Schools: Air Conditioning

(asked on 14th November 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of fitting schools with air cleaning technology.


Answered by
Damian Hinds Portrait
Damian Hinds
Minister of State (Education)
This question was answered on 27th November 2023

Officials in the department 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. 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.

There is strong evidence from laboratory studies of the efficacy of high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter air cleaning units at removing airborne viruses from the air. Although they help improve air quality, air cleaning units do not reduce CO2 levels or improve ventilation so it’s important that they are not used as a substitute for ventilation or a reason to reduce it.

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

Between September 2021 and April 2023, the department delivered over 700,000 CO2 monitors to over 45,000 state-funded schools and colleges. This means that all eligible school and college now has an assigned CO2 monitor for every teaching and childcare space to help them manage their ventilation.

For schools and colleges that identified spaces with sustained high CO2 readings (1500ppm or more) through their monitors, an application process was made available for department funded HEPA filter air cleaning units. This policy was informed by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies Environmental Modelling Group which advises that air cleaning units 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 air cleaning units to over 1,300 settings between January 2022 and April 2023.

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