Lighting professionals must join with educators to improve lighting in schools, Chris Boyce of Capita Symonds told LuxLive.
Better cooperation is needed to make use of government funding for primary and secondary education, Boyce said in a keynote speech.
Boyce urged lighting professionals to use their knowledge and skills to help architects and educators to make the right choices. He said: ‘We need the people who design the lighting in education to help us as architects to change the way light is given in education – that is my plea to you.’
He also called on schools to learn lessons from the way commercial offices and universities are lit.
Boyce warned of the dangers of installing low-energy lighting without understanding how it will be used. The drive by the government to standardise energy-efficiency and school designs could compromise the quality of school lighting due to a lack of evidence on the need for quality lighting, he warned.
‘It’s my view that lighting will suffer,’ Boyce said, ‘and it’s the industry’s job to work with architects to persuade teachers that they need quality space and not just space.
‘Lighting contributes to educational outcomes. My request for the lighting industry is to challenge the normal education need by gathering the data to back up the need for it.’