Analysis: future classrooms can be designed to be sustainable, resilient to the changing climate and provide a healthy learning space for the children
Children are at schools about 200 days each year, nearly a third of each day and most of it spent inside classrooms. Next to their homes, schools are where children spend most of their life. A comfortable and healthy classroom becomes essential for the teaching learning process and for students to be able to achieve their full potential.
Existing research tells us that poor thermal comfort in a classroom (where the room is too warm or too cold) adversely affects children's ability to perform the typical school tasks. Poorly ventilated classrooms also impact performance metrics like national test scores and examination results, and better classroom ventilation has been shown to reduce absenteeism related to illness. What is even more concerning is that uncomfortable thermal environments have a much greater impact on schoolwork than on office-work. Classroom indoor climate is an important, albeit often overseen, part of children's education.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Brendan O'Connor Show, Irish Times parenting columnist Jen Hogan on temperatures in classrooms
What the pandemic showed us is that schools are an essential part of our social structure. School closures not only affect student learning, but they also impact the parents' and the mental health of children. In the future due to the changing climate, school closures could also be triggered by elements like heatwaves, smog or wildfires. As a result, we need to plan for future school buildings to be able to provide a healthy indoor climate for learning, in a resilient manner, resisting extreme weather and hazard events.
There is a surge in new construction and renovation for schools, unlike any we have seen in decades. This presents an opportunity to evaluate how we may do things better. A school building today may easily last for the next half-century. How can we move to a scenario where classrooms are sustainable, aid learning, and are a healthy space for children?
In a classroom, poor indoor climate could be due to several reasons. These include overheating during summer or overcooling during winter, insufficient ventilation leading to stuffy rooms and high humidity, volatile organic compounds released by furniture, upholstery etc and fine particulate matter from outdoor pollution.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland, pupils from a Co Kildare primary school protest over a seven-year delay in the completion of their new school building
While design standards exist, they are not necessarily health-based or not verified during operation. The actual ventilation rate in classrooms often falls short of the prescribed standards. Further, the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems (HVAC) in schools are often in a state of poor repair due to inadequate maintenance funds.
A further challenge is that school classrooms are more densely occupied than pretty much any other type of building, increasing the demand on their indoor conditioning systems. Children are also more sensitive to their thermal environment than adults, meaning small deviations can have a big impact on their comfort and learning performance. When classrooms are retrofitted with increasing insulation without considering ventilation, it can lead to overheating during summer months. Changing climate means such incidents can become more frequent.
Classrooms can be designed to be both sustainable and healthy. There are a number of well-established technologies that can be brought to play to make resilient, healthy, and sustainable classrooms of the future. These include suitable insulation along with adequate ventilation, solar shading and night ventilation during summer and energy recovery ventilation to avoid loss of heat during winter. Other considerations are high performance windows to avoid overheating while still providing a connection with outdoors, high efficiency filtration to minimize exposure to particulate matter pollution (including smoke from wildfires), and high efficiency heating and cooling systems (heat pumps).
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From RTÉ News, air quality map released for Dublin
To ensure optimal performance from the building and HVAC system design, there are steps that need to be taken in terms of policy and managing schools. For example, schools should not be located near major pollution sources, say, a major road. The HVAC systems need to be maintained and operated as per manufacturer prescriptions.
Teachers and students should be provided with information regarding their classrooms so that they do not engage in behaviour that may adversely impact on the indoor climate (for example, leaving windows open in a mechanically ventilated school). Building managers can also implement monitoring of temperature, air quality, and energy use to ensure that the classrooms perform in-use as per the design intentions.
Healthier classrooms can be our instrument for public health and not school closures
Future classrooms can be designed to be sustainable, resilient to the changing climate and provide a healthy learning space for the children. Healthier classrooms can be our instrument for public health and not school closures. As the drive towards building and renovating schools continues, it is imperative to prioritise these aspects to foster educational spaces where children can thrive.
Recognising the importance of classroom indoor climate vis-à-vis children's education and health, one of the fellowships awarded under the DOROTHY postdoctoral research program focuses on developing engineering solutions for design of future resilient classrooms as well as improving indoor climate literacy among the public, specifically, schoolchildren. The project is titled INSIDE-AIR and brings together indoor environment researchers, public health experts and policy makers to strive towards designing indoor climate for classrooms of the future.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
