Characterization of school furniture in a basic education school

The workplace should be designed to provide adequate physical conditions so that it develops without extra penalization for the worker. Productivity is determine by the quality of the workplace, taking into account early fatigue, musculoskeletal pain and consequent absenteeism. The same can be said for students whose place of work is the classroom. The finding of imbalance of furniture measures in relation to the anthropometric measures of the students, as well as their dimensioning, has been a reason for attention by some researchers. The objective of this work was to characterize school furniture available in a basic education Portuguese public school. Furthermore, it was also intended to verify the compliance of the recommendations on the dimensions of school furniture in the European Standard (EN 1729-1: 2015) as well if the Portuguese government carried out, through the Ministry of Education, the transposition of the Standard taking into account the adjustments resulting from the anthropometric characteristics of the Portuguese population. This study included measuring the height of the table top and of the table structure from 330 tables. Additionally the height, width and depth of 638 chairs were measured. Mismatches were found between the recommendation of EN 1729 and the existing reality. It was verified, in the requirements imposed by the Portuguese government, the inexistence of two intermediate heights for the seat of the chairs as well as for the tables.For the accomplishment of this work, it was fundamental the collaboration of the school's management, both in the availability of data about the students as well as in the permission to remain in school and logistical support, provided by the operational assistants, for the collection of measures of furniture.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT –Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013