Hell or high water: Filipino schools lashed by climate extremes

Additionally, Filipino meteorologists have predicted” stronger and more dangerous typhoons” as a result of climate change.

This is bad news for the government’s 47, 000 state institutions. Severe weather may cause damage to bodily structures, which could lead to furthering education disparities because the least well-off are the ones who are forced to rely on website learning when they are sent home.

” It’s difficult every day classes are suspended due to disasters, and we could know the lessons correctly at home”, said 15- season- aged Prince Rivera, who goes to Bulihan National High School in Bulacan province, near the capital Manila.

His school has been repeatedly flooded, and he was moreover sent home from the most current heat wave. Save the Children Philippines ‘ Xerxes de Castro, the director of basic knowledge, said that education should be made more adaptable to natural disasters in the first place.

” I think it’s only right now that institutions, educators, and all the participants are learning about the impacts of climate change. It’s a tough training”, de Castro told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The Philippines, which topped the World Risk Index in 2022 and 2023 as the most disaster- sensitive country in the world, is hit by storms about 20 days a month.

Around 78 percent of public colleges and 96 % of students in the Philippines are exposed to a variety of dangers, according to the World Bank. Between 2021 and 2023, around 4, 000 schools were damaged due to various catastrophe, resulting in the upheaval of learning for two million children.