high temperatures and humidity

An uncomfortable combo for students and teachers: high temperatures and humidity

With temperatures and humidity soaring this week our thoughts turned to the thousands of students and teachers trying to learn and teach in such stifling conditions.

Our last advocacy ebulletin highlighted one of the key things we would like the NSW Government to invest in. Here it is again with some more information about why we think this is so important.

Invest $150 million to extend energy-efficient air conditioning to all NSW public schools by 2030 to ensure students and teachers have the same level of thermal comfort as other places of learning and work

Research shows that even moderately raised room temperatures (over 25 degrees) very quickly degrade work performance of office workers. And that’s before we even get to the compounding negative interaction with humidity!

SafeWork NSW warns that thermal discomfort can seriously impact a worker’s overall morale and work performance with the potential for prolonged exposure to lead to fatigue, lowered concentration and productivity.

Surely students and teachers need and deserve the same kind of comfortable work environment as NSW’s public servants and office workers like us at the Federation?

The good news is that while heat compromises learning, air-conditioning makes a difference.  A recent study of nearly 14.5 million students across 61 countries found that long-term exposure to high temperatures in schools, reduces students’ ability to learn and retain knowledge, with complex tasks such as mathematics really affected. The same research examined adaptation strategies, including air conditioning, and found they could offset 73% of heat-related cognitive loss.

One of the NSW Department of Education’s strategic goals is for every school to be a verified healthy and inclusive learning environment by 2030. That is a very important goal that we support. We would like to see a commitment to ensuring all schools have access to energy-efficient air-conditioning as part of that.

In the meantime, we’re calling for the Department to make it easier for schools to qualify for air-conditioning by reducing the temperature requirement and taking account of the compounding impact of humidity on thermal comfort and site-specific challenges such as building orientation.

Optimal temperatures between 21 to 25 degrees for office workers

Image: The effects of temperature on work performance in the typical office environment: A meta-analysis of the current evidence, Building and Environment, Volume 269, 2025, Xi Lin, Chao Guo, Pawel Wargocki, Shin-ichi Tanabe, Kwok Wai Tham, Li Lan,

More research if you’re interested:

• NSW Department of Education:  Our Plan for NSW Public Education
• Safework NSW –  optimum comfort for sedentary workers of 200C – 260C and relative humidity levels between 40% and 70% Maintaining thermal comfort in indoor work environments | SafeWork NSW 
• Australian Government, Bureau of Meteorology (October 2016) – Apparent (‘feels like’) temperature – Social Media Blog – Bureau of Meteorology (accessed 22/12/25)
• 1 Sherwood,S. (Jan 2024) UNSW via The Conversation:  Yes, it’s getting more humid in summer. Here’s why
• UNSW (2025) – article Rising temperatures affecting students learning across the world review of Vasilakopoulou K, Santamouris M (2025) Cumulative exposure to urban heat can affect the learning capacity of students and penalize the vulnerable and low-income young population: A systematic review.