Girls Face Biggest Education Setbacks as Climate Shocks Intensify, UNICEF Says
Girls are bearing the heaviest cost when heatwaves, storms and wildfires disrupt schooling, according to a new UNICEF analysis released Thursday, which found that extreme weather interrupted education for more than 171 million students across 106 countries and territories last year roughly one in every ten children enrolled in school.
The agency said the damage goes beyond missed lessons. When schools are damaged, classes are cancelled or lessons move online, girls face a steeper path back to the classroom. UNICEF pointed to a familiar chain of consequences: destroyed sanitation facilities, displacement and lost household income often push additional chores such as caregiving and fetching water onto girls, while the strain on families can raise the likelihood of child marriage, making a return to school even harder once classes resume.
Storms caused the most widespread disruption, affecting an estimated 109 million students worldwide, followed by flooding, which touched at least 70 million children, and heatwaves, which disrupted schooling for around 50 million more.
The 2025 totals mark a decline from the previous year, when UNICEF estimated that nearly 250 million children across 85 countries about one in seven had their education interrupted by climate-related hazards. The agency noted the drop partly reflects a shift in methodology, with this year’s findings drawn from aid organizations and local media reporting rather than government data.
UNICEF estimates that close to a billion children, roughly half the world’s child population, live in countries facing very high exposure to climate and environmental risks. The resulting setbacks to literacy and numeracy could translate into lifetime income losses of at least 200 billion dollars, the agency said, deepening inequality in regions already struggling to keep up.
Most affected children live in low- and lower-middle-income countries, where school systems frequently lack the resources to protect learning during climate emergencies. UNICEF is calling on governments and partner organizations to invest in building schools that can withstand extreme weather, warning that without stronger infrastructure, climate shocks will keep interrupting and in many cases ending children’s education.
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