The National Education Union is pushing for a legally enforceable maximum indoor working temperature of 26°C, which would force schools to halt lessons during heatwaves. The Telegraph has the story:
The union is also calling for taxpayer-funded cooling “hubs” for communities to use in “extreme heat”, and a legal right to paid time off for nominated staff to complete climate-change training.
The demands are listed in a motion submitted by the NEU to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) annual conference in Brighton, which starts this weekend.
If passed, it will become official TUC policy, which aligns the priorities of the organisation’s 47 member unions.
The proposal for a 26°C limit is backed by Hannah Spencer, a Green Party MP, who is leading calls in Parliament for a maximum working temperature. …
The NEU is the UK’s biggest education union, representing more than 450,000 teachers and school staff across the country.
The motion submitted to the TUC conference calls for a new, legally enforceable, maximum indoor working temperature of 26°C, which would apply to employees across “multiple sectors”. …
The NEU also calls for the Government to make schools “climate resilient” and introduce “a legal right to paid time off for green reps to undertake duties and receive training”. …
Ms Spencer, the MP for Gorton and Denton, is attempting to change the law in the UK by tabling her own legislation in the House of Commons.
The Maximum Workplace Temperature Bill – supported by Rebecca Long-Bailey, a Labour MP and a former shadow education secretary – would establish an independent body to advise ministers on when it was too hot to work.
Worth reading in full.
So what about when the heating breaks down and the temperature in the classroom is at freezing?
That happened to me for two days in the winter of 1953/4 but the school kept going, everyone just kept their outdoor clothing on. The biggest problem was that the teachers had difficulty holding the chalk while wearing thick gloves.
As for 26C, that is just pleasantly warm. If it is too hot to work at more than that temperature much of the world would stop for months at a time.
Why do the same people go on holiday to the Mediterranean where the summer temperatures are above 26°C?
Why do people visit a sauna but wouldn’t work at those temperatures?
Curious.
The proposal for a 26°C limit is backed by Hannah Spencer, a Green Party MP, who is leading calls in Parliament for a maximum working temperature. …
You clearly have no idea whatsoever about silly, insane working class plumber[?] Hannah and her crusade against drinking in Parliamentary hospitality areas.
Why do people visit a sauna but wouldn’t work at those temperatures?
You should ask a
teacherclassroom [climate change] activist. They’re the ones doing the complaining.What they are really doing is looking for an excuse to not work and get paid. The conference thing is more of the same. They all give the middle finger to actually teaching the children.
Do you work at those temperatures?
I wonder how many people here are bots. Connecting two posts to each other seems a insurmountable task sometimes.
Some people here think you’re a bot- probably paid for by Al Gore. 🙂
Yeah, Al Gore, antifa and atlantic council of woke. I’m swimming in money 🙂
I have worked on roofs in the sun at 50C and got the job done. 26C is not even hot.
Also worked in equipment buildings in very hot areas of Australia, where a thermometer went straight to its top of 127F and stayed there. Very unpleasant- couldn’t touch any metal surface with bare hands.
It was over 30C here yesterday in France.
Nice actually.
You get used to it.
The only problem is not in daytime it’s at night.
It’s actually tough to sleep at night over 25C without a breath of wind (last night and now mid september)!
As you said you get used to it but it also depends on the humidity. Low humidity with 26ºC sleeps great High humidity with 24ºC can be awful.
Why are you such an irrelevant piece of crap?
Saunas operates at what temperature? Maybe 2x – 3x 26c?
What an idiotic comment.
Maybe find the connection to the comment I responded too and think about how working =/= going on a holiday
Nope, can’t see it.
Russian Banya are hotter than saunas.
Typically 90C+
I’m still alive and well, but wouldn’t recommend working in there!
A sauna at 26C is broken.
It’s over 26C almost all summer here in NC, and I work in my field just about every day. If you can’t work in 80F temperatures, you should seek medical help.
Do you have to pay attention and think while in a sauna? No? Oh, so totally different than a school.
But holidaying in the Mediterranean where people are used to working, shopping, exploring the architecture, taking pictures, conducting business over some expressos, i.e. using your brain and eyes, and keeping aware of pickpockets, is not a bad comparison to having to paying attention at school – though boring communist teachers and uncomfortable desks and distractions from low IQ people are all a problem.
Let’s have class outside today!
They probably go to the topless beaches? 🙂
I went to a bar, the sign above the door said “TOPLESS BOTTOMLESS” I went in, there was nobody there!
Does Massachusetts allow them?
Nope. Not that I know of. There are some private ponds and small lakes- maybe it happens there.
25 years ago I visited the “Combat Zone” in Boston. It did back then.
As for 26C, that is just pleasantly warm.
I completely agree, particularly if one is just sitting, not actually moving. Although, any such decision should be based on a Heat Index, not just the temperature.
Classroom activists did not need to demand the right to mess children up. That’s their job. This latest bit of snowflakery is par for the alarmist course.
The luvvies lend a hand…
Benedict Cumberbatch on his Earth-saving eco film: ‘We are in the last grab of the extraction era’
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/sep/15/benedict-cumberbatch-how-to-live-on-earth-obama-venison
So is home-schooling taking off like never before?
It isn’t down.
Woah! This is huge. A Green MP backing an eco-policy.
I thought they were animated only by Gaza, supporting economic migrants, and alphabet people these days. But mostly Gaza.
When temperature exceeds 26C or 78.8F they want to stop work, that sounds like people who are not working anyway, they are likely just watching the thermometer.
They won’t be working in Mediterranean countries like Italy, Greece, or Spain.
However there’s one difference between the countries mentioned and the U.K. and that is when the school day starts and ends. Typically continental schools start at 08:00 and finish at around 13:00, thus missing the hottest parts of the day, whereas the U.K. start typically at about 09:00 and finish at 15:15, which means classes are in session over the hottest part of the day.
What should be considered is changing the start and finish times here in the U.K. rather than closing the school at some arbitrary temperature.
26C is not hot. One simply takes off the sweater and coat and turns on the fan when it gets to 30 or 35C.
It depends where you live. Also I didn’t say that 26 Celsius was hot, which is a somewhat arbitrary value. What I was pointing out is that there are alternatives such as changing the school day that need to be considered first, which is exactly what other countries do.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/temperature/employer/the-law.htm
https://www.idealista.com/en/news/lifestyle-in-spain/2026/08/31/807843-school-holidays-in-spain-dates-for-2026-and-2027
Schools in Spain are closed for 2 and a half month in summer. Even so it can be that the last days and the first days of the school season are hot. The difference is that at the end of summer we are all used to those temperatures.
These are the school term dates for where I live https://www.leicestershire.gov.uk/education-and-children/schools-colleges-and-academies/school-term-dates
Other counties start their summer break later and return later. Scotland has a different summer break as well.
You’ll see that the year is split into six half terms. There’s an opinion that the 6 week summer break is too long and children forget what they’ve learned.
Thus our schools are still open when the temperature starts climbing whilst Spanish schools close before then.
My son is a teacher in a primary school, I’ll see what his opinion is.
If people who only sit around and talk can not work at 26 degrees, than what’s the limit for those who do real physical work and heat up? 19 degrees or less maybe?
Yikes! I just realized I am within 3C of having to down tools right now. Why am I wearing this hoodie? Am I crazy?
I am not sure where I will go though. My house is the same temperature. I may as well stay where I am but just stop working.
Why am I wearing this hoodie?
Getting down with the kidz? I’ve noticed they’re doing the same and with the hood up.
Imitating John Fetterman?
Who is he? [A N Englishman}
You forgot how to use Google? 🙂
Is he that important? He seems to be over there…
A member of the Democratic Party…
…the only statewide Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania to endorse [Bernie] Sanders
…accused the party-endorsed Katie McGinty of taking campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry
Ah, one of those. But does he wear a hoodie? Apparently he does.
…wore a hoodie and shorts during President Trump’s second inauguration
He’s a well kept secret.
Not a secret here.
So I gather.
More to him than that, Strat-he’s quite the interesting guy. Read up on him a bit; you’ll be surprised, and like the rest of us terrible Yank right-wingers, bemused. He’s the only Dem that’s interesting.
So, why does he waste his time in the Democrat party?
God only knows. He had a stroke, maybe a brush with the Reaper woke him up? Maybe a blast of common sense? Nobody knows, but he’s got the libs, Dems, and socialists in an absolute uproar-quite fun to watch actually. They don’t know whether to shit or go blind.
He has a voting base which elected him. The democratic voting base is much larger than the republican base. He wants to stay in office to fix things. Independent or republican would most likely put him out of offioe. The democrat political machine types are trying to force him out as they simply refuse to tell the voters the truth about anything.
The only one who is sane.
Actual he is on the outs with the democratic party on climate , voting,Israel and a whold bunch more as he came around to reality, the rest of the party is still in denial on reality on climate and everything else. He appears to be the only sane democrat. He differs on how to solve some problems from say Trump supportes but he wants to fix things and has acknowledged reality. Nobody sane cares about the hoodie.
A U.S. senator from Pennsylvania who notoriously wears shorts and hoodies, even to the Senate.
I have now been introduced to Mr Fetterman, J. I can’t say I’m impressed.
He is the closest thing to sane that the Democrats have.
Exactly!
Oh dear.
Dig deeper.
So you impresses you? A president obcessed with gold leaf in the whitehouse? A bunch of democrat senators and congresspeople who lie and distort 24/7/365? Blue state governors who support keeping men on womens teams in support of men who claim to be women?
Same blue state governors who want the taxpayers to fund illegals with tax dollars?
A lot more should do the same, Pretense is all most in office know how to act. NONE actually want to fix things.
I would best describe him as a ‘disruptor’ in the usual omnipresent US political gamesmanship.
An interesting character.
House inside at the moment 28ºC humidity 60% does that mean that I don’t have to do the dishes?
When temperature exceeds 26C or 78.8F they want to stop work
That would shut down the entire southern half of the US for half the year.
The question is if teachers actually teach these days or just sprout communist rhetoric?
So maybe the best thing would be to close schools indefinitely.
The majority of humans live in countries where no one would work for most days throughout the year if they’d follow that idea..
As this temperature+ is considered to be the optimum for plant growth
one can guess how unnatural this demand is and that there would be no harvesting possible for most of the time.
Seems that mass starvation is always end result of such great ideas.
But the worst problem is that something with the names NATIONAL and EDUCATION
can let something so abnormal and stupid become part of their Agenda.
No nation can survive educators like that.
Such idiots shouldn’t be allowed to educate anyone, let alone children.
The finest example of the utter rot that has consumed academia is to be found in Cambridge’s faculty of “education” and the appointments of [fantasist] Jason Arday, Farah Ahmed and others. Ahmed is still being kept under the radar somehow; she is interesting…
The University of Cambridge is facing fresh scrutiny after it emerged that a former member of the now-proscribed extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir was given a role as assistant research professor in the institution’s faculty of education last year.
Ahmed authored a Hizb ut-Tahrir pamphlet entitled Education and Identity, first written in 2002 and republished in 2017.
In this work, she reportedly described “western education” as a “threat” to Muslim communities in Britain.
She is also alleged to have criticised British schools for presenting “polygamy or marriage under the age of 16” as “archaic and discriminatory to women,” while branding democracy a “corrupt tradition.” – GBN
Leopards do not change their spots. And Cambridge has doubled down.
When you put it like that, shirking because it’s not quite hot seems preferable.
Well, while Miss Farah Ahmed is operating on max, hypocrisy (who goes to a country that threatens you and your people? You don’t flee oppression to be opressed)
she is right – most probably for all the wrong reasons as I don’t know what she actually stated.
” Western Education” is a threat to western countries, their communities etc.
The wokeness and degeneration destroys everything.
Of course it is then a threat to everyone else.
Exactly. If universities would shut down their education faculties and throw out a few more of the liberal arts ones no one would be any the worse for such actions. The academics who have sinecures in them would be forced to seek gainful employment and not continually be trying the foist their harebrained theories on the rest of the population. And when leftist governments buy into their trash, we see how tax dollars are wasted.
26C equals 79F which is a comfortably warm temperature. It is not hazardous in any way.
When I lived in the Phoenix metro area and got used to its blazing heat after two decades, I didn’t need an indoor fan going for 82°F or below, it’s what I thought was a dang pleasant temperature. I’d swear from the length of time my idiot apartment neighbors ran their A/Cs in the summer and in the winter – my guess is they were gutless wimps who’d probably moved in from either San Francisco or Manhattan, and could not tolerate an indoor temperature higher than 62°F.
Why don’t those idiots of the National Education Union demand AC?
Hang on, even the UK’s communist daily rag – The Morning Star – has the NEU calling for AC
You forgot how to use Google?
SCHOOL buildings need urgent investment to deal with the worsening effects of climate change, the National Education Union (NEU) warned in an open letter to the Education Secretary today. In his letter, NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede urged Bridget Phillipson to roll out air conditioning to all schools to protect pupils and staff from extreme heat health risks. The Morning Star
We know why it won’t be granted.
Worsening effects of climate change? Heck it was 39 deg. F here this morning. Come on everyone, start emitting more “carbon pollution”. 🙂
I’m doing my bit.
My catalytic burner wood stove has been fired-up for two weeks.
At an elevation of over 2,000 feet, night and early mornings get downright chilly.
Because they’re looking for excuses for their members to skive off, especially on nice sunny days, not practical solutions to any real world problem.
Be far cheaper to install AC. Problem solved.
You do not understand the “problem”.
It can not be solved with AC’s.
Read between the lines.
1)The problem is that these people want to increase their spare time/number of vacation days.
That’s why the temperature is set so pathetically low – because weather is so bad in England that you won’t get more than 2 additional days per year if you set this number at a reasonable 33 degrees.
They want to increase it by at least 4 additional weaks – while keeping the same salary.
You could now accept their demands but don’t pay them for these additional free days – they’d start to protest like crazy.
And those vacation days would be highly effective – while you never know how the weather will be during vacation – 26+ degrees guarantees great weather every single time.
2) To corrupt the youth.
26 degrees is the temperature when you’d rather do everything else than go to school.It is actually so bad at 26 degrees that things start to be really good.
Another method to degenerate,undermine discipline, scare the weak
and intensify the impact of climate propaganda as – every free day is proof of global warming.
MSM will pick this up and say:” In the previous 200 years the schools were closed only twice as result of heat.
But this year we had 23 days.
Global warming is so real.
It makes our children dumber because it makes them miss 10% of school days.
The problem is they are leftists. Only one solution for that problem.
What a bunch of wimps!
As a young lad in Texas, we ordinarily started the school year right after Labor Day (early September). Schools were not air-conditioned, and outdoor temperatures commonly ranged from 90 to 100°F (32 to 38°C). School windows and transoms to the hall were kept wide open, and the room air was circulated only by a single large fan. We sweated. Arms stuck to papers. During recess, we played outside in the direct sun. At lunchtime, we ate our warm bologna sandwiches and melted chocolate bars that had been sitting in lockers all morning. But we gutted it out and no one complained and no one fainted from heat exhaustion, knowing that cooler days were ahead. Teachers taught, We learned.
Ditto-I was in grade school in Chicago in the’50s and we had the same deal-go to our 1911 built school-no AC either. Our situation was the same, only I had velveeta cheese sandwiches which melted. In the Winter we walked to school in the sub-zeroF temps and deep snow. The schools were never closed but once in my young life-the blizzard of ’67-and only for a day. Somehow, we thrived.
Meat and chocolate for lunch? Such a decadence! When I was young we only had a bowl of rice every other day and we liked it!
When I was young we only had a bowl of rice every other day
Like the four Yorkshiremen…
We never had a cup. We used to drink out of a rolled up newspaper….
Best we could manage was to suck on a piece o’damp cloth.
But you know we were happy in those days, but we were poor.
Because we were poor.
My old dad used to say to me: “Money doesn’t buy you happiness, son.”
He was right! I was happier then. We had nothing– use to live in a tiny old, tumbled down house with great holes in’ err roof.
A house? You were lucky to have a house! We used to sleep in one room, 26 of us. And half the floor was missing. We were all huddled in one corner, for fear of falling.
You were lucky to have a room. We used to live in corridors.
Oh…We used to dream ‘a livin’ in a corridor. Woulda’ been a palace for us. We used to live in an old watertank on top of a rubbish tip. Got Woked up every mornin by havin the lot of the rotten fish dumped all over us. etc – Monty Python.
Looooxury!
The reporting about the UK heatwaves and claimed heat deaths this year has been atrocious.
As of right now the reporting across the board has left out all mention of actual temperatures.
What were the killer temperatures in the UK this summer?
How can anyone diagnose heat attributions without a temperature record?
Get us a temperature graph or two so we have some facts.
26°C is 78.8°F, a typical warm summer temperature that is very comfortable at 45°N in the US.
Are we being completely gaslit?
What this is is the teachers union wanting more nice days for teachers to take off from work.
By comparing year-to-year mortality statistic. Were the bed-wetters to that they would find nothing requiring attribution.
Ok but it doesn’t answer the question specifically enough.
For instance, without seeing any other data, one could assume (probably wrongly but still possible) an increasing proportion of heat deaths from 2025 to 2026 and a decrease in other causes of death for 2026, as possibly one way the cumulative totals for both years to be the same mathematically.
I want to see the temperatures for places with assumed heat deaths to know whether they qualify for heat death attribution consideration.
Just another ruse to keep the AGW narrative alive.
It’s thoroughly in-line with the abuse of it’s citizens by the government there over AGW.
They don’t want people using air conditioning there because it goes against AGW dogma.
Air conditioning requires more base load power supply – an AGW policy no-no.
Sounds like teachers want schools shut down on hot days so they can have the time off to enjoy the warm sunshine and get a nice tan. They can take all the time off they want……without pay and with reduced benefits, and reduced pay cheques over the summer holidays depending on how many days they refused to work. Economics 001, an employee gets paid for what they do at work, not on time off. About time teachers realize who they work for. The taxpayer.
26 degrees c is the average Houston LOW temp from June 1 to Oct 1. How did 1 million people live and trive in Houston metro area in 1950?
When I was in elementary school in Southern California, we shut down for heat waves – when it was over 100F (38C)
26C was a nice day for recess…
Yes, 100f was the “school’s out” threshold for my generation too.
(Didn’t make much difference to us kids though – no aircon at home or anywhere else, so we just went for a ‘roll-your-own’ smoke under the football change shed as usual 🙂 )
I know elderly people who heat their homes in the winter to about 27C, slightly warmer.
I once worked in a building that was at 50C. That was slightly dangerous and rest protocol had to be followed.
When I was in school, there were days every student was sweating and we still attended class.
26 C is the same temperate as in the south china sea on the story to left. The average summer temperature in the UK is about 17C which is freezing to 90% plus of the world. Apparently one is supposed to wear a coat all year long with a thicker one in winter. In the US the average is about 24C with temperature in the south and southwest much higher and nobody in the USA is putting down their tools and heading for the green conference. In LA my schools did not have AC and it got to 29C in the summer. We simply put on short sleve shirts and opened the school windows, a large fan on occassion.
It was hotter than that, 90, last night at midnight on The Gulf of America, some people are sissies.
Western public education has absolutely nothing to do with creating independent and employable citizens. Its primary goal now is to create followers that will support the Progressive agenda without question.
All three of our children have been homeschooling their children (our 12 grandchildren), several all the way to high school graduation. With some noteworthy exceptions, most US school districts, especially in large Democrat-run cities and certain demographics, are failing to educate their charges and help parents prepare their offspring for life.
The curriculum has been diluted so far already that the students won’t be missing anything important even if this new rule is adopted. On the other hand, how are the students going to be indoctrinated properly about the threats from climate change if instruction is halted above 26C=79F?
The union is also calling for taxpayer-funded cooling “hubs” for communities to use
In America we call those cooling hubs “homes,” “schools,” and “businesses.” And their climate control systems are paid for by the owners, not government. Because we don’t live in a once great country rapidly regressing into Third-World status like the poor Brits. Ours is prosperous because it’s still free and relatively unencumbered by the tyrannical and oppressive policies of leftist governing elites. Although boneheaded voters misinformed by the degenerate media are enthralled with the latest batch of lies by politicians aspiring to socialism.
Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to add air conditioning? To think these knuckledraggers are teaching children is distressing.
Oh, please. Not even 80F? Was routinely warmer than that in the classroom when I was a kid and nobody thought to complain. What wimps.
This is how vouchers will happen.
Install air conditioning like civilized countries do.