Primary-school STEM clubs in Queensland acted as citizen scientists to find the hottest spots on their school grounds, and a toolkit built with school staff helps schools prepare for and reduce heat risk.
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Citizen Science for Cooler Schools
General Information
ISIG
A Queensland pilot in which primary-school STEM clubs worked with university researchers to find and reduce heat hotspots on their school grounds. Known as Citizen Science for Cooler Schools (CS²), it was led by Griffith University and ran for 12 months at two state primary schools, a metropolitan one in the Gold Coast area and a regional one in the Scenic Rim, both in South East Queensland. Students used a thermal imaging camera, a wet bulb globe temperature probe and small temperature and humidity loggers to measure heat, followed five hotspots per school, and developed their own cooling projects, which they presented at a state science showcase in 2023. With school staff, the researchers also co-designed a five-step Heat Risk Reduction Toolkit. The pilot was funded by the Queensland Government.
Queensland already has hot, humid summers, and the state-averaged maximum temperature in summer 2023–24 was 1.18°C above the 1961–1990 average, the highest since 2019–20. Heatwaves are expected to become more frequent, longer and more intense. Children are particularly susceptible to heat stress because they are very active, and the school day exposes them to heat at play, at lunch, in sport and when arriving and leaving.
Queensland state schools stay open during heatwaves unless the principal or regional director decides to close for an emergency, and staff manage heat risk with a range of strategies. The case notes that no school-specific heat guidelines are publicly available, and that research on heat in schools has focused on classroom comfort and on sport, with little on exposure in playgrounds, eating areas and entry and exit points. Studies of school heat have also tended to be purely scientific, with little user involvement, and costly in equipment. Queensland has air-conditioned many classrooms in recent years, but parts of school campuses with little shade, and halls that are hard to cool, remain a concern.
The project was designed to fit the state’s Continuity, Disaster and Emergency Management Policy, mainly its prevention and preparedness elements, and to build on state climate adaptation and cooler-schools initiatives. Two public primary schools were chosen for their location, heat-stress potential and socio-economic status: a large school in the greater Gold Coast area (649 students, prep to Grade 6) and a small school in the Scenic Rim region near Beaudesert (118 students).
Hazard Type
Geographical Scope - Nuts
Population Size
Population Density
Needs Addressed
Heat on school grounds is a health and safety risk that schools have few tools to assess. Four linked problems stand out:
- No site-level assessment. Heat risk is rarely measured at school level, and the published paper for this case found no publicly available guidance specific to an individual school or site.
- Heat outside the classroom is neglected. Research and policy deal mostly with air-conditioned teaching rooms and with sport, not with play, lunch breaks and entry and exit points.
- Limited involvement and high cost of past studies. Earlier school heat studies were purely scientific and relied on sophisticated equipment, with little role for students or staff.
- Practical constraints on schools. Staff have little time, curriculum requirements are fixed, and infrastructure such as shade is costly and paid for mainly by the school.
The target group is primary-school students (prep to Grade 6), who are described as particularly susceptible to heat stress. Teachers and other school staff are also exposed but are not a listed group. The paper (see url) lists students or staff with disability, and culturally and linguistically diverse school populations, as groups for future testing of the toolkit.
Queensland state schools come under the Department of Education, whose policy is that schools stay open in hot weather and that staff manage the risk. In this case, Griffith University led the pilot with funding from the Queensland Government. An advisory group with members from the state’s environment and science, education, health and fire and emergency agencies, and from the Environmental Education Centre Network, guided the research. School principals and administrative staff were involved, and teachers ran the STEM clubs.
Heat is covered in Queensland education policy and schools manage it through a range of strategies, such as modifying activities, but the paper says the extent to which extreme heat is part of emergency management in schools is under-explored, and no school-specific guidance is publicly available. The project produced a heat preparedness checklist and an extreme heat event checklist, which had been tested only in the two pilot schools. No public information on drills or heat-specific plans in the pilot schools was found in the sources reviewed.
Many Queensland state-school classrooms are air-conditioned and can serve as cool refuges, but the paper notes that parts of school campuses, such as sports and assembly halls and areas without shade, are hard to cool or ventilate. Shade structures, gardens and hydration stations were suggested but not built by the project, and a teacher said there was no budget for shade.
The toolkit does not depend on infrastructure: its mapping and checklists work with handheld instruments and administrative measures.
To involve students and school staff in finding and measuring heat risk, and to make sure the toolkit and mitigation ideas suited how schools actually work, within time, curriculum and budget limits.
The pilot began with school selection and the setting up of an advisory group, and included interviews with teachers and administrators at the start, during the work and at the end. Students worked on the question “how can we make the school more heat resilient?” in STEM clubs, walked around the grounds to note places that felt warm or hot, then measured them with handheld instruments. Staff tested a draft of the toolkit and their feedback shaped the final version. Researchers discussed the findings and future directions with the advisory group at the end.
Students, with teachers and researchers, chose the five hotspots per school to monitor and set their own criteria for judging project ideas using a decision matrix. Each group then picked its own project. Staff feedback led to a toolkit that is concise, easy to use and designed to sit outside the curriculum, with tasks that student leaders can carry out. Decisions on school policy, infrastructure and funding stayed with school administrations and the Department, and the project did not implement building or infrastructure changes.
The inquiry unit taught students to use scientific instruments and to read and record data, and linked to Geography, Science and Mathematics in the Australian Curriculum. Teachers said students were keenly engaged, and some equipment was donated to the schools to keep using in STEM activities.
Vulnerable Groups
Governance
Emergency Preparedness
Infrastructure Readiness
Engagement Level
Empowerment Level
Implementation
Citizen science is usually done with adults or high-school students, and this pilot used it with primary-age children. It looks at heat across the whole school ground, not only classrooms and sport. The project combines hotspot mapping by students with a toolkit for staff, and the toolkit is meant to fit into the audit and review cycles that schools already use. It has five parts: an instruction page; a heat risk analysis and mapping process; a heat preparedness checklist; an extreme heat event checklist; and a spreadsheet of medium and long-term mitigation options. Seven student projects were developed, and most focused on cooling the human body (such as a cool hat, cool shoes and a personal cooling unit) and not on changing hotspots.
English
Griffith University (Cities Research Institute, Brisbane), which led the pilot, working with the two partner schools and an advisory group of Queensland Government agencies. The pilot was funded by the Queensland Government.
The research team brought expertise in environmental health, urban planning, education, thermal physiology, architectural science and environmental science, and the advisory group included emergency management and health practitioners. The paper does not describe the team’s earlier disaster-management or school-based work, and this was a first pilot, so the concluded experience reflects research expertise in heat and health more than operational DRM experience.
Griffith University researchers; the two pilot schools, including principals, administrative staff, STEM teachers and students; an advisory group with members from Queensland Government environment and science, education, health and fire and emergency agencies and the Environmental Education Centre Network; the Queensland Government as funder; and parents and carers, who were reached indirectly through the students.
- Select schools and set up the project advisory group. Identify existing heat policy and practice, and interview teachers and administrators.
- Run an inquiry unit in the STEM club. Students identify hotspots on the school ground, measure them with handheld instruments, and researchers install logging sensors at the selected locations.
- Bring students, teachers and researchers together to design and carry out student heat-reduction projects, and to refine a draft toolkit with staff feedback.
- Hold final staff interviews, document the researchers’ reflections, gather advisory group feedback, and produce the project report, the toolkit and the other outputs.
- Human: a research team, teachers to run a STEM club, support from the principal and administration, and an advisory group.
- Technical: a thermal imaging camera, a wet bulb globe temperature probe, and five humidity and temperature loggers with a gateway for uploading data.
- Other: ethics approval and working-with-children clearance for researchers.
- Financial: Queensland Government funding for the pilot; the amount is not stated in the sources reviewed.
The project had four phases over 12 months: school selection and engagement; student inquiry and fieldwork; co-design and application of student projects and the toolkit; and final interviews, reflection and reporting. Ethics approval was granted in September 2022, the Griffith project summary states that heat monitoring ran in Term 4 of 2022 and Term 1 of 2023, and student projects were presented at a state showcase in 2023. Teacher interviews quoted in the paper are dated up to February 2024.
Experience of the Implementing Organisation in DRM
Target Audience
Resources Required
Timeframe & Phases
Participation Results
Primary-school students can take part in heat measurement and mitigation planning when the equipment is simple. The teachers reported high engagement, with students arriving early to work on their projects, and interest spreading to other students and to parents. Handheld instruments, especially the thermal imaging camera, were well used, while the real-time sensor data were used very little. Most student groups chose to focus on cooling the body and not on changing the environment. School staff said toolkits need to be easy to use or they stay on the shelf.
- Staff time and the school curriculum were the main constraints. Teachers said the work had to sit outside the curriculum because of assessment requirements, available time and resources, so it was run through STEM clubs and the toolkit was kept short and designed so that student leaders could carry out some tasks.
- Technology was a second problem. At the non-metropolitan school, weak mobile data coverage meant the gateway could not connect to the network, and the gateway and sensors were abandoned for sensors that are downloaded by hand. At the other school one monitored location had a missing sensor after installation. Teachers also reported that students did not regularly use the logger data, and the paper recommends simple handheld instruments for schools.
- Cost was a third challenge: shade sails, gardens and hydration stations are expensive, there was no budget for shade, and schools usually raise money themselves. The project therefore concentrated on student-led projects and gave only general infrastructure suggestions, in the toolkit’s final sheet.
The main implementation risks are low uptake, staff overload, unreliable technology, cost and safety. The pilot managed staff overload with a short, easy toolkit, extra-curricular clubs and student leaders. Unreliable technology was managed with handheld instruments and manual loggers. On cost, the checklists include low-cost administrative controls (such as moving activities to cooler times) alongside high-cost options. The paper warns that a shade sail could itself become an injury risk if damaged in a storm and would add maintenance costs. Safeguarding was addressed through ethics approval and the researchers’ working-with-children checks.
Risk & Mitigation Plan
Scalability and Sustainability
No public information on the sustainability model of the pilot was found in the sources reviewed. Based on the available information, it can be inferred that the work continues only if the schools keep the STEM clubs and donated equipment going and if the Department of Education or another body adopts the toolkit. The authors propose embedding heat risk mapping and the checklists in school auditing cycles and in the Department’s disaster and risk guidance, but this was not done within the pilot.
The toolkit is designed for schools to use at any time of year, and it uses minimal equipment, so it could be used in other schools in Queensland and in places with similar heat problems. What scales is the combination of student hotspot mapping, a short toolkit and a link to the school’s existing safety review. What must be adapted is the climate and local heat thresholds, the school type and size, the policy context, the relationship with the education authority and the funding for infrastructure. The authors say it has been tested in only two schools, so it needs testing in larger and vertical schools, in different climate zones and with culturally diverse and special-needs populations. The pilot did not test whether mitigation measures lower heat exposure.
The project used a handheld thermal imaging camera, a wet bulb globe temperature probe, and five sensors that log temperature and relative humidity, linked to a gateway that uploads readings to an online portal. Technology supports the education and mapping work and is not a core element. The paper recommends simple handheld equipment for schools, and it suggests an online dashboard as a later development.
The pilot was funded by the Queensland Government, and the funding amount is not stated. Equipment included a thermal imaging camera, a wet bulb globe temperature probe and five loggers with a gateway, and some equipment was donated to the schools at the end. For schools adopting the toolkit, the paper says the cost of checklist actions varies from low (rescheduling activities) to high (hydration stations, changes to uniforms, shade structures).
No public information on ongoing costs was found. They may include teacher time for the STEM club and for the audits, replacement of sensors and equipment, and the cost of any infrastructure that a school chooses to build.
The authors conclude that the toolkit needs more testing across climate zones, school types and populations before wider use, and that it should be linked to the Department of Education’s disaster and risk guidance and to school audit cycles so it does not depend on individual enthusiasts. One of the two schools had no STEM club at the start, and a teacher volunteered to begin one, which shows how much depends on a willing teacher. The authors suggest an online dashboard version, and equipment sharing through the Environmental Education Centre Network. Teachers saw school fundraising as a possible route to pay for infrastructure.