Arya News - Often situated in semi-permanent buildings with inadequate cooling facilities, the Indonesian capital`s informal learning spaces often suffer more than conventional classrooms during hot weather, hindering the learning process of poor children who need them the most.
JAKARTA – Every Saturday and Sunday, children from low-income families would flock to Rumah Belajar Senen (Senen Learning Center) in a small alley in Senen, Central Jakarta, to take complimentary school lessons.
Upon arriving at the location, students would be greeted by a sign on the wall that says “Welcome to Senen Learning Center” and four standing fans that help to circulate air. But the fans came with a tradeoff.
“The thing with fans is that the wind makes the children sleepy,” said Melvin Marolop Simanjuntak, this year’s deputy coordinator of Rumah Belajar Senen.
The fans were the only thing helping students in the 20-square-meter makeshift classroom cool off and follow the lesson.
But as the learning center mostly run by volunteers and rely on donations, teachers of Rumah Belajar Senen only have limited options to fight off the heat, such as opening the doors for better air circulation or put up a plastic tarpaulin to provide extra shade, although assembling it may become extra hassle for the volunteers.
“Sometimes we even let the kids study outside,” Melvin said.
While children from poor families in Jakarta can still go to the free public schools, they often lack access to compulsory classes to help them understand what they learned in school. They often go to informal learning spaces like Rumah Belajar Senen, which has been operating since 2005 and currently has 132 students from elementary to high school, to help with their study.
However, inadequate infrastructure to hold off heat in such institutions may hinder their learning process and put them at disadvantage in the long run.
A similar condition was also observed at another informal learning space, the Alternative School for Street Children (SAAJA), in Karet Kuningan subdistrict, South Jakarta.
The institution’s main building is a semi-permanent house equipped with ceiling fans and ventilation. “It’s not ideal to open the windows because [the noise] would distract the children,” said SAAJA head Kristina Iin Dwiyanto.
Fortunately, SAAJA students can cool off in the air-conditioned library and activity room nearby, with the air conditioner bought using donation money for the institution, according to Kristina.
Learning impairment
Students may have their learning ability impaired when they are exposed to continuous high average temperatures in classrooms, as suggested by studies.
A study published in 2025 in PLOS Climate analyzed data on nearly 14.5 million students across 61 countries. It found that long-term heat exposure impairs students’ cumulative learning, with complex tasks such as mathematics being more affected than simpler ones like reading.
The findings might bring bad news for Indonesia, which saw an average of 243 school days with average temperature above 26.7 degrees Celsius between 1995 and 2015, four times the number observed in South Korea and the United States.
While the heat affects every school, students of informal schools may be hurt the most due to the condition of their institution, said Konstantina Vasilakopoulou of the RMIT University’s School of Property, Construction and Project Management in Melbourne, Australia.
Most classrooms in formal schools in Jakarta generally have dedicated and permanent buildings with proper ventilation systems and windows. They are also equipped with ceiling fans or even air conditioners.
But in informal classrooms, “the effects of heat exposure can often be even more pronounced as they typically lack insulation, ventilation and cooling, so students are exposed to higher and more sustained heat loads,” said Vasilakopoulou, who coauthored the 2025 study.
Protection needed
Despite the inadequate facilities, students still flock to these learning centers and rarely miss classes although attendance is purely voluntary. Maudi, 13, felt helped with math thanks to volunteers in Rumah Belajar Senen who taught her an easier method to solve equation problems.
These students also adapt to heat as best as they can, such as 14-year-old Zalina: “I usually fan myself using my head cover, but [the heat] makes it hard to focus.”
There is mixed scientific evidence on the effects of acclimation, or being acclimated to the hot weather, on children’s learning performance. Some studies suggest that students used to the heat can still perform basic tasks, but struggle with demanding ones that more determine academic progress, according to Vasilakopoulou.
The problem with Indonesia, she continued, is that the temperatures are rising faster than the human body can adapt, particularly children, who have relatively lower heat tolerance than adults.
“Relying on the idea that children are ‘used to the heat’ risks underestimating the real cognitive losses they face as temperatures continue to climb,” Vasilakopoulou said.
Not all impacts of high temperature immediately show on the children. Aside from physical illnesses, children exposed to too much heat may miss school, causing them to learn less.
“Those are real, and those have long consequences, potentially,” said Perry Sheffield, professor at the department of environmental medicine and pediatrics at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, the US.
Students in Jakarta potentially face greater risks than their peers in other countries who have taken specific measures against extreme heat such as India, where schools are sometimes closed during heat waves.
Indonesian authorities assert heat waves do not occur in the tropical country. But Jakarta is still facing the risk of intense heat, as the city is projected by the World Bank’s Climate Knowledge Portal to have 323 hot days with temperatures higher than 30 degrees between 2020 and 2039.
Some practical, low-cost measures such as using fans and improving natural ventilation can help reduce heat stress, Vasilakopoulou said. But she emphasized more effective solutions on policy levels to particularly protect students from low-income backgrounds, who can experience up to three times greater cognitive losses from heat.
“In regions where temperatures are rising rapidly and humidity limits the effectiveness of passive cooling,” Vasilakopoulou continued, “governments and education systems must treat thermal safety and learning protection as core equity issues, not optional infrastructure upgrades.”