Inclusive Green Schools for Every Child in Punjab

How to read this: Sentences with hyperlinks are facts you can check at the source. “My observation” marks what I have seen as a teacher. “My view” marks my opinion.

Every afternoon at three o’clock, my classroom in Butter, a village in Gujrat district, begins to fill up. I teach 56 students, from kindergarten to class 10, through free classes run by EOTO Foundation. Most of them have already worked a full day before they reach me. Some sell newspapers at traffic signals. Some clean car windows, work at roadside stalls, or help on construction sites as labourers. They come to class after all of that, because they want to learn and become part of this society.

These children spend most of their day outdoors. That is why, in my experience, climate change reaches them first and hardest.

Children who work outside

Working children are not a small group in Punjab. The Punjab Child Labour Survey 2019–20 found that 13.4 percent of children aged 5 to 14 were in child labour, up from 8.2 percent in 1996.

My observation: In summer, heatwaves make some of my students skip classes. After hours of work in the sun, they are often too exhausted or unwell to come. In winter, smog arrives, and I must send the students home early. Their eyes burn, and many catch the flu or other viral infections during the smog season.

When schools close, work does not

Smog is now a regular part of the school year in Punjab. Education officials reported that schools stayed closed for 20 to 25 additional days in 2025 because of weather, with smog being the biggest cause. In November 2024, UNICEF warned that over 11 million children under five in the worst-affected districts were breathing toxic smog, and that closures had disrupted the learning of almost 16 million children.

School closures are meant to keep children indoors and away from polluted air.

My observation: This protection does not reach my students. When schools close for smog, they are still at traffic signals, at stalls, and on work sites, breathing the same air for hours. A closure order protects a child who can stay home. It does not protect a child who has to earn a living.

What I teach, and why it is not enough

I started holding awareness sessions with my students on how to protect themselves. I teach them to:

• Wear a mask during smog episodes.
• Rinse their eyes with clean water often.
• Wear warm clothes in winter and travel less on high-smog days.
• Drink plenty of water in summer and cover their heads in the sun.

My observation: These sessions work. Most of my students started following these precautions, and I noticed that doing so helped them cope with the effects of heat and smog on them.

My view: Awareness that depends on one volunteer teacher is not a permanent solution. If I graduate, move, or stop teaching, these lessons may stop too. Children in similar classes elsewhere may never hear them at all. Protection for these children needs to be part of a system, not a favour.

A programme with no place for schools like ours

Punjab already has a strong system for environmental education. The Punjab Green School Certification Program is an EPCCD initiative developed with the School Education Department, UNICEF, LUMS, WWF-Pakistan and the Lahore Biennale Foundation. Its website lists 24,617 public and 6,547 private schools as registered. The Earth Notes interactive story, The Green School Mission, shows how its activities help students develop climate-friendly habits.

However, the programme’s registration form only allows schools to select “Public” or “Private” as its category, and asks for a registration or EMIS (Education Management Information System) number. A community school like mine has no box to tick.

This gap is large. According to the Literacy and Non-Formal Basic Education Department, Punjab has 9.6 million out-of-school children, most of whom are aged 8 to 16, and 20,273 non-formal schools serving more than 593,000 children. Many of the children most exposed to heat and smog learn in these settings.

Many scoring activities also assume a regular campus, such as solar panels, double-glazed windows and a five-bin waste system.

My view: These requirements make sense for a large school, but a single room or evening class needs activities that fit its students’ lives.

One change: A Green School track for non-formal and community schools

My view: EPCCD should open a simple Green School track for non-formal and community schools, in partnership with the Literacy and Non-Formal Basic Education Department. It could:

• Let schools register through the department or a verified non-profit, without an EMIS number.
• Include activities designed for working children, such as heat and smog safety sessions and safe drinking water during classes.
• Share air quality and heatwave alerts with teachers by phone, so classes can adjust their timings.
• Train volunteer and non-formal teachers in the same climate content that formal school teachers receive.

This would not require new buildings. It would extend a programme that already exists for the children who need it most.

A green school for every child

Every day at three o’clock, my students choose to learn after a day of work. They already carry the cost of heat and smog more than most children in Punjab. A green school should be a place where every child learns how to stay safe, including the child who comes to class from a traffic signal.