CHENNAI: Dingy classrooms, ill-kept blackboards and illegible handwriting by teachers in city schools are making reading uncomfortable for students, finds a study by Sankara Nethralaya along with Elite School of Optometry.Carried out in 29 classrooms across eight schools, it finds many rooms don’t have proper illumination as prescribed by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). Published in the open source science journal, Plosone, the study measured illumination levels in the classrooms and combined the analysis with a students’ survey. The researchers concluded that there is a need for periodic audits of classroom environment along with eye screening at schools to bring down visual stress.In most classrooms, the study finds, children with visual difficulties are seated at the front. The recommend distance from the front desk to the board is between 2.3m and 3m but in many classrooms it was greater. Besides, letters written on the board were as small as 1cm. “The size of writing on the board should be at least 3cm to 4 cm. This is approximately the size of four fingers of hand kept horizontally,” said Sankara Nethralaya’s research optometrist and lead author of the study Dr Kalpa Negiloni.While seven of 10 backbenchers have high visual stress, the frontbenchers aren’t comfortable either, the study says. Nearly 62% of the students on the frontbench don’t get adequate lighting. The average lighting prescribed by the BIS is between 150-300 lux at any point in a classroom. But, the lighting in some classrooms was as poor as 20 lux. “It could be challenging even for students with normal vision,” she said. But a light or window in the middle of the room and near the last bench made a huge difference. The mean luminescence level for students sitting near the window or below a light was at least twice better compared to students in other positions,” she said.On an average, most classrooms studied had two fluorescent lamps, two windows and one door. Five classrooms had no sources of artificial light and were dependent on three or four windows and a door. Seven classrooms had up to four tube lights each, but at least one wasn’t working and in some cases, too much illumination – beyond 300 lux – caused glare.Besides improper illumination, an ill-maintained board makes black and white contrast poor, making reading difficult, said co-author of the study and head of preventive ophthalmology department, Sankara Nethralaya, Dr RR Sudhir.“Civil engineers and eye care professionals together can ensure there is uniform lighting across the classroom,” he said.

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