School closure due to heat

GrannyGravy13

MartavTaurus

Information here ...
France is experiencing its first strike due to the high temperature. Any excuse pour faire la grève!

We're at 44° this afternoon.

TV discussion for evidence.

Let’s hope your emergency services do not strike, as they will be needed with those temperatures.

And the worry now is the electricity substations blowing up with the heat. We're ready to drive round in the air-conditioned car all night!

MartavTaurus

Information here ...
France is experiencing its first strike due to the high temperature. Any excuse pour faire la grève!

We're at 44° this afternoon.

TV discussion for evidence.

Let’s hope your emergency services do not strike, as they will be needed with those temperatures.

Restaurants closed and Greggs in Southampton.

Information here ...
France is experiencing its first strike due to the high temperature. Any excuse pour faire la grève!

We're at 44° this afternoon.

TV discussion for evidence.

GrannyGravy13

Unless anyone on here was at the same schools as other posters or know the schools they attended, you cannot know that any of their posts contain ^deliberate misinformation^

Butterjams reference to ‘deliberate misinformation’ is not, I believe referencing specific schools. But there’s certainly plenty of misinformation flying around on GN today on this and other threads.

42° by lunchtime in DGC’s school. School remains open, but parents had option to take children home at lunchtime. Evidently only 15% of KS1 children and 25% of KS2 children were still in for the afternoon session.

Unless anyone on here was at the same schools as other posters or know the schools they attended, you cannot know that any of their posts contain deliberate misinformation

BlueBelle

How did we ever manage as kids !!! I don’t think my school ever closed come heat, snow, ice or illnesses

Totally agree Bellasnana we are a country of moaners nothings ever right we can’t seem to handle anything without moaning
Tuliptree you are very curt Bellasnana was giving her opinion which she’s entitled to

Opinions can be factually wrong. Those based on error and ignorance deserve to be corrected, if only to save its owner future embarrassment.

Deliberate misinformation deserves to be refuted, if only for the benefit of gullible or uneducated readers.

My school (on a hill) in England often closed because of floods or flood warnings; so that pupils and staff at school could get home to lower ground before access was cut off.

In my childrens school days in Scotland, their schools were sometimes closed by snow , or warnings of heavy snow, for the same reason.

<https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/06/uk-weather-snow-and-ice-warnings-schools-closed-in-scotland>

Well sil worked from home whilst dd had to go to Cornwall with her work so gc were ok. WFH has its uses. I do wonder though if schools do need to all shut? It’s 30C at DD’s house and gc go to an older built school so possibly it’s cooler there than at home.

I have got a GC here whose school closed at lunchtime.

He had his lunch in the shade, since then I have been in and out of the pool with him, played tennis and he is now back playing in the pool waiting for his brother to finish school and join him.

butterandjam

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?

Yes it did.
To be fair if you were an expat back in the day it usually meant that mums didn’t work so childcare wasn’t a problem.
I do remember that we had covered walkways outside the classrooms, presumably to keep the rooms cooler. No air con though.

GrannyGravy13

Chardy the two senior schools near here are allowing pupils to wear their PE kits this week.

They look so smart, in fact they are better turned out than when wearing their everyday uniforms.

Lol

Tuliptree

nanna8

They don’t close schools here even when it is 40 C plus. They probably have better ways of dealing with the heat,though.

That’s probably true. Here some of our children are in prefab buildings which will be like ovens at the moment or 1960s badly built blocks with lots of windows and no or inefficient blinds.

One classroom I taught in (late 80s) was freezing in winter, boiling in summer with south facing windows. It was upstairs in a ROSLA block (which were built in early 70s in most secondary schools to cope with increase in school leaving age to 16). I found out later that the builders overspent and the 'external wall' of the classroom was a piece thin fascia board. They'd put in no insulation, no internal wall.
I've just checked the website, the block is still there. I long to contact the school and find out if, 37 years later, the problem has been remedied!
Btw those pupils are going home at lunchtime today!

Chardy the two senior schools near here are allowing pupils to wear their PE kits this week.

They look so smart, in fact they are better turned out than when wearing their everyday uniforms.

Calendargirl

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. .

I think the key word is 'cotton'. The summer dress DGD wears is in part man-made fabric. Aertex tops are cotton, and baggy too.

Secondary schools don't have summer uniform, and again, a lot of their uniform is man-made for ease of washing and drying.

"Hitzefrei" (schools closing when it gets too hot) has always been a thing in Germany. DH remembers from when he was at school. They even have a word for it. I'm not sure what they do to cover for working parents.I'll see if I can find out.

Countries where very hot weather is usual, are better adapted, such as smaller windows ( with shades) ( or none on the sunny side), shaded courtyards, ceiling fans to move air- tree lined avenues , window bars so windows can be fully opened ( inwards) without security risks. ( I love ceiling fans having lived in Queensland!)
The main difficulty for us in the UK is the sudden change from walking around in warm coats and protecting plants from frost (less than a fortnight ago), so our bodies are unadapted as well as our homes and schools!

FWIW, I've just taken my SATs reading with an oximeter, I'm usually in the 98/99% level but today sitting in my kitchen, which is the coolest part of the house my SATs are 93%. Why? High temperature + high humidity. I'm fine but if I was in a very hot and humid room for several hours, I suspect I wouldn't be although generally I'm fitter than most people in their late 70's. We currently have contractors in making hay from our land. They have huge modern tractors with air con so they'll be OK but it would be impossible to do the job as it was done a few years ago with open tractors and the manual handling of bales. This weather is unlike the hot summer days we have experienced in the past and we are going to have to adapt our working practices to accommodate it.
"The main reasons include:The Oxygen Dissociation Curve: Increased core body temperature shifts this curve—which measures the relationship between hemoglobin's affinity for oxygen and blood pressure—to the right, reducing hemoglobin's overall affinity for oxygen and resulting in lower SpO2 readings.
High Humidity & Air Density: Warm, humid air is less dense and holds more water vapor, leaving less room for oxygen molecules per breath. This makes your lungs work significantly harder to deliver the same amount of oxygen to your tissues.
Increased Vasodilation: To dissipate heat, your blood vessels dilate, causing a drop in central blood volume and forcing your heart to work harder, placing extra physical strain on your cardiovascular and respiratory systems.
Dehydration: Sweating and fluid loss can cause your blood pressure to drop and dry out your bronchial tubes, leading to shortness of breath" AI generated

And since when has the forum a thread is on determined whether false information can be called out?

GrannyGravy13

I am extremely uncomfortable that a longstanding GN member is being vilified for daring to give her opinion.

One which I totally agree with by the way.

Having a family home in a Mediterranean country, sibling at school without air conditioning. I also have experience of hot

If this is global warming, then we just have to crack on, we cannot stop the country according to the climate.

This thread is in chat!

For goodness sake. Firstly it doesn’t matter how long BN has been a member. And vilified? A bit OTT. She criticised the UKs response with an opinion based on a completely false premise. And if you agree with her false facts about the response of other countries then you might be accused of vilifying other members ( whose length of membership I do not know or care about) who have posted otherwise.

I am extremely uncomfortable that a longstanding GN member is being vilified for daring to give her opinion.

One which I totally agree with by the way.

Having a family home in a Mediterranean country, sibling at school without air conditioning. I also have experience of hot

If this is global warming, then we just have to crack on, we cannot stop the country according to the climate.

This thread is in chat!

GrannyGravy13

Bellasnana’s DD is a teacher in Malta.

I have never seen a post from her which is not polite, even on this thread.

I share her frustration with regards to the U.K.’s response to curve balls whether it be a hot day, centimetre of snow, leaves in autumn (rail tracks)

Two schools in the same road, one allowing children to go home at lunchtime, one carrying on as normal. There is no across the board working.

Two schools in the same road presumably aren't identical (though I assume they're the same age group) Building materials are different. Were they built at the same time? Different sized windows facing different ways? Even having a tarmac playground outside your window can make a difference, rather than grass.
Little forward planning (or thought for that matter) goes into building a new school. Look at the RAAC crisis. Trust me I've been there - twice

And the Education Minuster is now on tv explaining what is happening.

I don't usually watch daytime TV, but holed up behind shutters in 42 degrees, I've nothing else to do!

So yes, France talks about the weather on their news programmes. At the moment they're desperately worried about forest fires as far north as Normandy.
Also, in Brittany it is reported on tv that 68000 homes are without electricity, and emergency measures are in place.

In some respects the French talk about the weather in a more practical manner on tv, with constant updates as to how to cope with the heat. Even the French Prime Minister has been filmed on tv assuring the residents of France and thanking the emergency service.

Two weeks ago we had large frozen hail fall on us. It is hard for any person in the UK to adapt so quickly to the extreme changes in temperature. Many bodies just don`t cope with fast adaptation, hence the safety in shutting schools. The sudden weather change to very hot is actually very dangerous to bodily systems and precautions are needed

40 years living in a country that is always hot, naturally the body does adapt so there is not much chat about weather and of course property is built to accommodate hot weather.

Snapping back at the UK was not nice and I am surprised at Bella