The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) is calling on the government to introduce a maximum workplace temperature and provide schools and colleges with the funding needed to maintain safe and comfortable conditions for pupils and staff.
In its submission to HM Treasury ahead of the Autumn Budget, ASCL says education settings need appropriate heating and cooling systems throughout the academic year. The call follows a summer of intense heatwaves that caused significant disruption across schools and colleges.
Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary of ASCL, said it was “astonishing” that there is a maximum temperature for transporting cattle but no equivalent limit for children and staff in schools.
However, he warned that introducing a maximum temperature would achieve little without sufficient investment from the Treasury to help schools meet it.
Many school and college buildings are ageing and poorly equipped to cope with increasingly extreme temperatures, he said, pointing to the Department for Education’s estates strategy, published in February, which acknowledged that many pupils are learning in buildings in need of repair and at risk of overheating.
Following the hottest summer on record, during which some classrooms reached uncomfortable temperatures and learning was disrupted, ASCL argues that a significant increase in capital funding is now needed to improve the education estate and prepare it for hotter summers.
The association is urging the government to use the Autumn Budget to recognise the scale of the problem and begin providing schools and colleges with the resources needed to address it.
ASCL’s Treasury submission also focuses on the financial implications of falling pupil numbers. With school funding largely allocated on a per-pupil basis, declining enrolment risks putting further pressure on already stretched budgets.
The association is therefore calling on the government, as a minimum, to maintain total school funding at its current level in real terms rather than reducing spending as pupil numbers fall.
ASCL argues that retaining this funding within the education system would turn demographic decline into an opportunity, allowing money that might otherwise be lost from school budgets to be reinvested and help put the sector on a more sustainable financial footing.
