̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - schools

Opinion: AI belongs in classrooms

lw355 — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 08:09:59 +0000

AI in education has transformative potential for students, teachers and schools but only if we harness it in the right way – by keeping people at the heart of the technology, says Jill Duffy.

Students from across the country get a taste of studying at Cambridge at the Cambridge Festival

zs332 — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 10:17:46 +0000

We were delighted to welcome pupils from Warrington’s Lymm High School, Ipswich High School, ̽��ֱ��Charter School in North Dulwich, Rickmansworth School, Sutton Valance School in Maidstone as well as schools closer to home such as St Peter’s Huntingdon, Fenstanton Primary School, Barton Primary School, Impington Village College and St Andrews School in Soham.

Running over two days (25/26 March 2025) and held in the Cambridge Sports Centre, students went on a great alien hunt with Dr Matt Bothwell from the Institute of Astronomy, stepped back in time to explore Must Farm with Department of Archaeology and the Cambridge Archaeological Unit as well as learning to disagree well with Dr Elizabeth Phillips from ̽��ֱ��Woolf Institute.

Schools had a choice of workshops from a range of departments including, how to think like an engineer and making sustainable food with biotechnology with researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, as well as the chance to get hands-on experience in the world of materials science and explore how properties of materials can be influenced by temperature at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy.

̽��ֱ��Department of Veterinary Medicine offered students the opportunity to find out what a career in veterinary medicine may look like with workshops on animal x-rays, how different professionals work together to treat animals in a veterinary hospital as well as meeting the departments horses and cows and learn how veterinarians diagnose and treat these large animals.

Students also had the opportunity to learn about antibodies and our immune system with the MRC Toxicology Unit. ̽��ֱ��students learnt about the incredible job antibodies do defending our bodies against harmful invaders like bacteria and viruses.

Alongside this, a maths trail, developed by Cambridgeshire County Council, guided students around the West Cambridge site whilst testing their maths skills with a number of problems to solve.

Now in their third year, the Cambridge Festival schools days are offering students the opportunity to experience studying at Cambridge with a series of curriculum linked talks and hands on workshops.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Festival runs from 19 March – 4 April and is a mixture of online, on-demand and in-person events covering all aspects of the world-leading research happening at Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��public have the chance to meet some of the researchers and thought-leaders working in some of the pioneering fields that will impact us all.

Over 500 KS2 and KS3 students from as far away as Warrington got the chance to experience studying at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge with a selection of lectures and workshops held as part of the Cambridge Festival.

Students make antibody keychains during a workshop with the MRC Toxicology Unit

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Make Indian Sign Language official language and open more schools for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, study advises

ta385 — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

“Many thousands of children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing are missing out on school in India,” said Dr Abhimanyu Sharma, from Cambridge’s Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages & Linguistics, the study’s author. “This has a huge impact on their wellbeing and life chances.”

“One of the main reasons for this very high dropout rate is that their schools do not offer education in sign language.”

Dr Sharma’s study, published today in Language Policy, explains that sign language continues to be ‘shunned’ in most Indian schools because it is still stigmatised as a visible marker of deafness. But, he argues, the alternative preferred by many schools, ‘oralism’ harms the school attainment of deaf students.

“Outside of India, ‘oralism’ is widely criticised but the majority of schools in India continue to use it,” Dr Sharma says. “Gesturing is not sign language, sign language is a language in its own right and these children need it.”

“When I was in primary school in Patna, one of my fellow students was deaf. Sign language was not taught in our school and it was very difficult for him. I would like to support the charities, teachers and policymakers in India who are working hard to improve education for such students today.”

Dr Sharma acknowledges that the Indian Government has taken important steps to make education more inclusive and welcomes measures such as the establishment of the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre in 2015. But, he argues, far more work is needed to ensure that DHH students receive the education which they need and to which they are legally entitled.

Sharma calls for constitutional recognition for Indian Sign Language (ISL) as well as recognition of ISL users as a linguistic minority. Being added to India’s de facto list of official languages would direct more Government financial support to Indian Sign Language.

“Central and state governments need to open more schools and higher education institutes for deaf and hard-of-hearing students,” Sharma also argues.

“In the whole of India, there are only 387 schools for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. ̽��ֱ��Government urgently needs to open many more specialist schools to support the actual number of deaf and hard-of-hearing children, which has been underestimated.”

He points out that deaf and hard-of-hearing people were undercounted in India’s last census because of the use of problematic terminology. ̽��ֱ��2011 census reported around 5 million deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the country but in 2016, the National Association of the Deaf estimated that the true figure was closer to 18 million people.

Sharma also highlights the need for more higher education institutions for these students as there are very few special colleges for them, such as the St. Louis Institute for Deaf and Blind (Chennai, Tamil Nadu). He also calls for an increase in the number of interpreter training programs available across Indian universities.

Dr Sharma advises central and state governments to conduct regular impact assessments of new policy measures to ensure that they are improving inclusion for deaf and hard-of-hearing people.

He also calls on the government to invest in research to support more targeted approaches to teaching and learning for DHH students, and to support public awareness campaigns to tackle biases and negative social attitudes towards deafness.

Dr Sharma’s study examines developments in Indian legislation and policy relating to DHH people since the 1950s. He highlights the fact that parliamentary debates in the Upper House about DHH people declined from 17 in the 1950s, to just 7 in the 1990s, before rising to 96 in the 2010s.

India’s language policy requires pupils to learn three languages at the secondary stage of schooling. Given the problematic nature of the three-language formula for deaf students, the 1995 Persons with Disabilities Act rescinds this requirement for these learners and decrees that they should learn only one language.

̽��ֱ��drawback of the 1995 Act, however, is that it does not mention the use of sign language and does not specify how language learning for such learners will be realised. Dr Sharma recognises that the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 brought significant improvements but highlights the gap between decrees and implementation. ̽��ֱ��2016 Act decrees that the Government and local authorities shall take measures to train and employ teachers who are qualified in sign language and to promote the use of sign language.

“In practice, India does not have enough teachers trained to support deaf and hard-of-hearing students, but I am positive that the country can achieve this,” Dr Sharma said.

References

A Sharma, ‘India’s language policy for deaf and hard-of-hearing people’, Language Policy (2025). DOI: 10.1007/s10993-025-09729-7

For the % of India’s deaf and hard-of-hearing children out-of-school in 2014, see National Sample Survey of Estimation of Out-of-School Children in the Age 6–13, Social and Rural Research Institute 2014

Around one in five (over 19%) of India’s deaf and hard-of-hearing children were out-of-school in 2014, according to a survey conducted for the Indian Government. A new study calls on the Government to address this ongoing educational crisis by recognising Indian Sign Language as an official language; rejecting ‘oralism’, the belief that deaf people can and should communicate exclusively by lipreading and speech; and opening more schools and higher education institutes for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students.

India does not have enough teachers trained to support deaf and hard-of-hearing students

Abhimanyu Sharma

Yogendra Singh via Unsplash

Female students in an Indian classroom. Photo: Yogendra Singh via Unsplash

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Roadside hedges can reduce harmful ultrafine particle pollution around schools

cmm201 — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 14:19:33 +0000

̽��ֱ��research, a collaboration with Lancaster ̽��ֱ��, found that hedges can act as protective barriers against air pollution from major city roads by soaking up significant quantities of harmful particles emitted by traffic.

̽��ֱ��researchers applied a new type of pollution analysis, using magnetism to study particles trapped by a hedge separating a major 6-lane road from a primary school in Manchester, UK. They found that the hedge was especially successful in removing ultrafine particle pollution, which can be more damaging to health.

“Our findings show that hedges can provide a simple, cheap and effective way to help reduce exposure to local sources of pollution,” said lead author Hassan Sheikh from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.

̽��ֱ��new study differs from conventional air pollution studies because the researchers specifically measured magnetic particles, which originate from vehicle exhaust and the wearing of brake pads and tyres. That allowed them to distinguish local traffic pollution from other sources of air pollution.

In England alone, epidemiological studies estimate that 26,000 to 38,000 deaths and thousands of NHS hospital admissions are linked to dust-like particles carried in air pollution — much of which is generated by heavy traffic in urban environments.

This particle pollution — or particulate matter — is made up of a variety of chemical compounds, metals and other materials, some of which are toxic. ̽��ֱ��bigger particles (which are still tiny) measure less than 10 microns in diameter (called PM10) and are easily inhaled. Finer particles of less than 2.5 microns across (PM2.5) can penetrate deeper into the lungs and are small enough to enter the bloodstream.

Children attending schools next to busy roads are especially vulnerable to the effects of air pollution because their airways are still developing and they breath faster than adults.

Sheikh and the team studied magnetic particles captured by a western red cedar ‘tredge’ (trees managed at head-height), which was previously installed outside St Ambrose Primary School as part of a trial led by Lancaster ̽��ֱ��.

“Western red cedar does a great job in 'capturing ' particulate pollution because it has abundant, fine, evergreen leaves into which airborne particles bump and then settle from the roadside air,” said study co-author Professor Barbara Maher from the Lancaster ̽��ֱ��, who led the previous research.

Sheikh and the team measured particles of varying sizes on the leaves of the tredge and used air filters to measure particle abundance at intervals downwind toward the school playground.

They also developed a new experiment that used a tracer gas to understand how ultrafine particles (measuring less that 2.5 microns) moved through and were trapped by the tredge.

Their results revealed that there was a substantial reduction in particle pollution downwind of the tredge. “ ̽��ֱ��tredge acts as a permeable barrier, intercepting and capturing particles effectively on its leaves,” said Sheikh.

In the school playground, 30 metres from the road, they measured a 78% decrease in PM10 relative to roadside air.

They noticed that this removal was even more efficient for ultrafine PM2.5 particles. “What was remarkable was just how efficiently the tredge hoovered up the very finest particles,” said senior author Professor Richard Harrison, also from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. They measured an 80% reduction in the ultrafine particles just behind the tredge.

They think the ultrafine particles are preferentially filtered out by the tredge because they have a higher likelihood of being captured on the ridged surfaces of the red cedar leaves than coarser particles.

However, they did note a slight uptick in levels of magnetic PM2.5 in the playground, although they were still 63% below roadside air. “ ̽��ֱ��ultrafine particles were very effectively removed, but this shows that some air still goes over or around the tredge,” said Sheikh. Less is currently known about how particulate matter moves and disperses at this higher level, where air mixes around buildings and trees.

“That means the design and placement of tredges near playgrounds and schools should be carefully considered so that their ability to soak up particles can be used to maximum effect,” said Harrison.

Cllr Tracey Rawlins, Executive Member for Environment for Manchester City Council, said: "We were keen to be part of this study as Manchester seeks to embrace innovation in our efforts to become a greener city with cleaner air and tackle climate change.

" ̽��ֱ��findings underline the contribution which nature-based innovations can make to rising to that challenge. We look forward to delivering more green screens as well as many trees at school sites, complementing our education climate change strategy," said Rawlins.

Previously, Sheikh and Harrison used their new magnetic analysis to identify high levels of ultrafine particles polluting the London Underground. They now plan on working with colleagues at the MRC Toxicology Unit in Cambridge to find out what happens when cells are exposed to this type of ultrafine particle pollution.

Reference

Sheikh, H A, Maher, B A, Woods, A W, Tung, P Y, and Harrison, R J (2023). Efficacy of green infrastructure in reducing exposure to local, traffic-related sources of airborne particulate matter (PM). Science of the Total Environment, 166598.

A new study led by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� confirms that planting hedges between roadsides and school playgrounds can dramatically reduce children’s exposure to traffic-related particle pollution.

Our findings show that hedges can provide a simple, cheap and effective way to help reduce exposure to local sources of pollution

Hassan Sheikh

H A Sheikh

Monitoring particle air pollution either side of the tredge installed at St Ambrose primary school, Manchester

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

'Reductive' models of wellbeing education risk failing children, researchers warn

tdk25 — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 00:11:28 +0000

In a new compendium of academic analysis, researchers argue that despite decades of investment in ‘positive education’ – such as programmes to teach children happiness and mindfulness – schools still lack a proper framework for cultivating pupil wellbeing.

̽��ֱ��critique appears in Wellbeing and Schooling, a book launched on 21 June. It compiles work by members of the European Health and Wellbeing Education research network, which engages specialists from around the world.

It argues that many education systems, including in the UK, treat wellbeing education reductively, generally viewing it as a means to drive up attainment. It links this viewpoint to the prevalence of one-size-fits-all models such as the ‘happiness agenda’: a sequence of initiatives which have tried to promote ‘happier living’ in British schools in recent years. These typically focus on training pupils to adopt a positive mindset. Commonly recommended methods include keeping gratitude journals and recording happy memories.

̽��ֱ��authors suggest that such approaches, while useful, have limited impact. Instead, they say wellbeing should be “an educational goal in its own right”. Fulfilling that requires a more nuanced approach, in which pupils engage purposefully with the circumstances that influence their wellbeing, as well as their own feelings.

Their book presents various examples from around the world of how this has been achieved. They range from system-wide strategies, such as the use of ‘Transition Years’ in Ireland and South Korea; to small-scale programmes and pilot studies, such as a project co-created by parents and teachers in New Zealand which drew on indigenous Maori heritage.

Wellbeing is typically conceptualised as having two dimensions: a ‘hedonic’ aspect, which refers to feelings and personal satisfaction, and a ‘eudaimonic’ aspect; a sense of meaningful purpose. Ros McLellan, an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, who co-edited the book, said most wellbeing education focused only on the hedonic dimension.

“If education doesn’t also guide children towards doing things that they find worthwhile and meaningful, we’re failing them,” McLellan said. “We limit their prospects of becoming successful, flourishing citizens. Life satisfaction is also more complex than we tend to acknowledge. It’s about dealing with both positive and negative experiences. Just running lessons on how to be happy won’t work. At worst, it risks making children who aren’t happy feel as if that’s their own fault.”

There is some evidence that wellbeing education, as presently realised, is failing to cut through. ̽��ֱ��Children’s Society has reported that 306,000 10 to 15-year-olds are unhappy with their lives, while one in eight feels under pressure at school. Other research on pupil stress raises questions about why the standard policy justification for wellbeing education remains the “positive impact on behaviour and attainment”.

One chapter in the book, co-authored by Professor Venka Simovska, from Aarhus ̽��ֱ��, Denmark (together with Catriona O`Toole), raises concerns that the happiness agenda overlooks the fact that some pupils inevitably find it difficult to suppress negative emotions, and fails to reflect whether focusing solely on positive feelings is beneficial for wellbeing.

“Students are faced with ever-increasing exhortations to be upbeat, to persist in the face of challenges, to display a growth mindset, to be enterprising and resilient,” the researchers write. “Repeated over time, this can give rise to an atmosphere of toxic positivity, particularly for those whose life experiences and living conditions do not lend themselves to feelings of cheery enthusiasm.”

As an alternative, they point to the recent revival in Scandinavia and elsewhere of Bildung, a German educational philosophy that links independent personal development to wider notions of purpose and social responsibility.

Informed by this tradition, schools in Denmark have applied a participatory and action-oriented pedagogical model to health and wellbeing education. ̽��ֱ��model starts by encouraging students to discuss an issue, for example how they feel when in school, then the teacher guides the students to critically explore the dynamics – either within their school or beyond – which might influence this, and envision creative possibilities for positive transformation.

Teachers and students together then develop programmes which address these structural influences and try to bring about change. ̽��ֱ��result has been school-level projects that address issues such as social inequality, marginalisation and discrimination related to health and wellbeing. “One could describe it as a form of citizenship education, but focused on school-related or wider societal determinants of wellbeing,” Simovska said.

̽��ֱ��book also underlines the need to avoid generic, often Eurocentric, responses to promoting wellbeing in school, to consider complexities of culturally sensitive and multicultural environments, and to focus on both local circumstances and the specific needs of different demographic groups.

One chapter examines Ireland’s use of an optional ‘Transition Year’, in which students focus on developmental activities and work experience, partly to help them become more “fulfilled citizens”. This has inspired the introduction of ‘Free Years’ in South Korea. ̽��ֱ��South Korean model, however, necessarily involved adaptations to address local issues. Most obviously, Free Years, introduced in 2013, are compulsory, reflecting deep nationwide concerns in South Korea “about student wellbeing and stress in a high-stakes academic environment” – manifest in rising rates of school violence and youth suicide.

Another chapter reports how researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Canterbury, Christchurch, orchestrated a series of wānanga – traditional Maori knowledge-sharing gatherings – for parents and teachers on New Zealand’s South Island, to examine local communities’ ideas and priorities for wellbeing.

Teachers used these to devise effective strategies for helping pupils to develop positive relationships and express emotions, often drawing on Maori culture. In one particularly touching example, a primary school teacher introduced a symbolic Maori Stone into her classroom, to which children could ‘transfer’ thoughts and feelings. She found it became a useful tool for working through moments of unrest and disagreement.

McLellan believes such cases illustrate how a more nuanced approach to wellbeing education is particularly feasible in primary settings. “Arguably, it’s important we start as young as we can,” she said. “ ̽��ֱ��examples in the book also show what amazing things teachers and schools can do, if we give them the resources and space to implement really effective, comprehensive, socio-ecological and culturally sensitive wellbeing education.”

Wellbeing and Schooling: Cross Cultural and Cross Disciplinary Perspectives is published by Springer, within the book series of the European Educational Research Association’s book series titled Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Educational research. ̽��ֱ��book will be launched at an event on 21 June.

An improved vision for wellbeing education should replace the over-simplistic approaches currently employed in many schools, such as happiness lessons, which risk creating an “atmosphere of toxic positivity” for pupils, experts say.

If education doesn’t also guide children towards doing things that they find worthwhile and meaningful, we’re failing them

Ros McLellan

Teacher speaking with students

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

NRICH: nurturing next-generation problem solvers

ta385 — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 06:00:00 +0000

NRICH spent the last two years in emergency rescue mode, helping learners in lockdown. Its online resources attracted over a million page views per week. Now celebrating their 25th anniversary, the NRICH team is more determined than ever to nurture our next-generation problem solvers.

Investment in languages education could return double for UK economy

ta385 — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 09:45:00 +0000

A new study from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the not-for-profit research institute RAND Europe shows that investing in languages education in the UK will return more than the investment cost, even under conservative assumptions.

By quantifying the wider economic benefits to the UK economy of extending languages education in schools, researchers found that the benefit-to-cost ratios for increasing Arabic, Mandarin, French or Spanish education are estimated to be at least 2:1, meaning that spending £1 could return about £2.

Researchers used a macroeconomic model to examine UK economic performance between now and 2050 if more pupils aged between 11 and 16 – Key Stage 3 (KS3) and Key Stage 4 (KS4) – learned to speak one of four different languages so they could later use it effectively in business. ̽��ֱ��modelling was based on the Government’s successful Mandarin Excellence Programme, in which extra hours are devoted to language learning without affecting other EBacc subjects, and lessons are fast-paced and engaging.

̽��ֱ��analysis showed that a ten percentage point increase in UK pupils learning Arabic in KS3/KS4 could cumulatively increase UK GDP by between £11.8bn and £12.6bn over 30 years, compared against a baseline scenario in which the current levels of language provision in schools do not change. This corresponds to about 0.5% of the UK’s GDP in 2019.

An increase in pupils learning Mandarin would increase GDP by between £11.5bn and £12.3bn. For French, the benefit is between £9.1bn and £9.5bn, and an increase in Spanish is estimated to be between £9.1bn and £9.7bn.

Wendy Ayres-Bennett, the study’s lead author and Professor of French Philology and Linguistics at Cambridge said: “Languages play a significant role in international trade, and having a common language can, all else being equal, reduce trade barriers and foster trade. This study provides a new economic estimate for some of the UK’s untapped language potential.”

“However, the UK has experienced a sharp decline overall in the uptake of languages since 2004. At a time when the UK Government seeks to reset its global economic relationships, such a decline in language skills could impact on the UK’s ability to compete on a global stage.”

Researchers calculated the benefit-to-cost ratio by applying a range of education cost estimates per pupil per year for each of the four languages under consideration: £600 to £800 for Arabic; £480 to £720 for Mandarin; and £240 to £600 each for French and Spanish.

̽��ֱ��resulting findings of a 2:1 benefit-to-cost ratio for each language demonstrated that there are identifiable returns for investing in languages education, not just in economic terms but also in producing workers with the language skills needed for the UK to compete internationally.

̽��ֱ��report notes that while the UK does have a comparative advantage because of the global nature of English as a lingua franca, English is not the sole driver in certain key trade sectors such as mining and energy and services – and other languages matter equally, if not more, in reducing trade barriers.

UK exports are predicted to rise if there is an increase in the number of languages shared with its trading partners. ̽��ֱ��report shows that the removal of language barriers with trading partners in Arabic-, Chinese-, French- and Spanish-speaking countries could increase UK exports annually by about £19bn.

Marco Hafner, report co-author and senior economist at RAND Europe, said: “ ̽��ֱ��analysis presented in this study demonstrates that investing in languages education could recoup its cost. But the idea behind the analysis was not in any way to substitute or diminish education in STEM or other EBacc subjects and replace them with languages. ̽��ֱ��intent is to demonstrate the value of improving the quality and quantity of languages education of secondary school pupils across the UK.”

Reference

W Ayres-Bennett et al., ' ̽��ֱ��economic value to the UK of speaking other languages', RAND Corporation (2022).

An increase in secondary school pupils learning Arabic, Mandarin, French or Spanish could boost the UK economy by billions of pounds over 30 years, according to new research. ̽��ֱ��study warns that the ongoing decline in language learning in UK schools is undermining the country's ability to compete internationally.

This study provides a new economic estimate for some of the UK’s untapped language potential

Wendy Ayres-Bennett

dendoktoor via Pixabay

A container ship

Funding

This study was funded through a research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant AH/V004182) awarded to Professor Ayres-Bennett.

Yes

Curbing COVID-19 in schools: Cambridge scientists support CO2 monitor rollout

sc604 — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 12:44:06 +0000

Scientists from Cambridge, Surrey and Imperial College London are supporting the rollout of portable monitors to UK schools as part of project CO-TRACE. ̽��ֱ��researchers behind the collaboration have produced materials to help teachers use the monitors, which have been rolled out to schools nationwide.

̽��ֱ��level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in a closed space is a good indicator of air quality and can signpost the need for ventilation. As the virus that causes COVID-19 is airborne, ensuring the air is properly refreshed using ventilation is crucial for reducing its spread. ̽��ֱ��device displays levels of CO2 and colour coding to indicate good, normal, or poor ventilation. Well ventilated spaces should have CO2 levels consistently below 800 parts per million (ppm), with readings above 1500ppm indicating poor ventilation or overcrowding.

“CO2 monitors allow teachers to assess the ventilation in their classrooms for the first time,” said Imperial’s Dr Henry Burridge, co-investigator on the project. “This is especially important during colder months when ventilation is typically lower due to colder outdoor temperatures, causing COVID-19 and other airborne diseases like the common cold and flu to linger and spread more easily.”

̽��ֱ��monitors mean teachers can see CO2 levels change in real-time as windows are opened and air is refreshed, allowing them to balance ventilation and warmth. Teachers can also use the monitors to know when it is safe to close windows slightly, which could help them keep classrooms more comfortable. As well as being a good ‘proxy’ for ventilation, lower CO2 levels have been linked to improved learning outcomes and better cognitive performance.

̽��ֱ��team behind the CO-TRACE project uses experimental modelling, numerical simulations, full-scale observations, and infection risk modelling to understand how the potential for COVID-19 spread changes with indoor air flows, ventilation levels, and the number of people in a space. In 2021, the researchers used monitored CO2 to indicate how much exhaled breath was present within classrooms, and their models found that seasonal variation in classroom ventilation levels could lead to airborne infection risks in winter being roughly double those in summer. This highlights that monitoring excess CO2 could be of significant benefit in mitigating airborne infection risk.

̽��ֱ��portability of the CO2 monitors, supplied by the Department for Education (DfE), means schools can move them around to test different areas, starting with those they suspect may be poorly ventilated.

“ ̽��ֱ��monitors empower teachers to strike a balance between good ventilation and warmth during winter,” said Professor Paul Linden from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, co-investigator on the programme. “We are pleased that the Government is taking evidence-based action to address air quality and COVID-19 spread in schools.”

̽��ֱ��monitors are accompanied by advice from the project which guides appropriate actions from teacher based on the CO2 readings in classrooms. Recommendations include opening higher windows before lower ones, and closing windows slowly when ventilation is good.

Schools with areas that are consistently low in air quality despite ventilation should consider using air cleaners. For such schools, the DfE is distributing between 7,000 and 8,000 air cleaning units.

When the project was announced in 2021, then-Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: “Providing all schools with CO2 monitors will help them make sure they have the right balance of measures in place, minimising any potential disruption to education and allowing them to focus on world-class lessons and catch up for the children who need it. By keeping up simple measures such as ventilation and testing, young people can now enjoy more freedom at school and college.”

̽��ֱ��project is funded by the EPSRC, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Adapted from an Imperial College story.

UK schools have received more than 300,000 CO2 monitors as part of a government initiative to reduce COVID-19 spread in classrooms.

̽��ֱ��monitors empower teachers to strike a balance between good ventilation and warmth during winter

Paul Linden

Olivier Le Moal

CO2 monitor

Yes