A field measurement study on the acoustic environment of primary and secondary schools in Southwestern China

A number of studies over the past 30 years have shown that the environmental and classroom noise have detrimental impacts on children’s academic performance. This paper presents the field measurement results of the acoustic environment in 15 typical primary and secondary schools in Southwestern China. RT and three different background noise levels (outdoor, indoor with and without fan) were taken into account for all the 30 classrooms (two rooms per school). Compared with UK’s schools, Chinese classrooms are normally bigger, with the average volume of 180 m3. Both RT and background levels at most of the measured schools largely exceeded the suggested values, as guided by the relevant Chinese standard. RT ranged from 0.62 s to 2.63 s, whereas the maximum background noise levels were as high as 74 dBA. A possible reason might be the lack of appropriate acoustic treatments in those selected schools.