Noisy classrooms can lower primary school grades by as much as a third. And most schools in London are too noisy, according to a recent study.
A study of primary schools in Inner London found that average marks in maths and English tests were lower in noisier schools. The results were presented yesterday at the British Association Festival of Science meeting in Salford, Greater Manchester.
Performance in the noisiest schools was about 30 per cent lower than that in the quietest schools. This finding was confirmed by testing over 2,000 children in classrooms with different levels of background noise.
General classroom babble reduced performance, as did babble with added background noises such as passing trains or buses. Children with special needs were more seriously affected, said Prof Bridget Shield of South Bank University, London, who conducted the research.
"Most schools have noise levels that are too high, and reverberations that are too great," she added. "Most of the noise in classrooms comes from classroom activities, something that modern teaching methods made worse," said Prof Shield.
But external noise was also too high. She and her collaborator, Prof Julie Dockrell of the Institute of Education, found 65 per cent of schools were exposed to more external noise than is recommended by the World Health Organisation. The noise comes mostly from traffic, with passing buses and planes generating the most noise.
"Hearing and understanding the teacher is very hard for children in bad acoustic conditions," Prof Shield said. The problem could be especially bad in primary schools, where at any time up to 40 per cent of pupils might have some form of hearing impairment, she said.
Noisier schools also tended to have more children from deprived backgrounds, but for similar levels of deprivation, children in noisier schools still did less well. "This suggests that deprived children are doubly disadvantaged," she said.
"So all in all, we need an improvement in classroom acoustics," she said.
Some of the worst were the Victorian schools with very high ceilings, pitched roofs and hard surfaces, she said. An ideal classroom would have good sound proofing to block noise from the outside, other rooms and the corridor. It would also have quiet ventilation, and be acoustically designed, with acoustic tiles on the ceilings, soft furnishing and carpets, she said.
Reducing background noise levels may also help discipline. Although lacking hard data, "it was very much our impression" that quieter schools were calmer and had fewer discipline problems, said Prof Shield.
Classroom noise may also be bad for teachers.
Teachers get more voice/throat problems than any other professionals and the cost of this, in terms of replacement teachers, "can be quite severe", said Prof Shield. The research also asked more than 2,000 children about noise in the classroom.
It showed the children were very aware of the difficulties of hearing and understanding the teachers, she said. Older children were more aware of noise, but younger children found it more annoying.
Most irritating were trains, motorbikes, lorries and sirens, said Prof Shield.