Children spend approximately 1,000 to 1,200 hours each year in classrooms. As warming becomes a background condition rather than a seasonal trend, schools emerge as one of the primary sites through which climate risk is lived. Summer vacations and reactive closures are no longer sufficient protection.
India no longer experiences heat as a summer event; it’s slowly becoming a year-round phenomenon. The country recorded its warmest winter in 124 years in 2025. This came on the back of 2024 being recorded as the hottest year in over a century. An analysis of Delhi’s heat index by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) revealed that nearly every year between 2014 and 2023, at least 10 “Extreme Caution” days were recorded per month from May to September, with 42-70 such days between July and September alone.
Emerging research also shows a rise in dangerous, “moist” heatwaves during the monsoons, when high humidity combines with high temperatures. High temperatures arrive earlier, last longer and spill across what were once considered cooler months.
The school system in India, however, has not woken up to this reality. Most schools continue to rely on summer vacations and closures as the sole means of protecting children from heat. But for millions of children studying in poorly-designed classrooms without adequate coping measures, heat is slowly becoming an everyday condition that threatens their well-being and learning.
Schools unprepared
Schools across the country rely on heatwave declarations by state governments to trigger responses. In the recent past, several states such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and others have adjusted timings, extended vacations or ordered closure of schools and colleges on heatwave days. But this alone is insufficient in the long run.
Urban heat researchers have demonstrated that temperatures can vary widely across different parts of the city due to the urban heat island effect: high-density neighbourhoods with low-levels of green cover experience hotter conditions than low-density, green neighbourhoods. Not to mention, indoor air temperature can be much higher than ambient air temperature due to factors such as the use of heat-trapping materials like concrete, asbestos, glass, poor building design and lack of ventilation.
This means that heatwave-like conditions can exist in pockets of the city even if a heatwave is not declared for the city.
Another significant blind spot lies in our understanding of how heat affects children’s bodies. Much of how we define dangerous heat is based on adults’ physiology. Children regulate heat differently. They gain heat faster, sweat less efficiently and lack the agency to control their space or respond to their body’s needs.
The impact of heat on pre-existing vulnerabilities like disability, neurodivergence, chronic illness, anaemia, and menstruation is also poorly understood. Studies show that children’s ability to recognise these risks themselves is skewed, making them dependent on their environment and caregivers to cool down. In schools, where one adult oversees dozens of such students, this reliance becomes a serious risk.
Schools act as a unique site of heat risk because this poor design and understanding of child physiology is layered with institutional norms that restrict children’s agency and adaptive capacity. Research consistently shows that heat stress impairs concentration, memory, and cognitive performance, and lowering temperatures from 30°C to 20°C can improve performance by about 20%.
In addition to the difficult environment that children have to endure, their ability to adapt to this environment is also curbed in schools. They need to ask for permission for everything. Hydration is restricted to breaks. Movement is scheduled. Uniforms remain climatically inappropriate. These are just some of how the modalities of schooling amplify heat risk.
In short, schools congregate hundreds of such bodies within poorly designed spaces, under rigid schedules, and with limited personal control.
How can schools adapt?
Responding to heat in schools begins with acknowledging that dangerous heat stress exists even when heatwave thresholds aren’t crossed. The critical distinction is that heatwaves are meteorological events defined by temperature thresholds, while heat stress is a physiological condition that is a combination of various factors, including physiological vulnerabilities, building design and school pedagogy.
Adapting to heat in schools begins by acknowledging that thermal comfort is imperative for learning and well-being. Enhancing thermal comfort is not just about changing spatial design and materials but also about institutional culture, and will require action across policy, school systems and everyday practice.
Public schools are often the most vulnerable, and governments need to prioritise their upgradation. Climate education and climate-resilient measures are already being piloted across states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala, through the Green School Initiative and Weather Warriors initiative, respectively.
We urgently need to embed climate-responsive design within school board accreditation frameworks. This will mandate schools to proactively adapt and signal quality and safety alongside education outcomes to parents. Schools can experiment with retrofit solutions like green roofs, strategic shading, tree plantation, and passive cooling technologies such as earthen pots for ventilation or solar chimneys.
Climate-responsive design must further be accompanied by institutional reforms like flexible hydration, scheduled breaks, season-appropriate uniform and climate education. Sustained sensitisation of students, teachers, parents and support staff is essential to build a shared understanding of heat risk and enable more responsive decision-making within school environments.
These pathways point to actions required across the education ecosystem. They ask us to rethink what we consider normal within schooling itself. Responding to heat and shifting our schools from a culture of endurance to one of care is no longer an aspiration but a necessary precondition to education in a warming world.
Malavika S and Rohit M are urban researchers working at Socratus and co-founders of Project Living Cities, a collective working to reimagine Indian cities. Malavika has a background in architecture and urban studies, while Rohit comes with a background in history and urban studies.
This research was part of Heat Futures at 78° E, an initiative by Lagori Collective and Good Life X, supported by the British Council’s Climate Futures: South Asia programme.
Views are the authors' own.