The Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Pillar Joyhas announced that his department is preparing a plan for the “climate adaptation” of schools that it foresees will be endowed with more than 200 million euros and that it will agree with the autonomous communities once the General State Budgets for 2023 have been approved.
Joy has remembered the climate crisis that plagues the country. To mitigate its effects, the Ministry is working to “adopt in that future budget an important line with a considerable amount of millions of euros to be able to adapt educational centers to the climate”, according to the minister in an interview with Europa Press.
In this sense, he points out that the objective of the plan is that, both for the summer and for the winter, the educational centers are better and more prepared.
This responds to the need to protect students in a much safer waywho suffered the effects of high temperatures last year.
During the first heat wave of the year, the classrooms reached 38ºC in the Community of Madrid, as reported by Workers Commissions. These temperatures exceed the limits established by Royal Decree 486/1997 on safety and health in workplaces, according to which temperatures in classrooms must be set between 17 and 27 degrees.
On the other hand, the plan will be discussed with the autonomous communities, with whose governments the distribution criteria will be worked out jointly, depending on the number of centers or the number of students. “And from there, that distribution of funds would be done very quickly,” he commented.
In any case, he points out that the most modern educational centers, and especially those of the last decade, are usually centers already adapted to the climate. However, he points out that in Spain there are schools over 100 or even 150 years old. “Thinking especially about these educational centers, we want to launch this new territorial cooperation plan to adapt educational centers to the climate,” he insists.
It should be remembered that the temperature limit of 27 degrees established by the energy saving plan would not affect educational centers. This is because schools are part of the exceptions established by the decree. Nor are hospitals, hairdressers, gyms, means of transport and workplaces that require physical effort affected by this measure.
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