Stupid Question - but do you consider air-conditioning in a school to be important??

[Queen]

In some places yes, it is essential, but most schools in Oz are off during the majority of summer so no worries.
I would 'prefer' my child to have aircon on the hot days.
Each to their own I guess.

[Bathsheba]

The hottest month down here in Vic often seems to be February though... here we are late April and we are having 20'C MINIMUM overnight temps... it was 29.4'C here yesterday. Climate change is scary. I think every public school really needs to look at generating some of their own energy with solar panels so that a/c can be provided.

[LimeSlice]

We went to primary school without - hell even my High School (private grammar school) still didn't have air cn through most of the school! lol
We survived perfectly, yes it was hot sometimes...but honestly it was fine.
That was in Melbourne

We don't have air con at home and now we live in Perth! I would think though that if I were sending Charlotte to school HERE then yes, Air Con would be important - it was 30 last week and that is almost winter lol It is not uncommon for 35+ degree days in October so, ys it would be more of a consideration.

But in Melbourne, whether her school has air con or not will not a priority at all.
And they are probably much healthier NOT having air con

[Cherished]

I was thinking about this the other day. While heaps of homes don't have aircon and get by I'd hate to be sitting in a stinking hot environment and be expected to concentrate and above that learn. So I think aircon will be important when we decided where to send our kids to school. I also don't think it's great to be in aircon all the time but at school kids are outside enough, they have a morning & afternoon tea break and lunch time in primary school anyway, I don't know what they do in high school these days but by then immune systems should be pretty good and getting colds may not be such a problem?

[MissM]

ESSENTIAL!!! We're out in the Penrith region - and DD goes to an independant school where every classroom has air con. If kids are too hot and bothered, they dont wanna learn!

We haven't had an issue with the air con being too cold/warm, as the kids are kept inside if its too hot/cold outside.

I have my air con on in the car when its 28 why should my DD have to suffer in the heat/cold at school?

[Rouge]

It's not essential. But I don't follow the school of thought that just because I didn't have it the kids don't need it. We didn't have it because we didn't have it. Simple as that. They didn't have the same a/c technology back then. Yes they had a/c but they were expensive, they were also power suckers and HUGE. Now they are more energy efficient, not as expensive and smaller units. I didn't use the internet to source information for my school projects, doesn't mean I'm going to take my kids down to the local library and whip out the old encyclopedia because well chances are that information could be highly outdated.

Progression isn't always a curse. And just because we walked 10,000 miles in the snow with no shoes doesn't make us stronger. Technology has shown to encourage earlier learning, kids are now learning at a more rapid rate. The age for reading has lowered, basic math's has lowered. Our kids are getting smarter. And without technology I am not sure this would happen. What's not to say we would have learnt quicker in our classrooms if we weren't focusing on how hot it was and what work we had in front of us. When I was a kid the only place in school that had a/c was the library and I know I got a heck of a lot more work done and more efficiently done there than in our classrooms.

[JLeigh29]

Just for interests sake, as I know it's off topic, but our school was looking like it was going to have about $50 000 leftover from a funding grant and our principal asked the staff if we had any ideas on how we'd like it spent. We all said air-con in the rooms that don't have it and new air-conditioners in the 4 rooms that have really old, inefficient ones. He said he'd looked into costs and it was about $25 000 to air-con one classroom. We could do our whole house several times over for that! Make of that what you will...

[Bathsheba]

There is a big debate in the media ATM about government schools getting ripped off big time for their grant money Isn't that just the lowest act? Makes me sooo angry when people think just because the government is paying for something they can milk it for all it's worth!!! They are milking tax payers! I don't understand why parents of kids going to government school aren't making more of a hoo haa I tell you what: if I heard that some contractor was doing that to my DD's private school i know about 100 parents that would march straight to their offices and protest! As if we don't pay enough in fees! Sometimes i think that if they means tested parents for education parents might start to think about issues like this. Could it be that because parents aren't paying for the public system that these types of issues are kinda off the radar? I am in full support of the public system but it would serve the parents of this system better in some ways to act a bit more like the parents of the private system and expect to be treated like clients instead of just accepting what they are given.... not feeling that they can be demanding because the service is essentially free? Sensitive topic I know... just putting it out there.