In 2023, Meghalaya had to close its schools because of a heat wave – the first time it has done so for this reason. The state typically has pleasant weather and is known for its heavy rainfall but in recent years it has been witnessing a shift in its weather patterns. The administration announced the closure of schools for three days as the temperature in some parts of the state crossed 35 degrees Celsius. 

At the same time, in the neighbouring state of Tripura, the temperature was soaring at over 40 degrees Celsius and the chief minister announced the schools to be closed for six days. 

School education, especially primary and higher primary classes, have seen increasing disruptions across the year throughout the country in the last few years. Increasing incidents of weather related events, such as heat waves, cold waves, heavy rains, cyclones, floods, and air pollution are affecting the classes, resulting in a considerable amount of the loss of school days.

However, at present, there are no mechanisms in the education sector to systematically monitor loss of school days in relation to climate change-induced hazards and events.

Mongabay India reached out, through Right to Information (RTI) applications, to state governments of Delhi, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Assam asking them about incidents of school closure over the last 10 years and their reasons. Except the Delhi government, none of the states answered the RTI requests.

Mongabay India also mined several media reports, government orders for school closures due to floods, heat waves, cold waves, and air pollution and found out that children lose about 10 percent of school days each academic year due to climate change-induced events. According to the National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023, the annual working year for schools has 220 instruction/school-going days after taking into consideration national holidays, term breaks, and vacations.

Different reasons, same result

India is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to the adverse impacts of climate change. According to the Global Climate Risk Index, it was the seventh most climate-affected country in the world in 2019.

On a hot afternoon in August, Ranjan Medhi, a 55-year-old government teacher, was teaching at Assam’s Dakshin Guwahati Higher Secondary School under a single fan as the temperature, rose to 33 degrees Celsius, which is high compared to the state’s average temperatures, with a humidity of 91%.

Medhi has been in this profession since 1993 and according to him, schools closing because of heat waves is something he has seen only in the past four to five years in his experience of over three decades.

“In the last two years (2023-24) the schools were closed twice because of the heat. Also the government advanced the timing of the schools and apart from that, the summer vacations last year, 2023, were extended for 15 days because of the heat wave,” he said.

In addition, in the same year, the summer vacations were also advanced by five days due to an ongoing flood situation. Assam usually declares summer vacations for a month from July 1 to July 31 every year.

In Lower Assam’s Kamrup district, Abdul Halim teaches at an island school which gets flooded every year. However, according to him, in Brahmaputra’s river island schools, the increasing heat is more concerning than the floods. “The flood season coincides with our annual break and since we are people of Brahmaputra, we know how to deal with it. But the increasing frequency of heat waves is something which we can’t deal with,” he said. Since 1901, 15 warmest years were recorded out of which 11 were recorded in the 15-year period from 2005 to 2019. The intensity and frequency of heat waves has been on the rise. In 2020, some cities in India experienced heat waves with maximum temperatures above 48 degrees Celsius, impacting those who live in crowded and poorly ventilated homes and urban slums.

Coupled with the increasing climate change and El Nino effect, India experienced one of its worst summers in 2024 with many Indian states witnessing long spells of heat waves and as a result extending summer vacations for schools.

Uttar Pradesh extended the summer break for 10 days; Chhattisgarh for 10 days; Odisha for seven days; and Delhi declared an immediate summer vacation for 50 days in 2024. Apart from this, many states also changed their school timings to minimise children’s exposure to heat.

For Delhi, if the heat was not enough, air pollution has surfaced as a new reason for school closures. According to the RTI response from the Delhi government, a new trend can be seen in the national capital and the NCR (National Capital Region). In the last few years, schools were closed on more occasions because of air pollution compared to heat waves, cold waves or rains. Between 2016 and 2021, Delhi schools were closed because of air pollution on four occasions, losing over 30 school days.

Schools in the hill state of Uttarakhand, as of now, are spared of heat waves. But the increasing temperature is worrying many. The intensity of rainfall has also increased in the state which results in more landslides and flash floods.

This year, from June 1 to July 10, the cumulative average rainfall in 13 districts of the state was 328.6 mm which is 11 percent higher than the normal 295.4 mm rainfall. Due to heavy rainfall alerts in different parts of the state, schools were closed for at least one day on three different occasions between July 1 and September 15.

A government primary teacher from Uttarakhand’s Pauri Garhwal district, preferring to remain anonymous, told Mongabay India that changing rainfall patterns and intensity have affected the classes in the past decade.

“In the last one decade or so, we have seen that the rains have increased and they’re quite intense. There are more instances of cloud burst also. Our schools are closed for about 10 days during these rains and this leads to a backlog in the syllabus. These rains also affected the connectivity to schools as some villages get cut off because of landslides,” the teacher said. 

Rajasthan’s Barmer falls under one of India’s most climate vulnerable regions. Located in the Thar Desert, this district bordering Pakistan witnesses extreme variations in temperature. The variation in temperature in various seasons is quite high owing to arid Thar Desert and sandy soil that heats up and cools down rapidly. In summers the temperature soars to 46 degrees Celsius to 51 degrees Celsius. In winters, it drops to 0 degrees Celsius.

Udaram Solanki teaches at a government primary school in Matasar village, 35 km from Barmer. He says there is a spike in school holidays due to both heat waves and cold waves.

“In the last few years, there were holidays because of increasing heat. For rains there are not many holidays, but in the last some years, holidays due to the cold have also increased,” he said.

“About a decade ago there were only incidents of schools closing because of rains sometimes, but in the last few years we feel that in summers the temperatures are also getting extreme and winters are also getting harsher, especially during December and January. Now, after our usual winter vacations it becomes even colder and we have to give extra holidays,” he added.

Unofficial holidays, learning loss

Apart from the holidays declared by the district administration, in the events of increased heat and rainfall, schools witness a considerable drop in attendance. These lead to teachers giving the studies a break so the absentees don’t miss out on the lessons, which effectively becomes a lost school day. In case the teacher continues with lessons, a large part of the class that is absent because of the weather, misses those lessons.

Bipin Dhane, is the founder of the Hummingbird School in world’s biggest riverine island, Majuli, in Assam. Dhane started the school after he found the quality of education in this island district dismal.

“On an average we lose around two weeks of school days on a minimum and maximum one, one and a half months due to floods or flood-related events. Now, along with the floods, the rising temperature is also a big thing. We have never experienced such summers before. And the last two years have been very difficult. Last year, we had to give about a one or two-week holiday when it was extremely hot,” Dhane said.

According to him, because of this loss of school days, the teachers have to rush through the syllabus but in this process some students are left behind.

Azim Premji University’s Saswati Paik and Chinmoyee Gogoi in their research article highlighted the learning loss in India’s flood affected states of Assam and Bihar.

“Since 2020, India and many other countries are dealing with this crisis (COVID-19) more so because of the already existing problem in children’s learning outcomes. The pandemic as a crisis is new to us, but what about the school closure, disruption in schooling increasing the learning gap, and silent exclusion of children from school? Those are not new issues. Unfortunately, one such recurring and common natural hazard is flooding,” they write in the article.

“If we calculate the number of school days when a child is out of school due to such natural calamities, in a typical flood-prone area, it may be 1-2 months on average for a child per year,” the article says.

Loss of concentration, trauma

Majuli’s Hummingbird School has a natural design with ventilation, thatched roofs and a considerable tree count to beat the heat. However, in the peak of summer, it becomes difficult for the students to focus on studies.

“Normally around 11 am or until 2 pm, the heat is unbearable, so, many times, children tell the teachers that they are not able to concentrate or understand. Then the teachers have no option other than giving them some time to sleep. We have a medical room and there have been cases when children were given some time to sleep. But the medical room also becomes so hot that it can’t be used,” Dhane said.

“For younger children it becomes very difficult. There are a lot of trees and thatched roofs in the campus so that prevents a lot of heat but the schools which have tin roofs, it becomes like an oven and you cannot go inside,” he added.

In summer, Solanki also faces similar issues in Barmer. “We got electricity at our school in the last 3-4 years. Before that, we were teaching kids in the heat. Teaching about 15-20 children in a room at 47-48 degrees Celsius temperature is extremely difficult. These are small kids who can’t bear the heat,” he said.

Solanki also highlights another issue which students and teachers face in the desert region – exposure to extreme heat during their commute. “When children leave the school at 1 pm in this desert area, they have to travel a good distance from the school in the extreme heat. This leads to a lot of problems,” he said.

“I have personally faced many issues. We leave at 1 pm and the wind which blows from the nearby sand dunes can burn people’s skin. If people don’t take proper precautions, this situation can be fatal,” he added.

Looking at policy

India is frequently updating its climate change action plans and has focused on sectors such as energy, sustainable agriculture, industry, water management, and so on. The government, in 2008 launched the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) outlining eight National Missions on climate change, but none of these missions focused on education.

In India’s Second National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (2012) lists seven key ministries with their role in awareness and action, the Ministry of Education doesn’t figure in this list. Similarly, the recent and the Third National Communication (2023) also does not mention anything about education.

Read more: Addressing climate vulnerabilities in a conference of panchayats

The country also introduced its new education policy, National Education Policy in 2020 but climate vulnerability of the education sector is missing from this policy as well.

“The National Education Policy, 2020, mentions mainstreaming environment education and research in curriculum as a partial solution to address future climate crises but is silent about the effects of climate-related risks on education. Therefore, whatever programmes/schemes are getting implemented for school education at this point, most of those do not consider climate action plans in designing,” Protiva Kundu, research lead (Social Sectors) at Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), said.

“Heat waves, floods, drought, storms are now frequent incidents occurring due to climate change. However, in the absence of climate responsive education policy, climate action plans for education are limited to school closures or change in school timing and hours or shifting classrooms to online,” Kundu added.

“When a school becomes shelter for flood affected areas in a locality, the children can’t access the school. Post flood, the learning loss of such children is hardly addressed by remedial classes etc. The standardized academic calendar declares some children’s failure, but the causes behind such failures either remain unknown or ignored. It is not the issue of merely the policies, rather it is the issue of policy execution, local level planning and utilisation of autonomy in a decentralised governance,” said Paik. Paik is a faculty, Teaching and Research, at Azim Premji University.

What’s the solution?

Since there is no uniformity in the impacts of climate change in different regions of the country, people affected by it feel that there can be different solutions to their problems instead of looking at a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Medhi in Guwahati suggested that the starting of the school session in Assam can be pushed by 15 days so a part of extreme summer can be used as summer vacation. 

“Assam witnesses extreme summer in July and August, if the starting of schools can be shifted from July end to mid-August, it will help the students as well as the teachers. It becomes extremely difficult for students to concentrate in heat as they experience a lot of difficulties at home because they belong to poor families where 14-15 members share just one room,” he added. He also agrees that the current syllabus should be relooked into with a consideration of frequent loss of school days.

However, Dhane doesn’t agree with this solution as it will lead to students missing out on basic lessons which they will ultimately encounter in higher classes.

“I don’t completely agree with making the syllabus short. We saw during COVID that the syllabus was reduced but that’s again a loss for the child. It’s not that the objective of the child is to pass class 9 or 10, but there are higher studies to be done where the syllabus is not going to be reduced. So if you reduce some chapters but that’s going to come again at a higher level and then the child will be clueless. So I think it’s not a good solution,” Dhane said.

Halim’s colleague Zahir Ali Ahmed suggested that a residential school for the children of chars (river islands) in Assam can fix a lot of issues and children can study without having to deal with frequent floods and shifting of schools.

On the policy front, CBGA’s Kundu suggested, “As an immediate intervention, governments should invest in building climate-resilient school infrastructure to reduce the learning disparity among students to the extent possible. A guideline for climate-resilient school infrastructure should be developed across states. As adaptation interventions are not one-time investments but require recurring spending, there has to be a conscious effort to incorporate climate action priorities in education planning and budgeting that can ensure sustainable as well as inclusive education.

“Education comes under concurrent list in India. The states have specific climatic zones and most of the seasonal hazards like flood, cyclone, draught, etc have a seasonal pattern. For such hazards, the states can plan for different academic calendars so that during the season of possible calamities, the children don’t lose school days,” Paik said.

Banner image: The Hummingbird School campus in world’s biggest riverine island, Majuli, in Assam, during the 2017 floods. Image by Special Arrangement.

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Shailesh Shrivastava Editor

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