Environmental design and educational performance with particular reference to 'green' schools in Hampshire and Essex

Research in Education, Nov 2006 by Edwards, Brian W

The aim of this article is to investigate the argument that attention to environmental conditions in the classroom helps support the delivery of the curriculum. There are two interconnected themes: first, that energy efficiency leads to quasi-natural environments in schools which are valued by teachers and pupils and, second, that sustainable architectural design can be an important aspect in raising educational standards or altering the perception of a school. These themes are explored within the context of the much earlier approaches to design such as the open-air school (1907) movement and also from more recent initiatives such as the Academies programme (1998), Classrooms of the Future (2000) and Schools for the Future (2004). The object is to speculate on the relationship between sustainable design and learning in general and to explore in greater detail the particular lessons to be drawn from two clusters of green schools in Hampshire and Essex.

The open-air school movement

Natural conditions in the classroom have long been regarded as beneficial to student learning. Early in the twentieth century the UK built a number of open-air schools which it was believed benefited the health, well-being and learning of children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The first such was established in 1907 by the LCC at Bostall Wood near Woolwich and it was followed by similar schools mainly for 9-13 year olds in Bradford, Halifax, Sheffield and Norwich (Turner, 1972, p. 58). The openair school movement had originated in Germany and was thought to enhance the educational, health and welfare role of schools by the provision of high levels of sunlight and natural ventilation and through a regime of physical exercise. Typical was Whitby Road Infants' School in Sheffield, built in 1914, which on the suggestion of the City Medical Officer incorporated a plan to maximise access to sunshine and cross-ventilation (Turner, 1972, p. 59).

Although initially a concept aimed at alleviating conditions for children in deprived urban areas, the ethos of the open-air school had begun by the 1920s to influence school design more widely. Pressure from Medical Officers of Health for more sunshine in the classroom and higher levels of ventilation (to reduce the spread of disease) led to schools which local education authorities believed also benefited children's general educational attainment. These early quasi-natural schools were not generally fully openair but contained classrooms with verandas and outdoor terraces reached by french windows. By 1934 the Hadow Report on the Primary School was able to state that the more 'closely the primary school approaches that of the open-air school the better' (p. 117). The report confidently highlighted the beneficial affects of sunshine and ventilation to both the general health and the educational attainment of pupils.

A few years later, however, the focus shifted to the primary importance of daylighting, since it was believed that poorly lit classrooms were damaging the eyesight, concentration levels and hence learning of children. Research conducted in 1938 jointly by the Building Research Station (BRS) and Medical Research Council (MRC) established that classroom lighting was more important than ventilation in terms of the concentration level of children (RIBAJ, 1947, pp. 1-7). Daylight was seen as crucial to the development of skills such as reading. As a result classrooms in pre-war schools were often highly glazed and not infrequently poorly heated (Saint, 1987, p. 37). The impetus to maximise daylighting in the classroom gained further momentum in the post-war building programme. Of the four environmental sciences impacting upon the school (lighting, heating, ventilation and acoustics) it was lighting which most interested architects and educators alike. The Ministry of Education school building regulations of 1945 established a daylight factor in the classroom of 2 per cent (subsequently increased to 5 per cent in technical memoranda), with the result that by the 1950s schools were very highly glazed.

It is clear, therefore, that for much of the first half of the twentieth century importance had been attached to daylighting as the most important of the environmental conditions influencing learning in the classroom. However, the pre-war priority afforded to sunlight gave way to mechanical measures of daylight levels after the war, with the 'daylight factor' becoming by the 1950s the principal tool of classroom design guidance. The effect was to move the focus of attention from the relation between lighting levels and learning to one where the classroom environment as a whole was to be designed and monitored against light levels, both natural and artificial. The early belief nurtured by Hadow that the sunlit open-air school helped with physical and mental development was overtaken after the war by the adoption of broader measures aimed at achieving optimum lighting and comfort levels for teacher and pupil alike. The problem with the notion of comfort was the assumption that artificial conditions led to better heating and more uniform lighting and hence educational efficiency.