7:09pm Thursday 2nd July 2009
By Ben Barnett
Pupils and staff at Bradford’s three newest secondary schools are suffering in the heatwave, according to a teaching union.
The use of glass at the schools have been blamed for temperatures reaching 38 degrees Celsius.
Problems have been caused at Titus Salt School in Baildon and Buttershaw Business & Enterprise College and Tong High School in Bradford which opened last September as part of Bradford’s £400 million Building Schools for Future (BSF) programme.
Ian Murch, secretary of the Bradford branch of the National Union of Teachers, said: “Inevitably at this time of year there are quite serious problems and they tend to be at new schools which have bigger spaces contained inside glass.
“We are dealing with quite a number of schools but it’s the problems with the newest schools in terms of their design because they are being tested out for the first time.”
He said all three schools had “relatively little capacity” to open windows. He said: “We are monitoring what’s happening at these buildings and we have monitored temperatures as high as 38 degrees inside some rooms so we are not making a fuss about nothing, it’s a very serious issue.
“Staff in all these schools are monitoring buildings room by room and our safety advice is that temperatures above 26 degrees are not fit to be endured for prolonged periods and we are well above these temperatures.”
Tony Smith, of Integrated Bradford (IB), the local education partnership which is working with the Council to carry out its BSF programme, said: “We are aware of these complaints and we are out investigating them to see what we can do to alleviate these problems. We are responding as part of the service to them.” He said IB staff had spent time on site at Tong High yesterday where the highest temperature recorded at desk height in the middle of a room had been 28 degrees Celsius.
Schools have been advised to leave classroom doors and windows open, and shut the blinds.
A Bradford Council spokesman said schools should apply sun cream, making sure sun hats are worn and giving pupils water to drink.
Schools are advised to check the Department for Children, Schools and Families website dcsf.gov.uk for further guidance.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which manages Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke’s, said there had been a higher-than-usual number of patients attending our A&E department as a result of the excessive heat.
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