36°C classrooms are coming and they will make pupils fail exams

Even after years of increasingly erratic weather, the heat we’ve just experienced is still hard to believe.

The peaks of 34.8°C seen on Monday and 35.1°C on Tuesday are more than 2°C higher than the previous May record for the UK, set way back in 1944 – with climate professor Peter Thorne, of Maynooth University in Ireland, calling them “mind-bogglingly crazy”.

These sweltering temperatures are bad news for everyone from the elderly to builders. But their timing brings to mind one group in particular – schoolchildren and college students who have to sit exams in May and June; often in the school gym or hall with great big windows that magnify the heat.

Not surprisingly, it’s much harder to perform well in hot, stuffy conditions. And as late spring and summer temperatures become more and more outlandish, there are growing calls to move exams forward a bit to give people a better chance of passing.

A friend of mine, who is a primary school teacher in south London, told me that in the few weeks running up to the summer holidays the children find it especially difficult to learn anything because it’s just too hard to concentrate. She says that the situation has got noticeably worse in the past few years, in her opinion, leaving no option but to end the summer term – and start the holiday – earlier.

Baroness Brown, from the Government’s Climate Change Committee, agrees that those final few weeks before the summer holidays are not conducive to a good performance.

She said last week that ministers should consider changing the school year so pupils are not forced to sit important exams in summer heat, when they may not have been able to sleep properly and are “absolutely not at their best”.

And with temperatures in some classrooms reaching 36°C and higher, the difference these sweltering conditions can make to exam results can be highly significant; putting some people down by a crucial grade or grade or two, or tipping them into an outright fail.

One highly concerning study found that taking an exam on a 32°C day reduces a person’s chance of passing by around 10 per cent compared to taking the same exam on a 22°C day, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

Even slipping a grade can make a huge difference to getting onto a course or into a job – as well as the amount a person goes on to earn. Government research looked at the grades and earnings of people in England who sat their GCSE exams between 2002 and 2005. It found that those who got just one grade higher than their fellow pupils in one subject earned £23,000 more over their lifetime, on average. And those who scored one grade higher across nine subjects are likely to earn on average £207,000 more in their lifetime.

As temperatures continue to climb, the percentage of dropped grades and outright fails will shoot up unless drastic action is taken to address the problem. The National Education Union recommends a maximum indoor temperature of 26°C in schools, but this is frequently breached.

Last summer was the UK’s hottest on record and temperatures inside classrooms reached 36.3°C at a primary school in Liverpool and 29.9°C in a Cambridgeshire secondary, according to data by the campaign group Round Our Way.

One study found that without air conditioning, each 0.6°C increase in average temperature across the school year reduces the amount a pupil learns that year by 1 per cent, which can really add up over the years.

And the Met Office and University College London estimate that an average of 6.7 days of learning are already being lost each year due to “increases in temperature resulting in a decreased ability to learn”.

While rising temperatures make studying harder for everyone, it seems clear that it will discriminate against children from less-advantaged backgrounds, increasing the significant inequalities already present in the education system.

Private schools and the higher-ranking state schools are far more likely to have air conditioning and other cooling measures such as mechanical ventilation systems and green roofs covered in plants and vegetation. And their pupils are more likely to come from wealthier families, living in cooler homes – helping them to sleep better and concentrate more easily at school.

The CCC has advised that all schools should have air conditioning by 2050 – but that is still some way off and is not currently a Government target or policy. In the absence of mandatory targets and extra cash, many schools simply won’t be able to afford them.

And so moving the exams forward by a few weeks – or else to a completely different time of year – would not only help everyone; it would make the playing field a little less uneven for children attending poorer schools.

This would amount to a substantial restructure of the school year but any inconvenience would be far outweighed by the long-term benefits to pupils in the form of a better education, higher grades and increased earnings.

There is a strong argument for bringing forward the school summer holidays as well – although that may result in an even longer summer holiday, given August and September can also be hot months, something that many parents in particular would resist.

But drastic times call for drastic measures, so this should be explored. In the meantime, the Government should get to work moving the exams and making sure all schools have air con.