Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of installing air purifiers such as (a) HEPA filters and (b) Corsi-Rosenthal boxes in classrooms to help reduce the risk of covid-19 infection.

As of 24 June 2022, the Department has delivered more than 386,000 CO₂ monitors to state-funded settings to help them assess how well ventilated their teaching spaces are.

Where an area of poor ventilation has been identified that cannot be resolved through simple measures, settings were able to apply for an air cleaning unit to use while the underlying ventilation issue is addressed.

All eligible applications received for air cleaning units have been fulfilled, with over 8,000 units now delivered. The Department also enabled settings to purchase air cleaning units at a competitive price directly from suppliers at the online marketplace. All air cleaning units supplied by the Department and available on the marketplace are HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) units that meet an approved technical specification.

Natural ventilation is best where that is achievable, and the Department has robust evidence that in the vast majority of cases, teaching spaces and classrooms benefit from sufficient natural ventilation. That evidence includes the responses to our recent survey of settings using the CO₂ monitors which was published on 24 January. The findings showed that only 3% of settings reported sustained high CO2 readings (above 1500ppm) that could not be remedied through quick fixes or remedial building works.