Over 210 million children lost crucial school days in just April and May of 2024 due to school closures from extreme heat, a Devex analysis has found. The true scale of this climate change-driven disruption to education is likely even greater, as there is little official data or research on how often schools shut down because of extreme temperatures.
Climate change impacts are rapidly eroding hard-won learning gains and widening education gaps between and within nations. With heat waves already becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change, addressing this threat is critical to safeguarding the fundamental right to education for hundreds of millions of the world’s most vulnerable children.
With 2.4 billion children estimated worldwide in 2023 and over 4 billion children projected to be born over the next 30 years, having an education system that can cope with heat, storms, and floods becomes a central issue for governments.
About the author
Diego Arguedas Ortiz
Diego Arguedas Ortiz is a climate journalist from Costa Rica. He has covered climate change since 2013 and is currently the associate director of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, a program at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University. His work has appeared in BBC Future, MIT Technology Review, Vice, BBC Culture, and Anthropocene, among other outlets. In 2015, he led the creation of Ojo al Clima, Central America's first climate news outlet, where he stayed as editor until 2019. His work includes six U.N. Climate Conferences, the Panama Papers international collaboration in 2016, and on-the-ground reporting from a dozen countries.
