in Montélimar, new class times to adapt to heatwaves

Formerly reserved for summer vacations, extreme heat now hits in the middle of the school year. A consequence of global warming which forces schools to adapt. In Montélimar, new class schedules are being tested throughout the month of June in three schools.

It’s one of the first things he does when he arrives in his class. Before even starting the dictation, Aurélien Sauvêtre, teacher, turns on the three ceiling fans. This Thursday 27 June, it’s already 26°C at 8 a.m. “It’s new this year and it’s a big game-changer”he explains. In this elementary school in Bouquet, in Montélimar (Drôme), heat has become a real problem, with global warming.

Although this end of year has been less hot than previous ones, the thermometer can easily exceed 34°C in this concrete building, facing due south. “For the students, it’s complicated to concentrate, we can’t tackle new learning”the teacher testifies. When it is too hot, “we don’t do class like a normal day”.

To address this problem, the school and the town hall did not just install fans. Under the leadership of the teaching team, new class schedules have been tested since the 3rd June, as in two other schools in the city. Concretely, school starts at 8 a.m. instead of 8:30 a.m. At midday, the lunch break only lasts an hour and students are released at 3 p.m., an hour and a half earlier than usual. Half return home, the others are welcomed by the extracurricular, in the refectory, the only air-conditioned room in the school. “We had to find a solution which would allow part of the workforce to leave the premises (…) because not all of them could be accommodated in a cooled room”contextualizes Françoise Etcheverry, the director of Bouquet.

For the head of the establishment, worried about increasingly frequent and intense heatwaves, the results of this experiment are “positive”. “We gained an hour of teaching compared to the traditional morning schedule”she notes, emphasizing that it is a time of day when children are “more available, more concentrated and less tired”. The mayor, Julien Cornillet (Les Républicains), is also excited by this “great first in mainland France” and invites his colleagues to implement the measure at home. “In the south of France, heat problems start in May and don’t stop until the end of September”he recalls.

When leaving school, parents are much more critical. “I don’t think that’s very wise.”, euphemizes Sonia Silvestre, mother of two children in CP and CE2. This parent delegate points out the difficulties in waking up children in the morning and the lunch break time being too short. “Some times, they eat very little and very quickly. At 3 p.m., when we come to pick them up, they are starving”she testifies.

“It put us in an impossible situation”summarizes Emilie Duroure. Her son Sacha, in CE2, has attention deficit disorder (ADHD) and oral eating disorders. With the new canteen hours, it is impossible to pick him up between noon and two. “The first days, he only ate a piece of bread”she remembers. Thanks to the director of the after-school program, she can now provide him with a meal, but “it’s time for the year to end”.

At the Bouquet nursery school, where the same timetables apply, Emilie Surply, parent representative, says she has received “fairly mixed feedback”. She emphasizes that the problem is not completely resolved, because it can be very hot from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the classrooms. “It seems more like a bandage on a haemorrhage than a real treatment of climatic conditions”she regrets. Gilles, father of a daughter in CP, believes that the solution should be “more technical than human”for example, with the installation of air conditioners.

“We are absolutely not in favor of all-air conditioning, because the impact on the carbon footprint is disastrous”, replies Françoise Etcheverry, the director. In the middle of the courtyard where a few trees timidly break through the asphalt, the mayor defends a “tool panel” to combat heat waves. “It’s not just ‘I’ll change the timetable and everything will be fine’, it’s ‘I’ll develop, I’ll invest in my schools, I’ll plant, I’ll put in the tools to freshen up the classrooms'”, insists Julien Cornillet, specifying that he invests one million euros each year in the 19 city ​​schools. An initial assessment of this experiment must be made before the summer holidays, to decide on the future of this system.

Since the 19th century, the Earth’s average temperature has warmed by 1.1°C. Scientists have established with certainty that this increase is due to human activities, which consume fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas). This warming, unprecedented in its speed, threatens the future of our societies and biodiversity. But solutions – renewable energies, sobriety, reduced meat consumption – exist. Discover our answers to your questions about the climate crisis.