School hygiene rules: a school administrator’s guide
Hygiene has always been important in schools, but the recent events unfolding in society have elevated that importance to all new levels.
As a school business manager, leader or administrator, it’s your job to promote the highest standards of cleanliness and encourage others to do the same.
In this piece, we’ll lay out the most important school hygiene rules and suggest some ways you can encourage pupils to follow them. Included in that is your own hygiene rules poster, which you can download by scrolling down the page.
The importance of reducing the spread of germs in schools
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, an organisation based in the US, have compiled some useful statistics on the value of handwashing.
- Handwashing can reduce the risk of respiratory infections by 16%.
- The use of an alcohol gel hand sanitizer in the classroom provided an overall reduction in absenteeism due to infection by 19.8% among 16 elementary schools and 6,000 students.
- Handwashing education in the community reduces respiratory illnesses, like colds, in the general population by 16-21%.
The statistics only relate to handwashing, but the impact of a seemingly simple habit can provide a big improvement.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, our awareness of germ control has been heightened. Not only will good practices ensure less absenteeism in schools, but it could also help to keep everyone safe and healthy inside of school and out.
Hygiene habits to promote to pupils in school
Before you start promoting those good habits, get to grips with exactly what those principles are.
- Washing hands
As we pointed out with the statistics above, regular hand washing is likely the single most effect way to prevent the spread of infections. Encouraging thorough hand washing can be done in a number of ways, and should be done at numerous times during the day.
- Catch and kill sneezes
Ask children to cover their mouths and noses when they sneeze or cough. Respiratory diseases like COVID-19 are often spread through the air. If you catch it in a tissue, you can kill the germs eliminate any chance of spread.
If you don’t have one to hand, then encourage pupils to catch it in their upper arm instead.
- Throw away old tissues
Once a tissue has been used, it should be thrown away immediately. Not on the floor for someone else to pick up and potential catch the germs! Make sure pupils have access to a waste bin wherever they are in school.
- Don’t share food and drink
In the short-term at least, it’s best that pupils don’t go around sharing their lunches or other food and drink. These human connection points are the way that germs are spread. In the long-term this might be an unrealistic target, but good hand washing habits can severally reduce the risks or transmission here.
- Try and keep your distance
Again, this is more of a short-term measure, but maintaining social distancing is an important step to reduce the spread of nasty germs. In this area, schools are often tasked with unreasonable expectations, but it’s still worth encouraging best practice and being an example for your pupils to follow.
- If you feel unwell, tell someone straight away
If a pupil or member of staff feels unwell, their own health, and that of the rest of the school, could be at risk. Let everyone know that if they feel any new cold-like symptoms, they should let their teacher know and appropriate action should be taken.
How to engage pupils in good hygiene habits
1. Make the habits visible
The heightened awareness of hygiene issues in schools offers hope that many of the new habits we’ve adopted will remain in the long-term. As a school, you can keep offering gentle reminders to pupils of what they need to do to keep themselves and everyone else safe.
Getting the message out can be as easy as hanging a few posters around the school. To help you, we’ve designed two hygiene posters that you can download for free using the links below.
Download our Stay Safe and Healthy in School posters:
2. Buy an abundance of hand sanitiser
Availability is key to promoting the idea of good hand hygiene among children. If they don’t have access to hand sanitiser or hand soaps in their classrooms, canteens and toilets, it’s unlikely they’ll go out of their way to seek it out.
3. Build time into the day for good hygiene practice
If possible, consider building dedicated hand washing time into the schedule, or attempt to make it part of the daily routine. Before lunch for example, can teachers take the last few minutes to hand out some sanitiser to get those hands cleaned before handling food?
It doesn’t have to be a long-term solution. The aim should be that eventually pupils will be doing this sort of thing as a matter of habit rather than being prompted to do so.
4. Get a stringent cleaning process in place
Getting the pupils on board with proper hygiene habits is one challenge you have to overcome. Another one is ensuring your school is cleaned thoroughly and that every member of staff is chipping in where they can.
This is another project all on its own. Head to our guide to cleaning in schools for more on scheduling cleaning in your school – including a downloadable checklist.
