The effects of climate change on the safety and suitability of school and college buildings needs to be addressed to ensure children’s learning is not compromised, members of NASUWT – The Teachers’ Union have argued.
Adaption plans and improvements to tackle excessive classroom temperatures and the impact of increasingly hotter, wetter and stormier weather on the ageing school and college estate need to be put in place in order to ensure the safety of pupils and staff.
Delegates at the Union’s Annual Conference, being held in Birmingham, have called for a legally enforceable maximum classroom temperature to be introduced, along with investment in greater ventilation, insulation, shaded areas and flood defences in and around schools and colleges in order to make them better equipped to withstand a changing climate.
Teachers responding to a recent NASUWT survey rated extremes of temperature as their greatest concern about their school building, with 70% saying this was a problem in their school.
Nearly a third (32%) rated the condition of their school or college building as poor or very poor, with 44% saying it had deteriorated or greatly deteriorated in the last three years.
Matt Wrack, NASUWT General Secretary, said:
“We already have a situation where decades of failure to sufficiently invest in our school and college buildings have left tens of thousands of pupils and staff learning and working in buildings that are beyond their intended design life and which are not fit for the demands of modern school life.
“With the realities of climate change now on us, schools and colleges are ill-equipped to manage higher temperatures and more extreme weather. What’s more, these weather patterns are only likely to become more severe in the years to come.
“Without a plan for adaption of our school and college buildings, disruption to children’s education becomes ever more likely. To take just one example, excessive classroom temperatures in summer can have a negative impact on pupils sitting and studying for vital exams.
“The effects of a changing climate are not incidental to schools and colleges or those who study or work in them. That is why we need governments to come forward with actions to help mitigate and tackle the climate crisis, including through investment in our school and college buildings to make them more resilient to changing weather patterns.”
