Daylighting in Schools influencing the health and productivity of children: Investigating with current British Standards

Daylighting in school buildings has been considered as one major aspect over the past few decades. A well designed space should meet appropriate quantitative aspects like illuminance, luminance, and daylight factor along with qualitative aspects like psychological and physiological factors, as well as time, duration, and directionality of the luminous stimuli. The study aims to understand the influence and relation between daylight and human productivity in the context of educational buildings. Whilst supporting the argument that current standards and British Legislation may not necessarily consider impact of daylight strategies on human factors in school designs. The study involves existing theories and research that explains the relationship between human behaviour and specific school building function alongside examining various and renowned standards and codes in order to support the importance of daylighting criteria in school buildings for a sustainable approach in design. The study further in support of the literature review focuses on a case study of a carbon neutral design, Victor Miller block in Bowbridge Primary school at Newark, United Kingdom. With reference to the existing theories and standards, the case study results confirms that the productivity of children is more for outdoor activities and during summer as compared to the productivity for indoor activities and during winter. Whilst the performance in children improved after shifting to the newly designed energy efficient building (Victor Miller block) with its passive design features, facilitating better exposure towards good daylighting. The study manifest that both visual and nonvisual aspects of daylighting equally affect the performance of a child. The total analysis of the study helps to understand and emphasize the priority of daylighting in educational buildings, and hence supports the argument about the gap existing in consideration of daylighting qualitative aspects in current British standards for school buildings.