Students in Shanghai returned home at noon yesterday due to the approaching Typhoon Chanthu, disrupting some parents’ schedule and causing traffic congestion around schools.

Shanghai’s flood prevention office has asked all primary and secondary schools, as well as kindergartens, to suspend classes yesterday afternoon and Tuesday to avoid the extreme weather expected as a result of Chanthu, the 14th typhoon of the season.

Minhang Experimental Primary School notified parents on Sunday night to pick up their children after lunch yesterday. It said fifth-graders would be dismissed at 12pm, third- and fourth-graders at 12:05pm and first- and second-graders at 12:15pm.

Xinsong Middle School, on the opposite side of the primary school, said students would be dismissed at 12:10pm.

At 11:45am yesterday, Weiye Road that runs between the two schools’ Chucheng campuses in Minhang District was already packed with private cars, mopeds and pedestrians waiting for students.

“The traffic was blocked on the road when I drove my daughter to school in the morning, and it is worse now at noon,” said Chen Yan, a mother of a third grader.

“It’s not surprising because it is rainy due to the typhoon and many parents chose to drive their children to school to prevent them getting wet,” she said.

Chen spent almost half an hour to drive away from the 300-meter road.

Hu Yuehong decided not to send her son to kindergarten and daughter to primary school yesterday.

“Today they only have to stay on campus for half a day so I decided to save the trouble of sending them to school one by one and picking them back in a few hours,” she explained.

Some schools, meanwhile, decided to conduct classes online based on experiences accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wu Rongjin, principal of Luwan No. 1 Central Primary School in Huangpu District, told Shanghai Daily that all the teachers would work on campus while students will take online classes at home. “Students will first watch the recorded classes at the city’s Sky Classroom and then teachers will organize discussion afterward,” she said.

“This model was proven efficient last year when students and teachers were stuck at home following the outbreak of the pandemic. So the extreme weather won’t be a big problem.”