Calls to rethink school exams in summer heat
Getty ImagesAn MP says the months when schoolchildren sit exams should be reconsidered as part of a wider plan to help society cope with hotter summers.
Adrian Ramsay, who represents Waveney Valley, has called for a cross-government approach to how health, transport, education, farming and housing must adapt to climate change.
"If the temperatures we've seen this June are the coolest we will see in the future, is is that really the best time of the year for children to be able to perform at their best?" the Green MP said.
The Department for Education (DfE) said it was "taking action to understand the potential impact on all areas of life, including education, so we can prevent disruption to learning."
"We've seen how big a challenge this is for the country," said Ramsay, who led a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday.
"Our infrastructure in this country is just not set up for the levels of heat we are getting now and we've got to recognise... this is a new climate reality."
Speaking to BBC Suffolk's Wayne Bavin, he said the UK was "only scratching the surface of what we need to do", and said he had used summer exams as an example of how we needed to rethink society.
"Could exams be held at a different point in the year, maybe a couple of months earlier," he added.
"It's the sort of thing we will have to start thinking about in the next few years."
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Last summer, Baroness Brown, who heads the Adaptation for the UK Committee on Climate Change, called for the scrapping of GCSE and A-Level exams in June.
She told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme rising temperatures left school halls too hot for students to perform well.
Dave Lee-Allen, director of the Suffolk Association of Secondary Headteachers, said change would probably be welcomed but the education system was "fixated" on a September to July academic year.
"Whether its SATS at primary school, GCSEs or A-levels, the whole structure is predicated around that timetable," he explained to Bavin.
"The idea itself has a lot of credibility but you would have to deconstruct the whole system and recalibrate it, in order for the exams to be taken at a different time."
The DfE said it had a £20bn plan to rebuild more than 750 schools, which were designed with effective ventilation and shade to stay cool.
Existing buildings were being made more resilient to a changing climate through a £710m retrofit programme, it added.
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