Secondary education

In large, open spaces, acoustics are often not doing well. Consider, for example, the auditorium or corridors in a school building. This can lead to serious complaints among students and teachers who use these spaces on a daily basis. This also applied to the school whose photos can be seen here. Poor classroom acoustics and noisy students are associated with hearing problems and voice problems. It is not only environmental noise and the construction of the building that determine noise and annoying noise. The setup 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.

In noisy areas, such as the auditorium, classrooms or busy corridors, students and teachers are frequently exposed to noise pollution. In all these spaces, people talking, shouting, walking and running produce a lot of noise. If the acoustics are not up to par then, this quickly causes inconvenience. Noise pollution at school is therefore a common problem. 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. 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. This is evident from a study by Arbo-vo.