By TORU ISHII/ Senior Staff Writer
July 18, 2023 at 18:02 JST
School buildings in Japan, particularly older ones, are generally uninsulated, creating the risk of students getting heatstroke even while indoors in the height of summer.
According to a survey by the Japan Sport Council, 2,549 heatstroke cases in which students received medical care benefits from its mutual aid program were reported at elementary, junior and senior high schools nationwide in fiscal 2021.
While 1,314 cases occurred during extracurricular physical activities, 97 were during classes other than physical education, and 44 during homerooms and other special activities.
NEW INITIATIVE IN NAGANO
The city of Ueda, which sits in a basin surrounded by mountains in Nagano Prefecture, is known for its hot summers and cold winters. Temperatures approached 35 degrees on July 17.
Ueda Someyaoka High School’s reinforced concrete building, erected more than 50 years ago, is uninsulated.
While the classrooms are equipped with air conditioners, they are less effective on the top third floor, where rising heat passes through the ceiling.
About 30 people, mainly students, participated in a two-day workshop in February to improve the insulation of a lecture room on the third floor.
The attic floor was lined with glass-wool insulating material about 30 centimeters thick and secondary polycarbonate windows were added on the northern side.
The insulation work made a noticeable difference.
“The winter felt less cold,” said Miku Oi, 18, vice president of the student council. “Now, the air conditioner in there is also working better.”
The workshop, where students also learned about climate change and energy conservation, was a prefectural government project organized in cooperation with Ueda Shimin Energy (Ueda Citizens Energy), a nonprofit organization, and a local building contractor.
The Nagano prefectural government implemented the project at six prefectural schools in fiscal 2022 and plans to continue it this fiscal year.
Only the lecture room could be retrofitted due to the limited budget of about 700,000 yen ($5,000).
While many students use the lecture room, the perceived risk of heatstroke was greater there than in other rooms at the school because temperatures in such corner rooms are higher in the summer.
One recent day, when the mercury hit 30 degrees, the temperature in the lecture room was about 2 degrees lower than in an adjacent room.
When a cultural festival was held in early July, the “go” and shogi club used the lecture room for its event.
A club member told a teacher the room felt cooler than before, too.
Similar efforts to improve insulation in school buildings have been made in Saitama, Tokyo’s Katsushika Ward, Fujisawa in Kanagawa Prefecture, Tsuyama in Okayama Prefecture and elsewhere.
But the education ministry has no nationwide data about insulation in school buildings.
Masayoshi Takeuchi, a professor of architecture and environmental design at the Tohoku University of Art and Design, said electricity consumption for air conditioning fell 30 to 40 percent when a classroom was insulated at an elementary school in Sendai.
He estimates that it would require about 600 billion yen to retrofit all 400,000 ordinary classrooms at elementary and junior high schools nationwide.
In a document sent to local governments in April, the education ministry said many students have gotten heatstroke even while in classrooms.
It said the insulation and airtightness of buildings need to be enhanced along with the use of air conditioning and ventilation to reduce the risk of heatstroke.
Masayuki Mae, an associate professor of architectural environmental engineering at the University of Tokyo, said the education ministry should first survey conditions at schools nationwide and develop retrofitting methods.
He added that all classrooms should be insulated by around 2035, when air conditioners at schools are to be replaced in phases, and that the ministry should formulate repair schedules for each fiscal year and secure the necessary budgets.
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Students line an attic floor with insulating material during a workshop at Ueda Someyaoka High School in Ueda, Nagano Prefecture, in February. (Provided by Ueda Someyaoka High School)
