Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the potential merits of installing HEPA filters in early years educational settings.

To date, department officials are not aware of any studies looking at the impact of using air conditioning units (ACU) specifically in early years settings. However, there is strong evidence from laboratory studies of the efficacy of high-efficiency particulate absorbing (HEPA) filtration technology at removing airborne viruses and particulate matter from the air. In addition, department officials sit on the working group for a project looking at the implications and potential benefits of fitting primary schools with air cleaning technology: the Bradford classroom air cleaning technology (class-ACT) trial. This was funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and managed through the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). The study is run from the Centre for Applied Education Research which is based at the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK. The trial has concluded and the academic leads intend to publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal in due course.

The department recognises that good ventilation helps to create a healthy indoor environment for staff and students. Letting fresh air into indoor spaces can help remove air that contains virus particles which reduces the risk of respiratory illness, as well as improving pupils’ alertness and concentration.

Between September 2021 and April 2023, the department delivered over 700,000 CO₂ monitors to over 45,000 state-funded settings, including early years, further education, childminders operating in groups of four or more, and children’s homes that offer places to 6 or more. This means that all eligible settings now have an assigned CO₂ monitor for every teaching and childcare space to help them manage their ventilation.

For settings that identified spaces with sustained high CO₂ readings (1500ppm or more) through their monitors, an application process was made available for department-funded ACUs that utilise HEPA technology. This policy was informed by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies’ (SAGE) Environmental Modelling Group, which advises that ACUs have limited benefit in spaces that are already adequately ventilated and should only be considered where the ventilation is inadequate and cannot be easily improved. The department has subsequently delivered over 9,000 ACUs to over 1,300 settings between January 2022 and April 2023. This included eligible early years settings.