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Climate Crisis Disrupts Education for Millions of Children
Confirmed
In Short: To mitigate these impacts, the report outlines practical solutions, including integrating climate resilience into national education planning, reinforcing school infrastructure, ensuring learning continuity, and embedding climate education into curricula.
UNICEF released a report titled 'Learning Interrupted: Global Snapshot of Climate-Related School Disruptions in 2025,' which examined data from 106 countries.
The report found that climate events, such as storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires, affected over 171 million students, or one in ten worldwide.
Storms were the leading cause, impacting 109 million students, followed by floods affecting at least 70 million and heatwaves disrupting schooling for approximately 50 million.
In Northern Vietnam, an unusually warm, short spring has been observed, with weather patterns deviating from long-established seasonal norms, pointing to a broader shift linked to climate change.
To mitigate these impacts, the report outlines practical solutions, including integrating climate resilience into national education planning, reinforcing school infrastructure, ensuring learning continuity, and embedding climate education into curricula.
The climate crisis disproportionately affects certain communities, including Latino farmworkers and families who face barriers to emergency services during climate events.
What this adds
The report highlights the urgent need for child-centred climate adaptation and resilience-building policies.
UNICEF advocates for mapping out children’s climate risk and supporting young climate champions.
The analysis underscores the immediate and widespread impact of climate change on children's education and well-being.
What's confirmed
- UNICEF released a report titled 'Learning Interrupted: Global Snapshot of Climate-Related School Disruptions in 2025,' which examined data from 106 countries.
- The report found that climate events, such as storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires, affected over 171 million students, or one in ten worldwide.
- Storms were the leading cause, impacting 109 million students, followed by floods affecting at least 70 million and heatwaves disrupting schooling for approximately 50 million.
- In Northern Vietnam, an unusually warm, short spring has been observed, with weather patterns deviating from long-established seasonal norms, pointing to a broader shift linked to climate change.
- To mitigate these impacts, the report outlines practical solutions, including integrating climate resilience into national education planning, reinforcing school infrastructure, ensuring learning continuity, and embedding climate education into curricula.
- The climate crisis disproportionately affects certain communities, including Latino farmworkers and families who face barriers to emergency services during climate events.
What's still developing
- As humanitarian action falls short of addressing the climate crisis, children and young people are bearing the brunt.
- Virtually every child on the planet is already affected by climate change.
- Social programmes for children need to adapt to a changing climate.
- We advocate for child-centred climate adaptation, resilience-building and child-sensitive climate policies, while mapping out children’s climate risk and supporting young climate champions.
- “For millions of children, climate hazards do more than disrupt lessons, they destroy schools, uproot families, and push the most vulnerable children, especially girls, out of the classroom for good,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said.
- When schools close due to floods or storms, students lose valuable learning time, face disruptions to their daily routines, and lose access to safe environments, she added, urging immediate action to build climate-resilient schools.
- Advancing Racial Equity and Justice, Tackling Climate Change and Environmental Injustice, Climate Change, Climate Impacts, Climate Resilience, Environmental and Climate Justice, Extreme Heat, Racial Equity and Justice +5 More The climate crisis is affecting communities across the country, but some groups —including Latinos in the United States—are disproportionately burdened by its impacts.
- From Latino farmworkers baking in 110-degree fields, to families who won’t call 911 during a wildfire, hurricane, or flood because of who might show up, to children whose lungs bear the burden of wildfire smoke, the climate crisis is not a future threat; it is already here.