How do school buildings affect learning?

School buildings have a very large effect on a student’s ability to learn, some studies estimate that a good environment can boost a child’s ability to learn by about 25%.

That a huge difference, and with schools often comprised of old or cheap buildings, it’s something to keep in mind. 40% of schools report unsatisfactory environments. So what should we look for when building for school?

__________________________________________________________________________

 

Indoor Air Quality

One in five children learn inside a school with poor air quality.
This affects general mood (and therefore ability to concerntrate) but also effects health – irritated eyes, headaches, fatigue, sleepiness are all symptoms of poor air quality. None of these are conductive to a good education.

The Data: Absenteeism drops (more students show up) by nearly 10% when air quality is improved.

The Solution: Where possible, rooms need to have as much air in them per person as possible. Windows should be open when pleasant and rooms should be designed to encourage airflow.

__________________________________________________________________________

Temperature

The optimal temperature for learning is 23 degrees Celsius. Anything warmer than this negatively affects student’s ability to achieve goals and reduces their attention span.

Poorly designed school often end up with buildings that have no way of shielding themselves from summer sun, and can sometimes be made with walls that are poor insulators.

The Data: When temperatures are dropped or raised by 5 degrees, work errors increased by up to 44%

The Solution: Heating and cooling systems are important for schools, but they need to be functioning within buildings that can keep temperatures. Make sure you have good insulation. Also make use of natural airflow and avoid placing windows in the path of summer sunlight.

__________________________________________________________________________

Lighting

Lighting has long been known to affect learning; students need to feel comfortable seeing what they’re working on.

But there has been renewed interest in natural lighting, which is also capable of lifting mood and improving psychological wellbeing.

The Data: Students in buildings with high levels of natural light progress 20 per cent faster in math learning and 26% faster in reading learning than others in buildings with low natural light.  

The Solution: Windows, skylights, and natural light-channelling designs. This has become a focus of more modern building design, and should be utilised for school, which usually have nothing obstructing their buildings (and no excuse for bad lighting).

__________________________________________________________________________

Acoustics

Background noise of all sorts can affect student learning; from heating systems, from other classes, from outdoor activities.

All of these factors make it much for difficult for students to direct their attention.

The Data: Students in a school in the path of a noisy aeroplane flight path performed 20% worse on spelling tests than those learning in quieter environments.

The Solution: Reverberation within rooms should be reduced (this comes down to the types of materials and the structural design of the building). There should also be efforts made to keep external noises from penetrating into a building; something that simple, flat, traditional walls often fail to do.

___________________________________________________________________________

Read more on learning in school buildings here. 

Download  a brochure of our school buildings here.