Actions we Need to Take

Five Actions to Bring Clean Air to Schools

Clean Air For Kids - Green circle with a white number one in the center.

It’s Councillors on the Local Education Authority who will decide whether to provide clean air for our kids in schools or not. Please contact the Council Leader and the Chair of the Children’s Policy Committee.

Local Education Authority

Clean Air For Kids - Green circular sign with the white number two in the center.

School Head Teachers and Governors can take a lead and install air cleaning in their schools. Any school could become the next in your area to improve the air their staff and pupils breathe.

Schools

Clean Air For Kids - Green circle with a white number three in the center, representing number 3.

Parents, please speak to your head teacher or the school governors. Ask them to look at this website. Encourage them to prioritise clean air in all classrooms.

Parents

Clean Air For Kids - Green circle with large white number 4 in the center

Please contact your local elected ward councillors and ask them to support clean air in schools. You don’t have to be a parent of a child at school to want to help bring clean air to kids in schools. Anyone can do it.

Councillors

Clean Air For Kids - Green circle with the number five in white in the center.

The campaign started in Bristol, and what’s good for Bristol is good for the whole country. The Government could implement a clean air policy in schools throughout the UK. Please write to your Member of Parliament.

Government and MPs

Please will you take action to help bring clean air to schools

Please write letters. And ask your friends to do so as well. Contact details and template letters are below to make it easy for you.

Take Action to Help Bring Clean Air to Schools

Local groups are being set up to take the Clean Air for Kids campaign all over the UK.

There are template letters that you can download and use to ask politicians and schools to add an air filter to each classroom and regularly open windows. This would reduce the number of coughs, colds, and Covid-19 infections that kids and their teachers catch at school and take home to their families and others. It would also increase attendance rates. At the same time, it will help schools to save money on supply teacher costs and improve academic performance. There is absolutely no downside to them taking this decision.

Ultimately, the people who will decide about whether to provide clean air for kids will be the councillors at the Local Education Authority (LEA) that run our schools. They have the power to make it happen.

So we are asking the Leader of that Local Education Authority, the Chair of the Children’s Policy Committee and individual councillors to agree to protect the health of school kids and staff.

We are also asking local Members of Parliament to support this initiative to protect children’s health, improve attendance and performance and save money for schools budgets.

In the panel below, you can click through to one of our regional groups to find the local contact information and download specific letters. Or, if you live in an area without this support, you can download more general letters and find out how to contact the appropriate politicians.

If you agree that kids should breathe clean air when they are in school, would you write letters to help us, please?

Look at the panel below to find contact details, and to download template letters to use.

Clean Air For Kids - Air filters can significantly increase the clean air supply in a classroom and therefore can be considered a cost-effective measure.

How to Take Action:
Find your Local Group

We have local groups in the areas listed below. To get specific information about contacting local politicians in these areas and to download letters, click on the area.

If you live anywhere else in the country, click here and it will take you to a page where you can find your own specific contact information and download more general letters you can adapt slightly and send.

Clean Air For Kids - Humidity: A well-ventilated space can prevent the build-up of odours and excess humidity, ensuring a comfortable indoor environment.

Bristol

Devon

Wiltshire

Cheshire

Warwickshire

Anywhere Else

This isn't a radical idea.
It's already happening!

Over 200 schools in London have air filters thanks to Mayor Sadiq Khan who has run pilot schemes and studies to prove it works and is cost-effective. More than 70 schools in Hertfordshire are breathing cleaner air. Your area can be next!

Our children spend over 6 hours each day in their classrooms. Clean air shouldn’t be seen as a luxury; it is a fundamental requirement for good health.

It’s cost-effective too. It has been estimated that installing air cleaners in schools in England would cost around £140 million while Sky News recently reported that supply teacher costs in England last year alone were £1.4 billion. Running costs are low too: it’s effectively the power for a small fan in each unit, and a change of filter in each one every 12-24 months, so the cost of installation and running costs would pay for itself many times over very quickly just from the savings from supply teacher budgets.

A programme of installing air cleaners to reduce the spread of sickness in schools will stop others becoming sick too, reducing workplace sickness absence and spread of illnesses, improving productivity, helping the economy and driving growth while protecting the NHS, taking pressure off the benefits budgets as well as having huge health and wellbeing benefits which in themselves will bring societal improvements.

With political leadership, we could easily transform the lives of schoolchildren, their teachers, and their families by improving the quality of the air they breathe. We drink two litres of water and breathe in 11,000 litres of air every day. We wouldn’t let our children drink dirty water, so why are we letting them breathe dirty air?

We can do this. But we need your voice.

Please write to politicians on your Local Education Authority and your MP, as well as to local schools. You can find links to contact details in the [colour] panel above, and you can download template letters to make it easier for you to help us.