AIBU to question calls for schools to close during hot weather?

[Alwaysperplexedwithlife]

I am so perplexed about parents wanting schools to close in this heat. My house is nearing 40 degrees and I have hybrid working so on wfh days I’m sweltering. I’m happier that my child is in the classroom where she has told me it’s ‘only’ 30 degrees! She is still learning, is happy and is also not thinking it is an excuse to not be in school which is a great trait to have. Has never entered her mind so why are parents pushing this to give their kids an excuse to not be in school and ultimately it not transverse into working life of not having an excuse to not go to work! This is the hidden agenda I see coming from this and nothing to do with the health of the child. Are the parents pushing this also work shy parents themselves? (Medical reasons exempt from this discussion)

This is the shape of things to come unfortunately, need to install air con I suppose and asap. Eventually we will acclimatise to it I’d have thought- like elsewhere in the world.

It’s not meant to be as hot this time at least.

Not understanding the debate - if you’re able to keep your kids at home as it’s safer in your opinion then by all means do so. It’s either the last week of term or penultimate week. How much learning is actually taking place. Those who have to send them due to no childcare support shouldn’t feel guilty for doing so.

If you shut the blinds to keep the sun out you mostly block the draft from the windows and often when it is hot there's no draft at all.

But even with the blinds closed and the windows open classrooms will often be significantly hotter than outside.

And when it's hotter, children do stop learning.

And here were we leaving the children sat in blazing sun with just one small drink with a roast dinner! 🙄

DD is 10 and her school is an old Victorian building. It reached 38 degrees and thankfully had sent the kids home before then but the teachers were doing a continuous risk assessment and shared this with the parents to evidence why they had to close the school. DS is at a secondary with air conditioning throughout the building including the sports hall. His school remained open whereas DD has been home a lot because of the weather. So it really depends.
The other question is how much learning is going on, if a lot of kids aren't sleeping or eating well because of the heat not to mention end of year fatigue.

Just because your child is fine and learning at school in the heat doesn’t mean they all are. At least at home they have free access to paddling pools, cold showers, ice lollies and anything else at home to keep them cool. The schools local to me are letting the kids come to school in PE kits. Fine I guess for younger ones in cotton T-shirts and shorts but both high schools have horrible PE kits that are 100% polyester.

Lots of schools have either removed the trees or had large portions of their fields sold off by their councils and had houses built on. Sadly.

My middle child’s school has the outside space it owns the size of a houses garden. They have to use communal grounds / greens.

They should carry out risk assessment. Health and safety covers home workers.

They might suggest op has cold showers, comes into the office, works different hours, gets extra breaks.

Il not suggesting they'd have to install air con! But lending you a fan from the office isnt unreasonable.

And they do have responsibility for cold too. If it was assessed as too cold to work safety they'd have to make adjustments.

I wish it was the last (or penultimate) week of term! We break up on the 23rd (Derbyshire secondary school), so we’re expected to be doing proper lessons for at least the next two weeks before doing any ‘wind down’ activities.

If your house is 40 degrees you need to start looking at black out blinds, cooling fans, shutters etc

Op do you have the heating on or something.

At home the children are likely not crammed in with 30 other kids. They can also wear what they choose, or nothing at all if they prefer. Or stand under a cold shower or sprinkler whenever they want. They can eat ice pops, drink fresh cold water or whatever from the fridge, suck an ice cube, turn their melting brains off. At school there is still so much residual heat from the May heatwave that the upper floor rooms are over 40 during the hotter days, and not much below even on the recent average days. It hasn’t had chance to cool down since then. Add in the sunshine when it appears, streaming in all day because the blinds don’t stop it fully, and body heat from 30+ kids (one class has 32) plus staff, then it’s dangerous. Due to safety latches, windows don’t open more than an inch or so, there is no air and no sniff of a breeze. The fan wafts a tiny warm puff of air around. Children have been sick, even fainted during the last hot spell. So yes YABU to be ‘perplexed’ that some children might not be having quite the experience yours is having in the heatwaves!

That’s 2 weeks and 2 days away! It’s not that bad!

There wasn’t a whole lot of learning going on during the last heatwave we were just fighting to keep 30 children cool!

Time goes reeeeaaaally slowly towards the end of term, so those twelve teaching days will each feel 140 hours long (fact).

Schools are mad about attendance now though, so you can't just make a decision to keep them off due to the heat if the school hasn't decided to close. At least, a lot of parents wouldn't feel able to do that. I would have to lie and make up an illness or something and get my child to go along with it.

Schools do need to adapt and can with investment. Shaded areas, screens, air con, more water stations, change school day timings, change term dates. Lots of things can be explored. But we aren’t there yet and in the meantime we need to make sure children and staff are safe.

My son stayed at school in heatwave 1.0. there were 5 kids in his classroom and he thrived. He normally struggles with the noise and busyness. It's hot at home, it's hot at school.

And were those 5 kids actually taught anything, or just babysat?

They carried on with business as usual. Phonics, maths.

Some schools are hotter than others. Not really rocket science.

Obviously it depends on the school and the classroom.

My current Victorian attic classroom has enormous south-facing skylights. No blinds to block the sun. No fans, certainly no AC. It's like a greenhouse. Over about 25C outside and it's too hot to think, let alone learn.

I have taught in other classrooms in the same school that would cope far better.

Blinds would help a lot (why, why won't they install them??) but even then at 30C+, which really isn't super hot this summer, it would be impossible to teach or learn.

So, yes, closing the school for extreme heat is entirely sensible.

I bet they didn't. What would be the point in teaching 5 kids the curriculum with 25 missing?

What would be the point in not doing? You can teach it more than once

So the 5 kids that sat there in the heat attempting to learn it the first time - what was the point in that if it's going to be taught again? Either having to prepare a whole new lesson so they haven't seen it before, or making them sit through the same thing again?