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Targeting school hygiene
Jim Melvin, British Cleaning Council (BCC) Director for Government Lobbying, asks: can targeted hygiene help keep children and teachers in the classroom?
Every winter, schools across the UK experience the same challenge: seasonal illnesses spread rapidly through classrooms, increasing pupil and staff absence and disrupting learning.
According to Department for Education figures, approximately 42.2m pupil days
were lost due to illness during the 2024/25 academic year. While some level of illness is inevitable, growing attention is being given to whether smarter hygiene practices could help reduce the impact.
This autumn, the BCC, working with sector partners including SC Johnson Professional, plans to launch a pilot programme involving a small number of primary schools and academy trusts. It will explore whether a targeted hygiene approach can help reduce illness-related absence and improve resilience during the winter months.
Unlike traditional approaches which focus on increasing cleaning activity throughout an entire building, targeted hygiene concentrates effort where and when infection transmission is most likely to occur, focusing resources on the highest-risk moments and locations.
In practice, this means reinforcing hand hygiene at key times, such as when pupils and staff arrive at school, before eating and after using the toilet. It also involves prioritising frequently touched surfaces, including desks, door handles, taps, shared equipment and other high-contact areas that can contribute to the spread of infection.
For cleaning and hygiene professionals, this is a familiar concept. Effective hygiene is not necessarily about cleaning more frequently: it is about identifying risk and applying resources where they can achieve the greatest impact.
The pilot has been designed to fit within existing school operations and avoid creating additional burdens for staff. Participating schools will not be required to undertake medical testing, monitor individual pupils or change attendance policies. Instead, the programme will use attendance and absence data schools already collect.
Schools taking part will receive support to implement a structured but flexible package tailored to their own environment. This will include hygiene mapping to identify key risk points, targeted cleaning protocols, support for hand hygiene infrastructure and simple behavioural
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prompts designed to encourage positive hygiene habits among pupils and staff.
Importantly, the initiative is intended as a learning exercise rather than a performance assessment. Findings will not be used for inspection purposes or school-level judgements. The aim is to assess whether targeted hygiene can be implemented consistently across different educational settings and whether it demonstrates measurable operational benefits. We will also seek to start changing the cultural view of cleaning and hygiene held by both staff and pupils as they will also be actively involved.
The approach is supported by organisations including the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene and the Royal Society for Public Health, and aligns with World Health Organization guidance on risk-based infection prevention.
I have also had a number of communications with Dan Jarvis, who up until recently was the Security Minister, before being promoted to Defence Secretary. Dan had both specifically asked to be personally kept up to speed and also promised to get the Department for Education involved. The project also reflects the principles outlined in the BCC’s Strategic Framework for Achieving Cleanliness and Hygiene in Public Environments.
For the cleaning and hygiene sector, the pilot represents an opportunity to further demonstrate its role in supporting public health, safety, wellbeing and community resilience. If targeted hygiene can help reduce even a small proportion of illness-related absence, the benefits could extend far beyond the classroom.
The BCC is currently seeking expressions of interest from primary schools and academy trusts potentially interested in participating. Schools and trusts wishing to learn more about the pilot or discuss potential involvement should contact BCC Company Secretary Simon Hollingbery at
compsec@britishcleaningcouncil.org.
www.britishcleaningcouncil.org x.com/TomoCleaning
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