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Children falling asleep in classrooms

Children are falling asleep in class because new eco-friendly schools have appalling ventilation, experts warned yesterday.

  • By Tim Ross. Evening Standard
  • Published: 22:40 December 20, 2008
  • Gulf News

London: Children are falling asleep in class because new eco-friendly schools have appalling ventilation, experts warned yesterday.

Builders have created air-tight classrooms, intended to reduce heat loss but also stop carbon dioxide escaping.

Higher CO2 levels in newly-built schools are leaving children drowsy and less able to concentrate, researchers from University College London and Reading University found.

The studies will come as a blow to Children's Secretary Ed Balls, who wants every new school to be "zero-carbon" from 2016. UCL researcher Dr Dejan Mumovic said ministers had "rushed" their sustainable schools programme. He monitored 10 schools built 50 years ago and nine erected under the Government's £45 billion (Dh247.8 billion) Building Schools for the Future programme. "The ventilation rates were equally appalling," he told the Times Educational Supplement. CO2 levels are exceeding targets, and that can affect the learning performances of kids."

Kim Knappett, a science teacher from Forest Hill School in Lewisham, said her new classrooms were either far too hot or freezing. Stiflingly hot classrooms lead to an increase in disruptive behaviour as pupils become "irritable", she said.

"It's just too hot and everybody falls asleep or gets ratty," Ms Knappett told the Standard. "They can't work properly."

The school's new buildings cost more than £20 million but a window which broke almost a year ago still has not been fixed, she said.

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