Benefits to Schools

Five Direct Benefits to Schools

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Cleaning the air in schools will reduce sicknesses absences for pupils and staff, helping schools meet their targets

Reduced sickness absence

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Cleaner air enhances teaching, learning and overall academic progress

Improved performance

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Less teacher sickness reduces costs of supply teachers, money which could be spent on enrichment

Saving money on supply teachers

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With less teacher sickness, fewer lessons will be taught by supply teachers, giving pupils a better learning experience

A better learning experience

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Reduced sickness levels in schools means less onward transmission into families, which helps the economy and the NHS

Less sickness for parents

Reduced Sickness Absence

According to the DfE summary of the pupil absence report for 2023/24 (the latest data available), nearly half of all pupil absences are due to illness. The overall absence rate was 7.1%, and sickness absence was 3.5%.

Pupil absence purely due to illness is still 40% higher than the pre-pandemic rate. The graph of weekly pupil illness absence follows exactly the trend of rising GP visits for influenza-like illnesses, so it’s likely that these children are genuinely ill, not truanting.

Until transmission of airborne illnesses in classrooms is addressed, it will be very difficult to improve attendance. Telling sick kids to come to school is counterproductive and just spreads the illness to other pupils. Cleaning the air in schools will reduce sickness absence.

In the school year September 2020 to July 2021 there wasn’t an increase in absences in primary and secondary schools. Indeed, in secondary schools, illness absence decreased in that period. In that school year, there were a lot of mitigations against Covid-19 in schools, including increasing ventilation and being outdoors more.

During that time, some of the usual diseases such as RSV, Flu, Norovirus, Shigella, Mycoplasma Pneumoniae, Strep A, Whooping Cough and Measles, were all reduced to a tiny fraction of the normal number of cases. This indicates that the illness in schools in that year was mostly Covid-19. The mitigations in secondary and primary schools prevented these usual illnesses.

Cleaning the air in schools will reduce sickness absences for pupils and staff, helping schools meet their targets.

Clean Air For Kids - Our Vision is to provide cleaner indoor air to benefit the health of all children

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Improved Performance

There are many research studies demonstrating reduced academic performance caused by poor quality indoor air. This paper summarises many of them.

They include a study involving 100 schools in the United States which demonstrated that classroom ventilation rates are directly associated with students’ academic achievements, and that measurable progresses in maths and reading (assessed through standardised tests) may be observed when improving indoor air quality in the classrooms. These conclusions are confirmed by specific systematic reviews and by a big cohort study performed on more than 8,000 children in the UK.

Another study in Austrian urban areas examined a total of 436 schoolchildren and observed reduced cognitive performance in those classrooms where higher concentrations of particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5) and CO₂ were measured.

In a cohort study involving 60 Scottish schools, CO₂ levels were associated to lower average annual attendance and worse individual test scores for reading, writing and arithmetic – even when adjusted for socio-economic status and number of students per class. Increased CO₂ levels were found to reduce short-term students’ attention performance in experimental studies with 20 cluster-randomized classrooms in Germany and in 51 primary schools in Portugal.

Clean air will bring better teaching, better learning and better exam results.

Clean Air For Kids - The pollutants that can be present in our indoor air include invisible nasties such as mould, fungal spores, pollen, bacteria and airborne viruses like measles, flu and Covid-19.

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Saving Money on Supply Teachers

Poor quality air in schools affects the teachers and other staff too, not just pupils.

In 2022/23, 2.8million teacher working days were lost to illness. Teacher illness absence was 28% higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 2.0 million teacher working days lost. I don’t think anyone is saying that these teachers were truanting, or that their parents were keeping them off school.

In 2023/24, spend per pupil on supply teachers in England soared to £222. In 2018/19, the spend per pupil was only £161, so it has increased by £61 per pupil, or 38%. In just one class of 30 pupils, that’s £1,830 that could be spent on better things. Across a school, the savings could be huge.

In total, £758million was spent on supply teachers in England in 2023/24. Less teacher sickness reduces costs of supply teachers, money which could be spent on enrichment.

Clean Air For Kids - Improving air quality in schools will not only reduce absence rates and protect children’s health and well-being; there is evidence that it will also sharpen concentration and enhance educational performance.

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A Better Learning Experience

We can all remember our experiences in school when our usual teacher was off sick. Whoever was brought in to cover for them was usually given a torrid time by pupils acting up and playing pranks. The supply teacher rarely knew much about the characters in the class, nor about their abilities. I asked my 12yr old recently what the lessons are like with a supply teacher. “Do you do much work?”

“No we don’t do anything. We just chat. And the teacher doesn’t seem to mind.”

It becomes a matter of containment for the duration of the lesson rather than advancing knowledge.

Nobody benefits from teachers being absent. It’s expensive, frustrating for colleagues who have extra work, and frustrating for students. Parents don’t like the idea that their children are missing out on essential learning because subject specialists are away. Whenever a child’s favourite teacher is sick, that child’s learning suffers.

And despite the opportunities to mess about and let off steam, most children hate it when they have so many cover lessons. It disrupts their education and spoils their school day. With less teacher sickness, pupils will have a better learning experience.

Clean Air For Kids - Breathing poor quality air is a well-known risk to children’s immediate and long-term health. It exacerbates existing respiratory conditions, such as asthma, and also affects how well young people can perform in exams.

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Less Sickness for Parents

We all know that sickness picked up by children in schools get passed around the family at home, and possibly the extended family, some of whom may be especially vulnerable to infection, such as cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

A large American study has shown that 70% of all Covid-19 infections start in a school. The children spread it to each other and teachers; and then it is taken into the wider community. This spread into homes and then to places of work and leisure leads to further pressures on NHS facilities and helps the virus to spread within them.

The Institute for Public Policy Research has recently published a report specifically looking at sickness and its impacts from a UK perspective. It includes: “Sickness has become a serious fiscal threat. The number of people out of the labour market due to sickness is now at an all-time high. There is no road to prosperity for this nation without tackling the tide of sickness head-on.”

Cleaning the air to reduce sickness levels in schools means less onward transmission into families which helps the economy and the NHS.