Ainu to believe there should be a maximum acceptable temperature at work and school?

[workwoes123]

We are in France. It was 30 degrees in my office this afternoon. In some of the classrooms (I work in a school) it was 33 degrees. My own kids report that their classrooms, in another school, were also at 33 degrees this afternoon.

it’s intolerable. We had some students sitting a GCSE exam yesterday, and the room was 30 degrees. How are they meant to sit and think and work to the best of their abilities in those temperatures?

No air con, fans don’t help much - they just stir the air around.

At what room temp should we call it a day and go home?

30 degrees is ok IF people have access to plenty of water and IF they can dress appropriately, ie cotton shirt and shorts/skirt.

Expecting school kids to wear wool blazers inside in the summer (my ds' school) is not reasonable

I have men in my family who have to wear full protective gear (gas explosion risk) in heatwaves. Plus another who works in a waste to energy plant, basically a furnace where indoor temperature is 40°c plus . They are not allowed to call it a day because it's too hot.
I think the school should do all it can to mitigate, shade, access to cool water and light clothing. But no, not send them home.

Hmm I'm not sure, i grew up in Aus and if it was forecast to be over 37 degrees we were allowed to go home at 1pm, unless the schools had air con. Must have been a nightmare for working parents only knowing in the morning, like snow days really.

They can hardly 'call it a day and go home' if they have a GCSE exam! If you're in a part of the world that frequently has those temps in summertime, then air con in the examination would be appropriate, I agree.

I feel your pain - AC inside the school, but those >40C break duties are a killer!

So air conditioning would be a reasonable mitigation at these temperatures?

@8timesPerWeek

presumably they went into those kinds / roles knowing that high temperatures / protective gear was part of the job. Students don’t get much choice in that respect.

jobs, not kinds 🙄

Rule at ours was indoor play if over 38C in the shade.

We didn't cool the house to much less than 30C tho. Air Con set to 28C.

YADNBU!! my old office often got to 35 in the summer, I used to have to take a change of clothes and basically worked in a beach kaftan. Don't even understand how it got so hot, but I think no air con combined with lots of computers whirring in one small room is a problem.

Yanbu. That sort heat would make me ill. I tend have a headache, palpitations and possibly nausea if I'm anywhere over 28 degrees.

Our school can't afford books, never mind air conditioning.

While I agree the hotter it gets the harder it gets work how would this be implemented in most settings? It's ok if you can work from home where it might be cooler but what about essential jobs (what even is essential?)? Also where would they make up the lost teaching time? It's only May, most schools are open until July where there are likely to be hotter indoor temps, there could be whole weeks schools are closed if 30 degrees + is the limit.

Agree with this. Try wearing full PPE complete with head wear in a hot environment whilst doing a physical job! Then imagine if those workers just said let's go home!

You'll just have to suck it up unfortunately and make sure there's access to water.

Agreed with 8timesPerWeek

At what room temp should we call it a day and go home?
I'd say 35.

I used to work in an office with no windows and the aircon did not work. The temperature was usually 32 or 32 degrees in the winter and it was very stuffy. This was more uncomfortable than a hot summer day as the air was so stale and we had to dress for winter outdoors. We gave up working mid afternoon as could no longer concentrate. I had sore throats, headaches and swollen ankles. We were always told there was no law about maximum temperatures.

Thank you Rose

If kids are sitting exams it should be an absolute last resort, surely?

I suppose having AC installed in a school where is does actually get well past 30oC indoors is probably like having heating installed in a U.K. school though? It would definitely be a waste of money over here I’d think as it wouldn’t be used more than a handful of times a year.

Anyway OP says she is in France.. yet GCSEs? So presumably some kind of (private) English school?

I agree that there should be a maximum temperature. They have it in Germany, I think - hitzefrei?

I wouldn't say that it should kick in at the kind of temperatures you're describing though. 30-33 degrees is hot but certainly not unbearable. I used to teach overseas in temperatures significantly higher than that, without any air conditioning, and it was tiring but OK. I would suggest that it should kick in at around 35 degrees at the very lowest.

Definitely. At one former role, my colleague and I clubbed together and bought a fan as it got so unbelievably hot in our shared office. We’d be dripping with sweat and the bosses refused to buy us one😅 We labelled it with our names and that thing never left the room, even when the matron tried to ask for it for the waiting room. Bloody cheapskates wouldn’t buy fans for the patients and tried to nick ours…err no!!

Most workplaces can't just 'call it a day and go home' though....can they!?

The trouble is air-con is hugely wasteful and bad for the environment.

As global warming increases we are all going to have to deal with higher temperatures and lower electricity consumption. Architecture needs to change to allow through drafts, blinds to block direct sunlight etc.

In our office (metal roof- not good in summer) the people who cope best are the skinny ones, with little natural insulation.

I also work in a school in France (south). The last couple of months are usually very hot - mid 30s in June. We don't have AC, would cost too much to install and run. The kids acclimatise eventually, they're used to it by the time their exams come round. I let them take their shoes off to cool their feet on the floor (tiles) and sometimes I sneak a fan or two in (not really allowed to as they use too much electricity according to the head). On days when it's really hot I let them work on the floor if they want (not during exams obviously). I did try and complain at first, but our head had previously been teaching in Djibouti, so had little sympathy for our 'mild heat' 🙄.