned. ArcheryAnnie I agree with you on all the additional measures such as insulation etc. Peter Garret introduced a program where buildings were having insulation added inbetween ceiling and roof. Unfortunately, it was completely scrapped because of poor workplace safety resulted in an apprentice trades person being electrocuted while installing insulation and he tragically died. Instead of providing better training, improving supervision and work place safety practices, Queensland decided that installing insulation is too dangerous to continue with the program. I think we should be insulating our classrooms, providing more shade, installing solar panels and using air conditioners while exploring environmentally friendly ways to provide electricity and faze out coal.

Phasing out coal has next to nothing to do with air conditioning in schools.