Blog post
Too Hot to Handle? What the Government Assessment of Climate Risk Reveals about the Future for our Schools
Ruth Watson
September 11, 2025
The Department for Education has recently released a summary of findings on the three key climate risks: overheating, flooding, and water scarcity.
Though based on emerging data and therefore only indicative of the direction we’re heading in, the findings make clear the increasing disruption schools will experience in the coming years. Missed learning days are set to increase, and pupils’ ability to learn will be harmed if adaptive and, importantly, preventative strategies to reduce these risks are not put in place.
This school-focused summary is in response to the third and most recent UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3). Required every 5 years, CCRAs not only assess risks but also identify the most pressing changes that need to be made and monitor progress in implementing them to reduce climate risk. What CCRA3 highlighted is that progress has been limited, especially when addressing the increasing risk of overheating, which the DfE has recognised, referring to it as a ‘significant threat’ requiring further research. The summary is in light of this.
The first and most discussed climate risk is overheating. High temperatures reduce the ability to learn, as well as posing a health risk, especially to children who are less well-equipped to regulate their own body temperature than adults. And our schools are not built for keeping pupils cool in high temperatures, either. We have seen the drastic effects of high temperatures, with approximately 2500 deaths recorded due to summer heatwaves in 2020, and in 2022 the heatwaves boosted temperatures past 40ºC. It is therefore unsurprising that the climate risk assessment predicts an increased frequency of ‘extreme heat days’ and a continued general temperature rise in line with the upward trend of the global surface temperature.
‘Extreme heat days’, according to the assessment, are days where indoor temperatures reach or exceed 35ºC, and on average, schools already experience 2 days like this a year. The ‘baseline’ from which global surface temperature increase is measured is the 1850-1900 temperature, relative to which we are currently at +1.2ºC. By 2050, the predicted temperature increase is +2ºC, taking the average number of ‘extreme heat days’ to 3, and up to 8 days at +4ºC by the turn of the century.
However, just because it’s not an ‘extreme heat day’, it doesn’t mean that learning is not impacted. The National Education Union advise that maximum indoor working temperatures should be set at 26ºC, well below 35ºC, for both teacher and pupil wellbeing, meaning that there are almost 10 degrees between comfortable working levels and what classifies as ‘extreme heat’, so the risk should not be downplayed. The assessment indicates that schools are already losing 7 days of learning a year, on average, because of overheating due to ‘generally warmer temperatures’. This is set to double if the current trajectory of global warming continues. Therefore, ensuring schools remain safe and operational during extreme weather is now essential to protecting children’s right to learn.
Disruption to education due to the flooding caused by heavy and sudden rainfall or rising sea levels is already a reality. For example, only recently have the pupils and staff at St Michaels and All Angels CE Primary School in Leicestershire been able to return to their school after every classroom was flooded and damaged beyond use in January 2025.
The summarised data on state-funded primary and secondary schools comes from the Environmental Agency (EA) and considers two types of flood risk. The findings indicate that the river and sea flooding risks are comparatively minimal, with around 90% of schools not at risk. However, surface water flooding poses a much more significant threat, with up to 66% of primary school buildings and 80% of their sites at low or higher risk, including 59% of secondary school sites at high risk. This means over half of secondary schools have a 1 in 30 chance in any given year of a flood event occurring on at least part of their site. With such widespread exposure, this underlines the need for an urgent shift from reactive recovery of ‘one-off’ events to systemic and anticipatory investment in flood resilience.
The third climate risk noted is water shortage. The assessment summary simply indicates that it is uncommon in schools, but highly disruptive if it does occur. The DfE highlights that it works with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to monitor and deal with any reported issues. This brief comment asserts that water scarcity in schools is under control, but given the escalating pressures on the UK water system, the predicted water deficit, the assessment potentially underestimates the wider impacts on pupil wellbeing and education.
Finally, the DfE bullet points current initiatives with guidance for schools and trusts. These include climate-adapted designs for new school buildings, strategic and research-driven to invest and prioritise strategically, one of these being investment in flood-resilience. For schools, the suggestions include being familiar with guidance on extreme weather events, having a climate action plan and naming a sustainability lead to manage specificities of each school.
This DfE assessment demonstrates that climate change is threatening education. It shows the direct and increasing risk of overheating and flooding to schools, and strongly highlights the urgent need to adapt school buildings and infrastructure accordingly.
It is also worth noting that the impact of climate risks on students and learning is much larger than the schools themselves, with climate-related implications for children and education reaching beyond the classroom. This includes overheating or flooded homes, disruption to extra-curricular spaces, increased illness, or increased cost of living driven by water shortage. All of these reduce children’s ability to engage in education.
The assessment is based on the scenario where no more actions are put in place to successfully slow down further climate deregulation. This indicates not only the need to adapt to climate risks but the necessity to work towards prevention and mitigation; wider government initiatives for this include their net-zero targets. This is why Teach the Future is calling for all schools to be built and retrofitted to net-zero by 2030. We are calling for increased funds to support efforts towards this goal and the government’s carbon emission-cutting targets. We are calling for a secure future of education.
Governmental or institutional actions that ignore - or worse, accelerate - causal factors of climate breakdown pose a risk to pupils’ future ability to learn. Education is threatened. So, while adaptation strategies are urgent and essential, they need to be supported with simultaneous action to lessen the continual increase in global temperature.