Even after years of increasingly erratic weather, the heat we’ve just experienced is still hard to believe.
The peaks of 34.8°C seen on Monday and 35.1°C on Tuesday are more than 2°C higher than the previous May record for the UK, set way back in 1944 – with climate professor Peter Thorne, of Maynooth University in Ireland, calling them “mind-bogglingly crazy”.
These sweltering temperatures are bad news for everyone from the elderly to builders. But their timing brings to mind one group in particular – schoolchildren and college students who have to sit exams in May and June; often in the school gym or hall with great big windows that magnify the heat.
Not surprisingly, it’s much harder to perform well in hot, stuffy conditions. And as late spring and summer temperatures become more and more outlandish, there are growing calls to move exams forward a bit to give people a better chance of passing.
A friend of mine, who is a primary school teacher in south London, told me that in the few weeks running up to the summer holidays the children find it especially difficult to learn anything because it’s just too hard to concentrate. She says that the situation has got noticeably worse in the past few years, in her opinion, leaving no option but to end the summer term – and start the holiday – earlier.
