CHILI: School and nursery level variations in health outcomes in children and young people
“Our research will support schools and nursery buildings to become carbon neutral whilst maximising children’s health, learning and wellbeing.”
This study is being led by Prof Pia Hardelid and Dr Niloofar Shoari (UCL) and was funded by UKRI (Medical Research Council, Natural Environment Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) and NIHR. CHILI also has additional funding from UCL RIGE. The study started in February 2025 and aims to finish in December 2029.
This project was reviewed and approved through ECHILD's data access process. Learn how ECHILD data is kept safe.
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We want to understand how school and nursery building characteristics and indoor environmental conditions, particularly air pollution and temperature, affect children’s respiratory health, attendance and educational outcomes.
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Children spend a large part of their formative years in schools and nurseries. Efforts to improve energy efficiency in schools and nurseries may alter ventilation, indoor air quality and heat exposure. The findings will help identify building and environmental factors that could be targeted so that progress towards net zero also supports children’s health, wellbeing and learning.
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We will link information on school and nursery buildings and indoor environments with children’s linked health and education records in ECHILD. Analyses will examine differences in hospital admissions, attendance and educational outcomes between settings, and how these patterns relate to building characteristics, air pollution, temperature and pupil characteristics.
Find out more
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Why does this matter?
As school and nursery buildings are refurbished to become more energy efficient, changes in ventilation, indoor air quality and overheating could have important consequences for children’s health, attendance and learning.
What do we want to find out?
We want to find out whether school building characteristics, indoor air pollution and temperature are associated with hospital admissions, school attendance and school performance, and whether these exposures and outcomes differ between groups of pupils.
What we will do
We will use ECHILD to link children’s health and education records with information about the schools and nurseries they attend and the characteristics of those buildings. We will describe how pupil demographic and health profiles vary across different types of educational settings and indoor environments. We will examine how the timing and magnitude of respiratory-related hospital admissions vary between schools and the extent to which these differences are associated with building characteristics and indoor environmental factors such as air pollution and temperature. CHILI’s wider programme will also use this evidence to help evaluate how changes to educational buildings can improve environmental sustainability without compromising children’s health and learning.
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Background and aims
Schools and nurseries are important environments for children’s health, development and learning. As the education estate moves towards net zero, measures such as greater insulation and airtightness can improve energy efficiency but may also affect ventilation, indoor air quality and heat exposure. This research aims to determine how physical characteristics of educational buildings and indoor environmental factors are associated with respiratory health and educational outcomes, and to identify whether particular groups of pupils or types of buildings experience greater risks. The work forms part of the CHILI Hub, whose “Understand” work package links indoor air quality and heat in educational settings with national health and education data to inform the design of net-zero interventions.
Methods and analysis
School buildings data from the UCL Modelling Platform for Schools database will be linked to ECHILD Analyses will describe variation in pupil characteristics across educational settings and differences in the timing and magnitude of hospital admissions and school outcomes, in relation to building characteristics, indoor air pollution and temperature.
ECHILD data used
ECHILD linked health and education records will be used and linked to school/nursery building and indoor-environment information.
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CHILI presentation (CIBSE, November 2025), including progress on linking the UCL school buildings database with ECHILD