Half of teachers are unintelligible

Poor classroom acoustics and noisy students are associated with hearing problems and voice problems. 50.6% of secondary school teachers have to talk loudly to make themselves heard. By comparison, 26.0% of all employees in the Netherlands say they need to talk loudly to make themselves heard. To gain more insight into the noise pollution experienced in secondary education, Arbo-VO conducted a survey.

The National Working Conditions Survey (NEA) shows that secondary school teachers are much more likely to deal with workplace noise than the average Dutch employee. The NEA research on this topic is too limited to answer the question why this difference stems from. That is why Arbo-VO, together with CNVO, launched a survey among secondary education employees who have a license for the ArboScan-VO (the RI&E instrument for secondary education) and members of the CNVO, respectively.

Poor classroom acoustics and noisy students are associated with hearing problems and voice problems.

Response

A total of 141 questionnaires were completed. Most respondents (47.5%) are lecturers who sometimes also play the role of prevention officers. In addition, 29.5% of the respondents indicated that they were (also) an occupational health coordinator.

Outside and inside noise

A third of respondents say they complain about noise and annoying noise at school. Around 30% of respondents do not know if there are complaints and the other 38% say that there are no complaints about noise and annoying noise at school.

According to 64% of respondents, there are classrooms at school where noise is experienced from adjacent spaces. This involves music, practice or technical rooms, but also listening tests played too loudly, too many students in auditoriums/canteens, halls and corridors are mentioned. Traffic noise is also regularly mentioned as a source of annoying noise. This makes it very difficult to ventilate the room properly.

In addition to noise from outside the classroom, 57% of respondents say that speech intelligibility in classrooms is poor. The causes are too much reverberation, poorly insulating or too thin walls, poor acoustics in emergency rooms or in 'improvised' rooms.

Causes of noise and annoying noise

Not only environmental noise and the construction of the building (especially its acoustic comfort) determine noise and annoying noise, the arrangement of, for example, candy and coffee machines, lockers, etc., can also be important. In addition, the correct use of spaces plays a role. “Wrong” examples mentioned include classroom teaching in a classroom that is too large (poor speech comprehension) or too many students in a classroom that is too small.

Hearing and voice problems

Without pretending to be able to make a causal relationship, we were informed about preventing hearing and voice problems. More than half of the respondents say that there are teachers with hearing problems at school. In a fifth of the schools, none of the teachers have hearing problems. According to respondents, problems with or with the voice occur in 37% of the schools. 28% report no problems with the voice.

Measures

According to 45% of respondents, nothing has (yet) been done at school to prevent noise or annoying noise. 41% of respondents say that the school has taken measures to reduce noise and annoying noise. Respondents mention the following measures to reduce noise/annoying noise:

• Acoustic adjustments on ceilings (other material, suspended), floors (carpeting, rubber mats), walls, double glazing, etc.
• Induction loop (microphone with boxes)
• Limit volume when moving to music (and moving moving to outdoor gyms)
• Organizational measures (e.g. mowing grass outside school hours)

Conclusions

Noise and annoying noise occur in most of the schools. It is likely that in the long run, this will promote complaints about the use of voice and lead to hearing damage among teachers. A recent epidemiological study substantiated this finding; it showed that more than half of the teachers have (had) voice problems. This study also shows that around a fifth failed for this reason.

The survey shows that noise and annoying noise are caused by combinations of factors such as the construction (acoustics of the building), design and organization (canteen, lockers, music room, etc.), noisy students and working methods.

Source approach is the most appropriate method for dealing with noise and annoying noise. With external noise sources such as roads, etc., this can mean lobbying the province and municipality to install a noise barrier. In case of internal noise sources in the school building/classroom, installing acoustic ceiling panels, other carpeting or installing baffles help, etc. Solutions of a different order are organizational and disciplinary measures.

Source: www.arbo-vo.nl