Hot Yoga, Hot Schools and the Great British Heatwave

Sarah Tucker

Last week, I taught yoga to teenagers in a non-air-conditioned drama studio which had ceased to be a room and had become, in effect, a municipal kiln with mats. The pupils were thirteen and fourteen, which is already an age of profound physical negotiation. Limbs lengthen without permission, deodorant becomes a social issue, and embarrassment arrives before the register has been taken. Add heat, polyester uniform and a drama studio with the atmospheric quality of soup, and you have less a wellbeing lesson than a small experiment in human endurance.

All they wanted, quite reasonably, was to be out of there, or preferably submerged in a cold bath with the emotional intensity of Romans at a spa. Even lying down became demanding. Savasana, for those uninitiated in yoga, is the final resting pose where you lie on your back and do absolutely nothing. In normal conditions, this is considered relaxing. In extreme heat, even doing nothing can feel like an ambitious extracurricular activity. Yet they were brilliant. They listened. They slowed down. They laughed. They adapted. They did not complain half as much as several adults I could mention, though I will not, because some of them may still be holding clipboards.

That experience made me think that the debate about schools and heat is often framed wrongly. We ask whether schools should close or stay open, as if the only choices are full attendance or national abandonment. That is too blunt. The better question is how schools can keep children safe, teachers capable and learning alive when the building itself has started behaving like a conservatory with GCSE options.

Britain is not naturally good at heat. We long for sunshine, speak of it romantically, then act personally betrayed when it arrives in quantity. Schools sit at the centre of this contradiction. Many were built for damp winters, not classroom temperatures suggesting a minor geological event. Victorian schools sometimes fare better than newer glass-heavy buildings, which can look architecturally optimistic until the sun appears and the place becomes a business-class greenhouse. The problem is not that schools are incompetent. The problem is that the climate has changed faster than the buildings, budgets and rules.

The first task is to separate facts from indignation. Some children are safer at school than at home. Some homes are cramped, overheated or unsupported. Some parents cannot leave work at twenty minutes’ notice because Year Eight has been released into the wild carrying a water bottle and mild confusion. Some classrooms are genuinely unsuitable by mid-afternoon. Some teachers are being asked to manage behaviour, hydration, safeguarding and learning while slowly roasting beside a laminated poster about resilience. All of these things are true at once, which is why the answer cannot be supplied by one shouty national mood.

A useful school heat plan starts by refusing the false choice. Open or closed is not enough. Schools need a middle range of responses agreed before the heat arrives. That might mean heat timetables, with demanding lessons early and calmer work later. It might mean assemblies cancelled automatically above certain temperatures. It might mean PE being redesigned, not abandoned, with shade, mobility, breathing, balance and body awareness replacing competitive exertion. It might mean shorter days when necessary, but announced with proper notice rather than through a frantic email which lands just as parents have joined a meeting and pretended their home life is under control.

The cheapest and most practical intervention is to map the heat. Not metaphorically, although a few staff meetings would benefit from that too. Literally. Put inexpensive thermometers in classrooms, corridors, halls and studios. Record which rooms become unbearable, which stay tolerable, which windows help, which blinds work, and which glamorous glass area appears to have been designed by someone hoping to cultivate aubergines. Once a school understands its own thermal personality, it can move people intelligently. Vulnerable pupils, younger children, exam groups and overheated staff should not be left in the rooms that become human lasagne trays by period five.

Uniform is another obvious place for intelligence to enter quietly. A blazer in a heatwave is not discipline. It is upholstery. Schools should have a heat uniform ready to activate: PE kit, loose shirts, trainers, hats, and no solemn interrogation at the gate about whether a sock has betrayed the ethos of the academy trust. Staff should be included too. Adults cannot model calm while dressed for a court appearance in a sauna.

Water sounds simple until schools make it complicated. Pupils need to drink more in hot weather, but drinking more only works if toilet access is sensible. A school cannot encourage hydration and then treat the toilet as a privilege to be negotiated like a trade agreement. Water without toilet access is not a health policy. It is a bladder-based endurance test with pastoral consequences.

Movement needs careful thought. In my yoga classes, the answer has not been to push through. It has been to slow everything down. Less heat-building activity. More breath. More seated work. More balance. More awareness of the body before the body becomes dramatic. That is not weakness. That is judgement. A hot-weather PE curriculum could teach pupils how to regulate themselves physically and mentally. It could teach them that resilience is not ignoring conditions, but responding intelligently to them. This is a more useful life skill than discovering who can run fastest while looking faintly boiled.

Schools can also learn from hotter countries without pretending Britain is suddenly Seville because someone has put olives in the staffroom. Shade matters. Cooling spaces matter. Morning learning matters. Outdoor waiting in direct sun should stop. Sports days should have heat thresholds, not heroic traditions. Dining halls should offer lighter food. Kitchens should not be expected to produce hot lunches in conditions better suited to industrial ceramics. One properly managed cool room in every school, prioritised for vulnerable pupils and staff who need recovery, would be more useful than another motivational wall display urging everyone to “be their best self”.

Communication matters almost as much as temperature. Parents do not need drama. They need clarity. A good heat plan should explain, in advance, what happens at different levels of heat. When does uniform change? When does PE change? When are lessons moved? When might the school day be shortened? How much notice will parents receive? Which pupils need extra support? What should pupils bring? What will the school provide? This is not bureaucratic fussing. It is how trust is built before everyone becomes irritable and sun-struck.

There is also a deeper educational opportunity here. Heatwaves can teach science, geography, design, citizenship, economics and common sense. Pupils can learn why bodies overheat, why cities trap warmth, why trees are infrastructure rather than decoration, why buildings matter, and why “open a window” is sometimes less a solution than a sentimental gesture toward air. Climate adaptation should not sit politely in a textbook while pupils sweat beneath a skylight. It should be visible in how the school actually behaves.

The explicit lateral thinking point is this: change the question. Instead of asking, “Should schools close?” ask, “What arrangement protects safety, learning, parents and staff at the lowest possible cost?” Instead of asking, “How do we preserve the normal day?” ask, “Which parts of the normal day matter, and which parts are merely habit wearing a lanyard?” Instead of asking, “Are we being soft?” ask, “Are we being smart?”

This matters because schools already do extraordinary work with limited budgets. Teachers and school leaders are used to improvising around leaking roofs, missing staff, stretched families, exam pressure and the photocopier making noises associated with maritime distress. The last thing they need is another policy lecture from people sitting in air-conditioned offices. What they need is permission, planning and practical tools. Thermometers. Shade. Flexible uniform. Sensible hydration. Adjusted timetables. Cooler rooms. Clear communication. Fewer heroic gestures. More trust.

My teenagers in the drama studio understood this instinctively. They did not need a grand speech about climate adaptation. They needed water, patience, humour, a slower pace and permission not to perform toughness for its own sake. They managed the heat not by conquering it, but by working around it. They accepted that even lying still can be difficult when the floor has developed opinions. They also reminded me that pupils often adapt faster than systems.

At the end of the class, when they came out of savasana, nobody looked spiritually transformed, unless transformation now includes sticking slightly to a yoga mat. But they were calm. They had done enough. They had learned something about breath, body, limits and adjustment. In a hot British school, that felt like a small victory. Not dramatic, not expensive, not revolutionary in the usual noisy sense. Just sensible, humane and cool-headed, which in the current climate may be the most radical pose of all.