The number of air purifiers in Victorian schools is set to more than double as winter approaches and schools begin to close doors and windows.
Announced by Minister for Education, James Merlino, the rollout of an additional 60,000 air purifiers began this week, adding to the 51,000 already delivered to schools.
Mr Merlino said the rollout would see an air purifier in every classroom, instead of just high-risk areas of schools.
“This winter allocation will provide enough purifiers to cover all classrooms and other high-risk spaces in all Government and low-fee non-Government schools by the beginning of winter – including general purpose classrooms and other specialist classrooms such as art and science rooms,” he said.
“Of the 111,000 air purifiers, a few thousand purifiers will be kept in storage after winter begins to be distributed to schools whose enrolments increase or who commission extra classrooms throughout the second half of the year.”
The Minister said eligible kindergarten services were sharing in $3.8 million in grants to support ventilation improvements and keep children and staff safer at kinder, to give families confidence that early learning was safe.
“This is the largest investment in school ventilation in the nation – no other State is taking such strong steps to protect students, staff and school communities,” Mr Merlino said.
