Schools, performance and policies

Schools, performance and policies 

In the news on schools one reads in Dutch media, among the many items on ICT possibilities and dangers, the scarcity of teachers and the financial relations between schools and municipalities, the physical environment makes regular recurring appearances. The latest is again about poor interior climate and its influence on teacher and pupil health and performance: https://nos.nl/artikel/2224225-slechte-ventilatie-veroorzaakt-hoofdpijn-op-tientallen-scholen.html.

It is not the first time schools have been observed to perform poorly in this respect or that poor building performance has been linked to poor user performance. Eleven years ago, three Dutch ministries were already concerned with the matter and stipulated policies that should solve all problems (http://www.co2indicator.nl/documentatie/Scholen_richtlijnen.pdf). The big change since is that one of the ministries has been dissolved; the problems with schools persist.

One can interpret the recurring news similarly negatively and dismissively:

1. They don't tell us something new: anyone with some experience with educational buildings (i.e. teachers, students, pupils, parents - practically everybody) is familiar with these problems, only we tend to brave discomfort with buildings, relying on our adaptability and tolerances to compensate for shortcomings in our environments. As a result. we tend to forget not only that buildings may underperform and that this certainly affects our performance and even wellbeing but also that we pay a lot to maintain buildings in such poor performance. 
2. Design and management of the built environment are far from holistic or even balanced. Attention and priority switches too easily from one thing to another (e.g. energy consumption to interior climate), ignoring interdependencies between aspects and consequences of partial solutions. So, today we may focus on air quality and raise classroom ceilings, as easily as we lowered ceilings when we were trying to economise the heating bill. Other factors and relations, from overcrowding to expansive glazing in classrooms are not taken into account. 
3. Policies are similarly partial and geared towards short-term goals. When energy is the issue, we promote measures that only economise consumption, disregarding the rest. The effects of a policy are often not explored in full beforehand and certainly not monitored or evaluated after deployment so as to adjust the policies or improve our understanding of the problem and its solutions. 

The bottom line is that when it comes to architecture and buildings, we are primarily geared towards making (designing or developing plans and policies). The customary solution is to make something new or even just more of the same, not use and real performance and how to analyse and evaluate them. Consequently, we keep on wasting money and tolerating poor built environments.