The Effects of Noise on Children at School: A Review

This paper reviews research on issues relating to the effects of noise on children at school. Areas covered include factors affecting speech intelligibility in the classroom; the effects of environmental and classroom noise on children's academic performance; children's annoyance due to noise; and surveys of classroom noise levels. Consistencies and discrepancies between the results of various studies are highlighted. The paper concludes by outlining some current acoustic standards for classrooms.