The Classrooms
As the classrooms were refurbished, Head of Infant Education, Paula Cragie wanted to make sure that the acoustic issues of the classrooms were remedied. Based off the Ministry of Educations recommendations, Autex set to specify a solution that would bring the classrooms reverberation time down to 0.6 seconds allowing a high level of speech intelligibility and also reducing the need for teachers to raise their voices.
Just like other classrooms where noise reverberation is an issue, occupants experienced difficulty at the high end of the frequency spectrum with intelligibility of words. Therefore, the issue lay with not being able to decipher what had been said as opposed to not hearing. Sounds that are not heard on the high end of the frequency spectrum are usually the soft sounding consonants that shape and determine words. This is important when teaching small children, as their ability to understand and learn words is less than that of teenagers or adults.
To bring the reverberation down to the desired level, Autex Composition® was installed on the walls of the classroom to provide overall sound absorption which doubles as a functional display area. For targeted low frequency absorption, 25mm Quietspace® Panel was used on the back wall opposite where the teacher stands. This allowed low frequency reverberation to be absorbed before bouncing back in towards the teaching space.