85% of Spanish students have had to use fans or cool down at some time during classes, according to a study presented this Wednesday by Escuelas Renovadas, which warns that most public schools in Spain were built before efficiency criteria existed. energetic.
The study, carried out from a sample of more than 1,200 people, corresponding to more than 200 teachers and directors of Infant, Primary and Secondary schools and 1,000 parents, reveals that the majority of public schools “have had little maintenance, which causes that, on occasions, students and teachers do not have optimal conditions of temperature, humidity and air quality, which impacts their performance”.
Escuelas Renovadas, which has the support of Ecodes, Aldeas Infantiles, Revuelta Escolar or Teachers for Future, ensures that there is “a clear relationship” between inadequate levels of temperature, humidity or air quality in buildings and health conditions in vulnerable groups – especially in childhood – and school performance.
For this reason, the organization has studied the conditions in which Spanish public schools teach and stresses that quality public education “needs buildings that offer optimal environmental conditions for learning and that are an example of energy efficiency and use of clean energy.
However, he warns that “many” of the Spanish schools were built more than 25 years ago, “without regulations that ensured thermal comfort or accessibility within them.” In this sense, 87% of teachers and directors of public centers state that they teach in buildings older than 25 years.
Likewise, nine out of ten teachers and directors affirm that the thermal insulation of the building in general can be improved or greatly improved, along with other aspects such as acoustic insulation (94%), waterproofing (87%) or the state of doors and windows. (70%). Aspects such as lighting and water pipe systems also have structural deficiencies, where parents once again rate them as improvable by 74% and 52%, respectively.
One of the most notable data is the number of schools that lack the necessary infrastructure for good cooling in the rooms. In this case, 65% of teachers and directors who say they work in centers where there are no refrigeration or air conditioning systems.
In the cases in which there are these types of energy systems for efficient heating and cooling relative to air conditioning systems, the percentages increase again, since up to 66% of the parents of students admit that they need some type of improvement.
“We need the rehabilitation programs for regional and local public buildings to prioritize the improvement of educational centers. For this, 30% of the funds should be reserved for this purpose. In addition, due to their great involvement, it is important to promote the participation of the educational community in the school renovation processes”, pointed out the director of the Energy and People Area of Ecodes, Cecilia Foronda.
In reference to how the state of the building affects the education of students, the survey indicates that nine out of ten parents indicate that a poor state of the building influences the well-being and performance of students and teachers, being the main reasons for influence the impact on health (52%), their academic performance (52%) and the performance of the teaching staff and managers of the center (40%).
As preventive measures, parents demand periodic reviews of the facilities to detect points of improvement and allocate more funds to this task, the most necessary types of rehabilitation being the installation of renewable energy systems for the production of electricity and/or heat and cold and thermal insulation in general.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project