A proposal by a University of the West Indies scientist to outfit all classrooms throughout the country with air conditioning (A/C) units, in light of extremely hot conditions brought on by climate change, has found favour with Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) President Dr Mark Smith.

Director for the Institute for Sustainable Development at The University of the West Indies (The UWI), Mona, Dr David Smith, who made the recommendation during Wednesday’s sitting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC), argued that outfitting all school rooms across the country with air conditioning is vital.

“Research shows very clearly that children learn less the warmer it is. It’s not just that they’re uncomfortable and irritable; they don’t learn,” he said.

“So what we are looking at is a situation where as our school rooms become warmer and warmer, and our ability as a country to develop the human capital we need to run our economy gets worse and worse and worse. So, putting air conditioners in school classrooms is not a matter of comfort and luxury; it is what we absolutely need to build the human capital we need to get to where we would like to go. If we don’t do it, our economy will not grow because we have no capital to drive it,” Dr Smith told PAAC members.

The JTA’s Smith, in response to queries from the Jamaica Observer, said he welcomed the call by The UWI’s director, which also highlights the need to modernise classrooms to be able to withstand climate change impacts.

“My opinion on the matter is that what is clear is that we need to modernise many of our classrooms. If you look at many of the classrooms across the island, you’re going to find that the same classroom with children presently sit in look exactly the same like the classroom their parents sat in and their grandparents, and possibly even their great-grandparents sat in. So there has been a failure for us over periods to really modernise our classrooms. A part of that would be climate-proofing those classrooms to ensure that they are better equipped and a conducive environment for learning,” he said. The JTA president said that there is a lot of merit to what the scientist said, pointing out that increased temperatures globally are going to be a barrier for effective learning and facilitation of affected classes as students often get fatigued, frustrated and are unable to focus when conditions are warmer.

“Also, it’s very difficult for our teachers where you have to work in a classroom sometimes with 40 or 50 students in that classroom. Ideally, we would like to have our class size at around 20 to one, but in many schools, particularly with this shortage of teachers, we’re seeing some critical areas where teachers have had to be doubling up the size of their classes, and putting more physical bodies within a space increases the temperature within the room. That is then layered over with the fact that there’s really poor ventilation of the classes and with the increase in the global temperatures that then layers on another challenge for creating a conducive space. Many classrooms don’t even have a fan, much less an air conditioning unit,” he said.

Dr Smith said that while the economics of installing A/Cs in schools will undoubtedly be challenging, he suggested that in seeing the proposal through, focus in the first instance could be placed on those schools that are suffering the most.

“One of the things that I will put on the table from the Jamaica Teachers’ Association is that we need to, first of all, establish some minimum standards for our schools. After establishing those minimum standards, then we create an entire schedule of schools showing how many of these schools have met those minimum standards. If you say 30 schools [will be outfitted] and then we’re going have to work to fix the rest now to meet the standards. Then every year, the Government would systematically try to get 10 schools [outfitted] and then you publish that list every year so we as a public can monitor the progress that is happening,” he said.

He said what is being proposed would be a massive cost that would require private/public partnerships, and maintenance costs as well as electricity would have to be considered. He suggested that solar technology could be used to power the A/C units to save on cost.

This suggestion was in line with dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at The UWI, Mona Professor Michael Taylor’s earlier words of caution during the PAAC sitting that the need for A/Cs in schools cannot be divorced from the country’s commitment under the energy sector policy which speaks to the use of renewable energy.

“You certainly can’t put them in there and then run them off of fossil fuels because then you have a challenge. This is [why] I talk about now climate-proofing all of the actions and the collaboration across [sectors].”

“It is clear, we do need to figure out cooling, but we have to do it in a way that is consistent now with the other commitments that we have made energy and the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and that’s critical. The other part of that is you want to make sure that the new infrastructure that you are putting in…I know that there are some brand new schools that are going [up]. Have those plants been climate proofed?,” he asked.

In the meantime, Professor Taylor told the PAAC that the education sector is now emerging as one of the industries that is becoming more vulnerable to climate change, stressing that measures need to be put in place to mitigate the impact, particularly extreme heat.

He said the education sector is taking a beating from climate, especially from heat, pointing out that last summer was the hottest, with July being the hottest ever and has only been eclipsed by this year globally.

“It’s an unfair ask to ask kids to perform in the kind of classrooms that they have, especially as you know how our classrooms are built. They are built really to protect from theft and so you have concrete with what they call the little breather blocks and the zinc roofs, and then fully concrete outside. That’s an unfair ask to ask and we have not paid attention as a country to the impact,” he said.

Professor Taylor warned that with predictions that it will be getting getting hotter as climate change worsens, the world is entering into a new era of multi-hazard climate, marked by unprecedented weather events such as severe drought, sweltering heat and intense rains in one year, as was experienced in 2023.

He said that it is going to become even hotter by the end of the century. “We’ve seen 23 more hot days, but by the end of the century, we will get up to 98 per cent of the days in a year being hot… and two per cent cool,” he said.