New timetables, longer holidays: How can French schools adapt to heatwaves?

New timetables, longer holidays: How can French schools adapt to heatwaves? The start of a new heatwave in France has prompted multiple schools to announce changes to their opening hours from Thursday onwards. As climate change makes high temperatures an annual – and increasingly early – phenomenon, France and other countries in southern Europe are debating whether more permanent changes are needed. With high-level orange weather alert warnings in place across most of the country and the mercury set to hit 40C next week, many schools in France have announced changes to their regular hours to protect students from the heat. Among the measures taken are ending classes early and localised changes to end-of-year exam schedules, leaving students with yet another summer term disrupted by hot weather. So intense was the heat last year that nearly 2,000 schools made the decision to close their doors before the official start of the summer holidays. In 2019, multiple national brevet diploma exams sat by 14- and 15-year-olds were pushed back. As climate dysregulation makes heatwaves both more common and more intense in France, the argument for a permanent change to the academic calendar seems to be gaining steam, supported by examples in other southern European countries – such as Spain and Italy – which have already begun to adapt to Europe's increasingly hot weather. On the front lines of climate change Traditionally, schools in France have been spared the challenge of operating in extremely hot weather, as such temperatures have tended to hit during the July and August summer holidays. Meanwhile, in southern European countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy, students were more likely to experience “the highest number of hot days”, according to a 2026 report from the European Climate and Health Observatory. It found that around 16,000 schools – five percent of all schools in Europe – mostly located in the south were already experiencing days with maximum temperatures above 30C during the school year. Climate dysregulation is now changing this dynamic, making hotter temperatures more likely to occur earlier in the year and all over the continent. Since the 1980s, Europe has warmed twice as fast compared to the global average, with elevated temperatures during May and October, according to Europe’s Copernicus Institute. Read moreWhy is Europe heating up faster than the rest of the world? If the current trajectory continues, by 2050 the number of schools in Europe impacted by heatwaves with temperatures of over 30C will rise to around 31,500, or 9 percent, and then climb to 25 percent of all schools by 2100 – with France set to be on the front lines of the change. Fighting the heat One fairly radical way for French schools to adapt would be to extend the summer holidays to include June and September. Officially the French summer break begins on July 4 – significantly later than in many countries in southern Europe. France's school holidays are also much shorter, weighing in at 56 days compared with 77 in Spain and 97 in Italy. For Italy’s school-age children, classes generally end between June 6–11 and resume in mid-September. But having the longest summer vacation in Europe still doesn’t fully shield Italian students from sitting through classes in high temperatures, and warnings about overheated schools appear regularly in local media. In May this year, a 12-year-old student was taken to hospital after experiencing heat-related illness at a school in Emilia-Romagna in the north of the country, local site Il Resto del Carlino reported. Italian teaching union Anief even called in September 2025 for a longer break due to a heatwave at the start of the academic year. “We cannot continue with an academic calendar from 50 years ago in the face of climate change,” Anief director Marcello Pacifico said. Watch moreKeeping cool: How French cities are adapting to extreme heat But parents of students did not agree. More than 76,000 people signed a petition organised by the NGO We World proposing that the summer holidays be shortened by one month. Their main argument was that, beyond the question of climate change, a longer break would penalise children of working parents who are not in a position to provide all-day activities for their children during the holidays. There is also another issue: extended periods at home do not always benefit children. As the Covid-19 pandemic illustrated, “in some cases students are better in school than at home… It’s important that schools create the conditions to keep students there,” said Conceicao Pinheiro, a teacher at a school facing climate change challenges near Porto, Portugal, during an OECD education conference. “Fighting the heat is one thing, but we must also fight inequality,” agreed Fatima Souchi, member of a French union of school directors and head teacher at a primary school in the Essonne department. “Rather than extending holidays, I would be more in favour of bringing students in earlier – one week in advance, for example,” she said. ‘A social issue’ A less radical solution might be to adjust school times to mitigate the hottest period of the day in the afternoon. In Italy, students have for years had five hours of intensive classes in the morning, allowing them to finish school at 1 or 2pm. But in Spain – even though the country is known for its siesta culture – students still work through the day. As in France, they normally start their day around 8am and finish at 5pm. Some regions in Spain have now started experimenting with new timetables, however. Madrid plans to move classes to the cooler morning hours during heatwaves. In the southern Andalucía province, where temperatures can climb too high from mid-May, schools will be able to dismiss students early, provided that families have given their consent. The French town of Montélimar, in the southern Drôme department, experimented with a similar system in June 2024. Students there started classes at 8am instead of 8:30am and finished at 3pm instead of 4:30pm, with lunchtime shortened by one hour (many French students normally having two) to make up the time difference. The system was broadly welcomed by teachers but less so by parents, who found it hard to accommodate the early start in the morning and felt their children did not have enough time to eat a filling lunch. The experiment has not been repeated. “It’s a social issue,” explained Souchi. “On paper, the idea is good. The problem is that at the moment school hours are synchronised with parents’ working hours. For this to work, we have to adjust everything. Otherwise, what will children do in the afternoons? Who is going to collect them? Where will they go?” Souchi is in favour of a third option: dividing the day in two, with students attending school in person in the morning when it is cooler, and distance learning after lunch when temperatures rise. “Students who are able can go home at lunchtime and resume their classes remotely. Those who need to could stay at school, where the heat would be less oppressive with fewer students overall,” she said. ‘Limited’ school buildings Although the various solutions are still subject to debate in France and elsewhere, Souchi is clear: schools urgently need to evolve. In France, two thirds of primary schools, middle schools and high schools were built before 1970, making them poorly adapted to the warming climate. In school playgrounds, asphalt can easily heat to 50C in hot weather. Measures to counteract the heat are “limited”, Souchi said. Her school has only “an air conditioner in the courtyard, and a few fans in the classrooms”. Other teachers are feeling the same frustration. In Spain the end of the school year was marked by a series of teacher strikes – largely supported by parents – with one of the demands being the release of funds to speed up the process of improving school buildings. Ultimately, “we need to tackle these large-scale projects and establish clear protocols for responding to heatwaves,” Souchi said. This article was adapted by Joanna York. Click here to read the original in French.