Climatic changes are disrupting education outcomes, increasing learning loss: UNESCO
New Delhi: Climate related stressors like heat, wildfires, floods, droughts, diseases and rising sea levels affect education outcomes and threaten to undo educational gains of recent decade, according to the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM).
The global report compiled by UNESCO, Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) project and University of Saskatchewan in Canada has pointed out that most low and middle-income countries are experiencing climate-related school closures every year, increasing chances of learning loss and dropout.
“Climate change related impacts are already disrupting education systems and outcomes. Direct effects include the destruction of education infrastructure as well as injuries and loss of life among students, parents and school staff. ,” the report said.
“Over the past 20 years, schools were closed in at least 75 per cent of the extreme weather events, impacting five million people or more. Increasingly frequent natural disasters, including floods and cyclones, have led to the deaths of students and teachers and have damaged and destroyed schools. “Exposure to heat has significant detrimental effects on children’s educational outcomes. An analysis linking census and climate data in 29 countries between 1969 and 2012 showed that exposure to higher than average temperatures during the prenatal and early life period is associated with fewer years of schooling, especially in Southeast Asia,” it added. The GEM report noted that a child experiencing temperatures that are two standard deviations above average is predicted to attain 1.5 fewer years of schooling than children experiencing average temperatures.
“High temperatures reduced high-stakes test performance in China and led to reductions in both high school graduation and college entrance rates. In the United States, without air conditioning, a school year hotter by 1 degree Celsius, reduced test scores by 1 per cent.
“Very hot school days disproportionately impacted African American and Hispanic students, due to poor infrastructure conditions, accounting for roughly five per cent of the racial achievement gap. In the most disadvantaged municipalities in Brazil, which were also amongst those most exposed to heat risk, students lost about one per cent of learning per year due to rising temperatures,” it said. Elaborating about impact of climate change on education in India, the crucial report pointed out that a study of rainfall shocks over the first 15 years of life in India found that they negatively affected vocabulary at age five and mathematics and non-cognitive skills at age 15.
