To students, an excellent curriculum and inspired teachers aren’t the only keys to success. Among that list, believe it or not, is cleanliness. The sanitation and tidiness of a school has been shown to have a direct correlation with students’ grades and success.
In a study of 1,481 students, 88 percent reported they become distracted in environments that show a “casual inattention” to cleanliness. In the same study, 84 percent of students said they preferred at least “ordinary tidiness” or “orderly spotlessness” for a positive learning environment.
Health
When your school is cleaned properly and is clutter-free, germs and bacteria are much less likely to infect staff or students. With so many people in one building, commonly touched surfaces like desks and doorknobs become saturated with microbes, and disease spreads much faster and more easily.
On average, elementary school students contract eight to 10 cases of the flu or common cold a year, which can add up to a lot of absences. When students are sick and have to stay home, they miss out on valuable knowledge in class and can struggle to catch up.
Absences
Chronic absences are one of the biggest predictors of future school dropouts. Keeping a general level of cleanliness and tidiness helps lower the number of days missed a year, which helps keep your students in their classrooms where they are less likely to fall behind.
As important as it is for students to stay healthy so they can attend class, it’s equally important that your educators are healthy and able to teach. The average teacher misses 5.3 days of school a year. Teachers that are absent 10 or more days a year are considered to be teaching at the same level as a novice teacher, even if they’ve been teaching for years.
Costs
When teachers have to miss a day of school it costs the school money. The 5.3 days teachers miss collectively costs schools nationwide $25 billion, with an additional $4 billion to hire substitute teachers. When schools are cleaned correctly, teachers miss fewer days and your school can use some of that $29 billion for educational purposes.
With the extra money saved from fewer teacher absences, you school has a lot of potential to beef up your academic programs and get new, state-of-the-art equipment to give your students an even better learning experience and a brighter future.
Invest in Education
With extra time spent cleaning and sanitizing your school, you are not only providing a safer environment for your students, but you are investing in their well-being and their future. Re-configuring your custodial staff or adopting a new cleaning regimen is a small action that will have a positive ripple wave over your entire school and faculty.
Call us today at 402.331.3243 for a FREE, no-obligation analysis with one of our custodial specialists to see how much you could save!