Many children return to school next week. Switzerland’s sweltering summer has renewed concern over the condition of its schools, many of which are poorly equipped to cope with extreme heat. Meeting in Bern on Thursday, teachers’ unions warned that high temperatures can impair children’s ability to learn, reported RTS.
Investing in school buildings means investing in education, said the French-speaking teachers’ union, SER, and its German-speaking counterpart, LCH. After decades of use, they argue, Switzerland’s schools need to be assessed to determine whether they still meet modern needs.
Schools are not merely infrastructure. They are educational tools, David Rey, the president of SER, told RTS. Everything from air quality and natural light to classroom acoustics can affect pupils’ performance, he said.
Mr Rey pointed to studies showing that as temperatures rise, concentration and learning suffer. Yet many schools were not designed to withstand heatwaves that are becoming more frequent.
SER says schools can no longer rely on improvised measures during periods of extreme heat. At the start of the summer, Geneva temporarily relaxed compulsory attendance for some younger pupils. Several towns in French-speaking Switzerland changed their end-of-term programmes, while schools in Zurich and Lucerne adjusted timetables and, in some cases, regularly ended lessons at midday.
Both SER and LCH say there is too little reliable data to assess conditions nationwide. They want schools to monitor temperatures and air quality more systematically, plant more vegetation in playgrounds and make greater use of night-time cooling.
The unions are calling for a broader discussion with municipal and cantonal authorities about the condition and future of school buildings. They have set out four priorities. First, they want a co-ordinated survey of school buildings to identify where renovation and adaptation are most urgently needed. They also want educational, climatic and energy requirements to be routinely included in architectural competitions and renovation projects.
The unions say teachers, other school staff and pupils should have a greater say in the design of the spaces they use every day. Finally, they want schools to become more resilient to a hotter climate, including through additional planting and greenery.
Similarly, Swiss school architecture was criticised during the Covid pandemic because of poor ventilation. A study by the Federal Office of Public Health found inadequate indoor-air quality in about two-thirds of Swiss classrooms that relied on manually opened windows. In some rooms, CO₂ concentrations exceeded 2,000 parts per million for more than 10% of teaching time. In Graubünden, the cantonal authorities installed CO₂ sensors in 150 classrooms across 59 primary schools. The resulting study found poor air quality in many rooms and reported up to six times as many coronavirus infections in poorly ventilated classrooms as in well-ventilated ones.
Years of poor school design have left Switzerland with buildings ill-suited to both cold winters and hot summers.
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RTS article (in French) – Take a 5 minute French test now
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