More than 400 million students worldwide have experienced school closures from extreme weather since 2022, with the climate crisis hitting education the hardest in low-income countries, according to the World Bank.
Students in low-income countries on average lose 18 school days a year to climate-related closures, compared with 2.4 days in wealthier nations, the bank said in a new report out this month.
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The report also found that a ten-year-old in 2024 will experience three-times more floods, five-times more droughts and 36-times more heatwaves over their lifetime compared with a ten-year-old in 1970.
The bank called for education to deliver the information, skills and opportunities that students will need in a climate-affected world, as well as for more funding.
Just 1.5% of climate finance goes to education, but a one-off investment of less than $20 per child could enable schools to protect learning with measures like improving classroom temperature and building resilient infrastructure, the bank said.
