By Lucy Ashton
Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Willie Rennie has today highlighted plans from the Education Secretary to spend £300,000 chopping the bottom off doors of 2000 “problematic” classrooms where airflow is poor.
A letter from Shirley-Anne Somerville, the Education Secretary to the Education, Children and Young People Committee, available here, states:
“The informal local authority feedback indicated that around 2-4% of spaces have so far fallen into that problematic category, equalling around 2,000 spaces out of 50,000 learning, teaching and play spaces across all local authority school and ELC settings”.
Shirley-Anne Somerville, the Education Secretary to the Education, Children and Young People and LibDem education spokesperson Willie Rennie.
It goes on to say: “Finally, we have assumed the door in the example space will need to be undercut to increase airflow, at a cost of £150, in line with business ventilation fund guidance. 2000 x £150 = £300,000”
Commenting on the letter Mr Rennie said: “Rather than putting an air filter in every classroom, the Education Secretary’s solution is sending a handyman round to chop up classroom doors.
“We are two years into the pandemic and three terms into this school year but only now has the Scottish Government admitted there is a problem in thousands of classrooms. Yet this could only be the tip of the iceberg.
“We heard that Edinburgh Council found seven out of nine schools surveyed fell below air quality standards. The government should publish the evidence from councils so we can judge the true scale of the problem.
“Opening windows in winter and chopping up doors is an insult to the thousands of teachers and pupils who deserve a better solution to the problems of ventilation.
“Air filters could play a long-term solution with cutting the spread of other infections and improving conditions for good learning.
“The Education Secretary should take ventilation more seriously and pick up the pace on finding proper solutions.”
Scottish Liberal Democrats yesterday revealed a leaked report commissioned by Edinburgh City Council which showed all but two schools surveyed in detail failed CO2 threshold tests amid concern about the ventilation in classrooms.
The report commissioned by the City of Edinburgh Council dated May 2021 stated that most of the schools monitored in the detailed study (a sample of 9 schools) demonstrated periods where the maximum recorded CO2 concentrations exceeded threshold values.