Heatwave hysteria has gone too far - especially in schools, writes James Hanson

For most of us, this brings sensible precautions as we carry on with our daily routines, but for some teachers it’s prompted an absurd overreaction. Hundreds of schools are closed today across England and Wales, supposedly to avoid both pupils and staff sweltering in boiling-hot classrooms. But isn’t this just the latest example of Britain’s nanny state gone too far? When did we become such a country of snowflakes?

Of course, it’s important to keep both students and teachers safe in the heat, but whatever happened to taking sensible precautions? By all means cancel school sports day in these temperatures, but surely one of the lessons learned from the Covid pandemic was that closing classrooms should only ever be a last resort? And if the classroom itself is too hot, how about holding lessons outside in the shade?

By closing schools completely, teachers are simply passing the buck to hard-working parents, who may themselves be operating in an uncomfortably warm workplace but don’t have the same luxury of downing tools for the day. Instead, these parents will now have to make last-minute childcare arrangements because a headteacher has deemed it easier to let pupils swelter alone in their bedrooms than under supervision in a classroom.

There’s a broader point to be considered here. Isn’t this just the latest example of how we overprotect and mollycoddle our children? On my LBC show last weekend, I was joined by Jo Frost, best known as TV’s Supernanny. She told me how kids as old as seven or eight are struggling to brush their teeth or hold a knife and fork and how one in four children arrive at primary school without having been potty-trained. They are the victims of over-protective parenting that ignores basic life skills.

Wanting to keep our children safe is a completely natural instinct, but if you take it too far, you risk permanently infantilising them and denying them the chance to build the resilience necessary for adulthood. Surely a responsible headteacher would see this week’s hot weather as an opportunity, not a cost? What better chance to teach pupils about ways to keep cool, the importance of hydration, or the physics of airflow? And yet, in what is frankly a dereliction of duty, many have decided it’s easier to send them all home.

What makes this all the more frustrating is that extreme heat is here to stay. Temperatures in the high thirties happen most summers now, so do we really want school closures to become an annual event? Instead, we should use this latest overreaction as a reality check. It’s not rocket science: ensure pupils drink plenty of water, slather them in factor 50, and keep them in the shade. Our heatwave hysteria has gone too far.

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Listen to James Hanson on LBC on weekends between 4 and 7am.

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