Before the school day even begins, learning is already underway. It starts on the journey a child takes to school and in the air they breathe when they arrive, in the noise or calm that surrounds the entrance, and in the shade they find, or do not find, in the playground. It continues in the natural light entering the classroom and in the opportunity to move, observe and explore in an environment that is both calm and stimulating, without demanding extra effort simply to concentrate.
That is why, when a recent monitoring study in València and its metropolitan area found that six out of ten school environments analysed exceeded the reference level for nitrogen dioxide for 24-hour exposure on a daily basis, and that all of them were above the annual threshold recommended by the World Health Organization, the finding should not be used to single out any particular school. It should open up a broader conversation, because the school environment is simultaneously an educational, urban and health issue.
A school environment is not confined to the classroom. It is shaped by the interaction of many different factors: air quality, the intensity of traffic nearby, the presence or absence of green spaces, ventilation, noise levels, the materials used, and the way the space welcomes and supports the child. And there is something else that is harder to measure, yet easy to recognise when it is present: calm.
The kind of calm that allows a child to concentrate, find their bearings, explore safely and learn from a settled state of mind.
The World Health Organization states this very clearly in its reports: clean air is fundamental to health, and today there is far more evidence than there was a few years ago about how pollution affects wellbeing, even at lower concentrations than previously understood. In its 2021 Global Air Quality Guidelines, the WHO recommends an annual average of 10 μg/m³ for NO₂ and a daily average (24 hours) of 25 μg/m³. These figures represent a significant reduction from the 2005 guidelines, in which the annual reference value for NO₂ stood at 40 μg/m³.
During childhood, all of this matters even more. Children breathe in more air relative to their body weight, their bodies and systems are still developing, and they spend many hours at school. That is why the question cannot simply be what they learn. It must also include the conditions in which they learn.
Air, attention and cognitive development
The link between pollution and learning is supported by scientific evidence. It is a well-established area of research and one that is particularly relevant when we talk about children.
The BREATHE project, carried out in Barcelona with primary school pupils, studied children from 39 schools and found that those attending schools with greater exposure to traffic-related pollution showed less improvement in cognitive functions that are essential for learning. The differences were particularly noticeable in working memory and attention — two abilities that children constantly rely on to listen to an explanation, solve a task, follow a sequence, wait their turn or return to an activity after an interruption.
The figures help put the impact into perspective: children in schools with higher levels of pollution showed an annual increase in cognitive development of 7%, compared with 11% among children in less polluted schools. The research measured traffic-related pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide, both in playgrounds and classrooms, and assessed cognitive development using computerised tests.
This relationship does not begin when children start school. An ISGlobal study associated exposure to nitrogen dioxide during the first two years of life with reduced attention capacity later on, between the ages of four and eight. As NO₂ comes primarily from traffic, a school’s location forms part of the real conditions in which a child grows up.
Indoor air matters too. In a closed classroom full of children, carbon dioxide builds up quickly, and when there is insufficient air renewal, attention, alertness and memory can suffer. Measuring CO₂ is the most direct way of knowing whether a classroom is breathing properly. Air quality inside a school depends not simply on opening windows, but also on the design of the building, its ventilation systems, the materials chosen and the relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces.
At Imagine, this is not left to chance. Every Early Years and Primary classroom has sensors that continuously monitor CO₂ levels. When these reach 600 ppm — the point from which levels are considered harmful to concentration — the system automatically activates air renewal without causing the classroom to lose temperature.
Talking about children’s health, therefore, does not take us away from pedagogy. It takes us to its very foundations. To concentrate, a child needs to feel safe, breathe well, be able to move and inhabit a space that does not force them to spend energy protecting themselves from noise, sensory overload or excessive stimulation.
Green spaces: nature that teaches too
Research does more than warn us about risks. It also points towards possible solutions, including those described below.
Green spaces around schools can contribute to cognitive development. A study published in PNAS, led by researchers associated with ISGlobal, followed almost 2,600 schoolchildren in Barcelona aged between seven and ten for more than a year. It found that greater exposure to green spaces around schools was associated with better working memory and lower levels of inattentiveness, regardless of variables such as ethnicity, maternal education or parental employment.
The authors also suggested that part of this effect could be explained by the fact that areas with more vegetation tend to have lower levels of air pollution. Specifically, the study estimated that traffic-related pollution could explain between 20% and 65% of the observed relationship between green spaces around schools and cognitive development.
This does not make nature a magic solution. It makes it something perhaps even more important: an everyday ally. Contact with trees, soil, shade, light and biodiversity supports a child’s physical, emotional and cognitive development. Not as a decorative addition or simply as an attractive backdrop for break time, but as part of the conditions that enable them to grow.
This perspective also connects with Attention Restoration Theory, developed by Stephen Kaplan, which suggests that natural environments can help restore attention by offering a gentler and less demanding form of stimulation than many urban spaces. A systematic review published in Educational Psychology Review explores this body of research and notes that contact with nature can ease cognitive overload, reduce stress and support wellbeing, all factors that create better conditions for learning.
Within a Montessori philosophy, this idea has particular resonance because the environment has never been neutral. We speak of the prepared environment as a space designed to encourage autonomy, concentration, movement, order and freedom within limits. A space that does not constantly direct the child, but instead provides the conditions for them to act with purpose.
Seen from a broader perspective, the environment functions as a third pedagogy. It educates through what it enables. Through what it cares for. Through what it awakens.
What determines the quality of a school environment?
The quality of a school environment does not depend on a single factor. It is built in layers.
There is an urban layer: proximity to heavily trafficked roads, building density, narrow streets where air disperses less effectively, noise and the lack of green spaces.
There is an architectural layer: the building’s orientation, ventilation, natural light, the materials selected, solar protection and the connection between indoor and outdoor spaces.
And there is an everyday layer, perhaps the one most visible to families: how children travel to school, whether there are safe routes for walking or cycling, whether drop-off and pick-up times turn into traffic jams, whether playgrounds provide shade, vegetation and varied spaces for play, or whether they are reduced to a concrete court.
The local study carried out in València points precisely to this pattern: the highest pollution levels are associated with proximity to major traffic routes and dense urban environments, while the lowest readings are found in areas with lower urban density, greater distance from main roads and more green spaces that help pollutants disperse.
Designing a school, then, is not simply a matter of allocating square metres. It means deciding what experiences will be available to a child each day: what they will breathe, what they will hear, what they will see through the window, how they will move, where they will find shade and what kind of relationship they will build with the place they inhabit.
The Imagine Montessori School campus: when space becomes part of the educational project
At Imagine Montessori School, the La Pinada campus was designed around the conviction that space educates.
The school is located in a natural setting in Paterna, next to a pine forest and a natural park, and its architecture seeks to bring together indoor and outdoor spaces, sustainability, wellbeing and Montessori pedagogy. The school itself describes the building as “the first learning material”, an idea deeply connected with the Montessori understanding of the environment.
This approach has gained recognition beyond the school itself. Imagine Montessori School is included in the archive of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture / Mies van der Rohe Awards, whose project profile highlights how the design uses the ravine and pine forest as educational and landscape opportunities, with the building acting as a transition between the city and nature and architecture understood as a learning experience.
The campus architecture supports this idea through every decision: classrooms facing the pine forest, wooden walkways, outdoor terraces, natural light, ventilation, honest materials and transitional spaces that allow children to move around the school independently. Architecture Today describes it as a nature-centred Montessori school, where architecture and landscape create an immersive, tactile environment for learning.
It is not about having “more greenery”. It is about making the natural environment part of everyday school life: allowing children to observe the changing seasons, care for their surroundings, go outside, pause, listen and develop a sense of ownership and belonging. Because at Imagine, contact with nature is learning — not a break from learning.
Designing schools means designing childhood
The conversation about pollution, air quality and school environments requires us to look at the bigger picture. A child’s health does not depend solely on individual habits. It is also shaped by collective decisions involving urban planning, mobility, architecture, sustainability and educational culture.
A school can protect a child or overload them. It can isolate them from their surroundings or teach them how to relate to them. It can treat space as a simple container or recognise it as an active part of the learning process.
And this is where the responsibility of those who design education lies. Every tree, every window, every pathway, every shaded area and every metre of distance from traffic teaches something before the lesson has even begun.
The La Pinada campus was born from this way of understanding school, and its approach has gained recognition beyond the education sector. RTVE’s Escala Humana programme dedicated an episode, “Escuelas sostenibles” (“Sustainable Schools”), to the campus, exploring some of the decisions discussed here: protecting air quality and natural light inside classrooms, and choosing materials that reduce the building’s carbon footprint, avoiding concrete and steel in favour of timber and fired clay.
A school becoming a reference point only has value if that experience is shared, enabling other schools to rethink their own spaces too.
Because preparing the environment is, in itself, a pedagogical decision.