Imagine two school pupils of identical background and academic ability. Each attends a school which delivers the same quality of teaching and the same level of care.

The only difference is that one school is built in the standard way – with windows on one side of each room – while the other has no side windows at all but instead has a series of skylights in the roof.  

Is it possible that there will be any difference in the GCSE results that these two school students achieve?

Amazingly, the answer is not just yes – it is yes to the extent of the student getting one grade higher in every GCSE where the teaching is carried on in a sky-lit room.  

This finding first came to light (if you’ll excuse the pun) in the USA in 1999 when researchers found that pupils learning in rooms with a well-designed skylight (one which diffused daylight throughout the room and which allowed teachers to control the amount of daylight entering the room) improved by 19 to 20% faster than those pupils without a skylight.

Using Professor John Hattie’s well-established “table of effects”, it can be seen that this is equivalent to advancing the learners’ achievements by almost half a year – and ultimately it is equivalent to raising the student’s achievement by a grade at GCSE.

While the use of buildings with skylights cannot make as much difference on their own as such fundamental effects as giving quality feedback, the ability of the teacher or the pupil’s cognitive level, it does appear that skylighting has more of an effect on the pupil’s work than such commonly debated topics as homework, teaching style, peer effects or computer-aided instruction.

Conport is the major provider of sky-lit educational buildings in the UK. Our NorthlightTM Studios are already in use in higher education (e.g. The Arts Institute at Bournemouth and Chelsea College of Art and Design) and are now being offered to schools that are rebuilding as part of the government’s Schools for the Future programme.