European Schools Stay Open in 90-Degree Heat as Officials Weigh Closures
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jun 24
European Schools Stay Open in 90-Degree Heat as Officials Weigh Closures
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 24
Summary
Millions of students in Britain and France are still attending class despite extreme heat, leaving education officials split between keeping schools open and shutting them to protect children.
90-degree temperatures are baking London classrooms—many in decades-old buildings without air-conditioning—while Paris schools are scrambling to add fans and other stopgap cooling measures.
That trade-off is sharpened by evidence that high temperatures can hurt learning outcomes and test scores, even as closures would cost already limited school days.
Europe’s hotter, earlier summers are exposing how school calendars and aging buildings were designed for colder climates, not repeated heat at the end of the academic year.
With students fainting in 104°F classrooms, should Europe mandate 'heat days' just as it has 'snow days'?
Europe's schools were built for a climate that is gone. Who will pay for the massive overhaul to protect students?
As heat turns Victorian schools into ovens, are ancient cooling designs the key to a climate-proof future?
2026 European Heatwave Crisis: Rising Deaths, School Closures, and the Challenge of Adapting to Extreme Heat
Overview
Europe is facing an early and severe heatwave in June 2026, highlighting the continent's escalating climate crisis. Driven by human-caused climate change, extreme weather events like this are becoming more frequent and intense. The heatwave's intensity is clear, with record-breaking temperatures in places like France and Bordeaux, and follows a worrying trend of rising heat-related deaths—over 62,000 in 2024 alone, the hottest year on record. These extreme conditions are putting immense pressure on infrastructure and public health, showing the urgent need for adaptation and collective action to protect vulnerable populations.