Every classroom in the country should be provided with an air filtration system to reduce the spread of respiratory illnesses like Covid and flu.

That is the call from a leading Lancashire teaching union official who says it is vital both for children’s health and their learning.

Ian Watkinson – a branch secretary of the National Education Union and chair of the organisation’s nationwide health and safety committee –  says evidence shows the devices help to stem infections in the classroom.

He made the plea for action ahead of winter, the arrival of the annual flu season and against the backdrop of rising Covid rates – warning that children and school staff could not afford another academic year blighted by illness like the last one.

Department for Education data shows the overall pupil absence rate across the country during 2022/23 was 7.5 per cent, up from 4.7 percent in 2018/19.

But persistent absence – a child missing 10 per cent plus of lessons – rocketed from 10.3 per cent of pupils to 22.3 per cent.

Mr. Watkinson said: "It is within the government’s own data that the absence rate is being driven by respiratory illnesses.  And long-term sickness absence rates are also at records never seen before for education workers. Parents, teachers, even children themselves know classrooms are a hotbed for spreading disease – Covid, flu, RSV, glandular fever.

“So why on earth wouldn’t you do something relatively straightforward and cost effective if you were serious about kids not missing days at school and keeping people healthy and safe?” the primary school teacher asked.

Mr. Watkinson pointed to research into the benefits of air filtration units found they led to a 48 per cent  “mean reduction in particulate matter” in classrooms.

Study authors, on behalf of the British Association of Child and Adolescent Public Health – said while the equipment was “not a panacea”, they concluded it was “a useful tool [whose] ability to remove particles, including airborne pathogens, could help schools become healthier environments”.

Mr Watkinson also contrasted the lack of such systems in classrooms with their increasing prevalence at Westminster and Whitehall buildings – including Department for Education (DfE) offices.

“Surely every child and every school deserves to benefit from the same protection,” he added.

Lancashire County Council acquired 50 air filtration units earlier in the pandemic to supply to those schools that applied for them.  Thirty-two are understood to have been distributed and the remainder are still on offer.

The Dfe says it has provided more than 9,000 air cleaning units to more than 1,300 education settings, with reported high CO2 readings.

And between September 2021 and April 2023, the DfE delivered more than 700,000 CO2 monitors to 45,000 plus state settings.