Our schools must adapt to a changing climate

For much of August, millions of Filipino learners couldn’t attend school consistently because of heavy rains and flooding. On one particularly disruptive day, more than 10,000 public schools suspended face-to-face classes, affecting approximately 6.5 million learners.

This is no longer a one-off event. Typhoons, monsoon rains, flooding, extreme heat and schools converted to evacuation centers repeatedly disrupt classes, and yet education is still organized as if these were unexpected.

We can’t control the weather, but we can stop designing our education system in defiance of it. Our schools need to have climate-responsive school calendars, safer classrooms, predictable suspension procedures, efficient and corruption-free flood management and a permanent system for education in emergencies and learning recovery.

Why do we begin classes during the months when heavy rains, typhoons, flooding and unsafe travel are most likely to disrupt attendance?

Learning is cumulative. Calendars could reflect regional rainfall, typhoon exposure, flooding, heat, agricultural cycles and other local conditions. The aim should be to spread more teaching time across drier, safer months.

Climate-ready classrooms

Moving more instructional days into the dry season will work only if we make classrooms climate-ready. We should not transfer learners from flooded classrooms to unbearably hot ones. Schools need good ventilation, shaded windows, insulated or reflective roofs, fans, trees, drinking water, reliable power and cooling where needed.

A comfortable, well-ventilated classroom is not a luxury, but a prerequisite for meaningful learning.

Suspension decisions

More localized suspensions may prevent unnecessary disruption. An entire province or city need not stop classes when the actual danger affects only particular communities, routes or schools.

So ‘granular suspension’ does not mean all schools or LGUs should wing it. The national government should establish common criteria, timelines, announcement windows and advisory formats. The process and the evidence should be consistent and transparent, but local circumstances and local decisions will differ.

Risk assessments should cover weather and flood warnings, river and landslide hazards, road access, school and home conditions and vulnerable learners. A school may be dry, but the communities and routes its learners come from may be unsafe.

The framework should be anchored on preparedness, suspension, learning continuity, safe recovery and humane resumption as provided in DepEd Order No. 22, s. 2024. Flooded roads, rising rivers, unsafe electrical systems, evacuation centers – the downgrade of a warning doesn’t make any of those safe.

Flood prevention as education policy

Learners cannot attend even if the school is dry when their homes are flooded or their routes are impassable. Remote learning also cannot function in a household without electricity or communication.

Addressing worsening flooding and the alleged corruption surrounding flood control projects, is part of the government’s obligation to protect learners. Enormous amounts have been allocated while many communities continue to experience severe flooding. Investigations have raised allegations of ghost projects, substandard construction, poor documentation, contract concentration and inadequate coordination with local governments.

Money stolen from, wasted on or misdirected within flood control programs is also money taken from children’s safety and learning.

Education in emergencies system

We should have learned from the pandemic that educational systems must prepare before emergencies occur.

EDCOM 2 reported that schools lost an average of 15 days per school year to calamity-related suspensions across School Years 2024-2025 and 2025-2026. Yet only 37 percent of teachers and 17 percent of students reported having the devices needed for online learning. Remote learning therefore cannot mean online learning alone.

Learning continuity pathways should include educational TV and radio, print and offline resources, SMS or Messenger, teacher check-ins and online instruction where possible.

DepEd TV should not only be a re-broadcast of recorded classes or an improvised program during class suspension. Through sustained and transparent collaboration with experienced educational producers and broadcasters like Knowledge Channel, DepEd can produce engaging, developmentally appropriate, multilingual programs that are rooted in Philippine languages, communities and learning needs.

Emergency education must also be humanized. Travel may be unsafe during a precautionary suspension, but children can stay safe at home and continue flexible learning. During an active emergency, families may be flooded, evacuated, displaced or without power. Then, safety, survival and psychosocial well-being should take precedence.

Recover learning

The EDCOM 2 report noted that at the end of School Year 2025-2026, at least one in two students still were not reading at the expected grade level. Repeated disruptions to sustained teaching, practice and feedback leave learners who are already struggling with reading, comprehension, calculation or communication especially vulnerable.

Schools should not respond by cramming in every lost lesson or piling on catch-up work. The first step is to identify missing prerequisite and foundational skills.

Learning recovery does not mean making children work faster. It means identifying what they have not learned and giving them the time and support to learn it well.

Climate adaptation

We need an education system that reflects children’s real lives: climate-ready calendars and classrooms, national standards responsive to local risks, resilient flood management, equitable learning continuity, safe resumption and humane recovery. Children should not have to choose between safety and learning. But protecting both requires more than repeatedly announcing class suspensions.

The climate has changed. Our schools and the systems that support them must change with it.

*      *      *

Lizamarie Campoamor-Olegario, PhD, teaches at the University of the Philippines College of Education and holds the 2025-2027 One UP Professorial Chair in Educational Psychology.