About 140 county schools shut due to hot weather

About 140 schools in Herefordshire and Worcestershire have been closed or partially shut amid a red weather warning for extreme heat.

Eighty-two were subject to partial closures in Worcestershire, with 17 full shutdowns, the county council said.

The 39 affected in Herefordshire include John Kyrle High School in Ross-on-Wye, which will close until the end of Thursday.

"It's a really, really difficult decision, but it's about weighing up the overall level of risk," said deputy headteacher Luke Moseley. "We've got a duty of care to our community - we want to make sure our students are safe."

Twenty-four primary schools and 11 secondary were among those affected in Herefordshire.

Schools include:

• Fairfield High School in Peterchurch - closed on Wednesday and remains shut on Thursday
• St David's Centre, Hereford - closed on Tuesday and remaining closed until Thursday
• Blackmarston School and The Aconbury Centre in Hereford - still shut on Thursday
• Oasis Academy Warndon in Worcester - remains closed after being shut on Tuesday

Moseley said most parents were understanding of the dilemma faced by school leaders.

"They expect us to make really sensible, really well-judged, thoughtful, careful decisions that put their children at the centre," he said.

"We care too much to keep pushing and keep the school open when we're concerned about young people's safety.

"But it is a tough decision."

Staff at the Aconbury Centre and St David's Centre stated they would review the weather throughout the week and re-open sooner if appropriate, Herefordshire Council has said.

Red heat health alerts issued by the UK Health Security Agency for regions including the West Midlands remain in place on Thursday.

BBC West Midlands science, environment and rural affairs correspondent David Gregory-Kumar said when he started in his role he felt heatwaves like the current one were expected with climate change but it was not possible to say for sure they were caused by it.

He said that 25 years later, however, "the science is very different" and not only "can we say climate change is making this heatwave worse, scientists can say by how much".

He said that according to scientists for Climameter, a consortium of weather events researchers, climate change was making "the current weather patterns" 2C to 4C warmer than "we typically saw for the last half of the 20th Century".

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