In this guide: Three jobs · The room · Speech first · Wireless · Headset mics · Monitoring · Projection · Lighting · Sports day · Procurement · Records · Phasing · Mistakes · Picks · FAQ

Three jobs, one room, and why they fight each other

A school hall is the hardest working room in the building, and the least well served by one specification, because it does three jobs that pull against each other.

• Daily assemblies. Speech, run by whoever is on duty. There is no operator: someone walks in, presses one thing and talks. Anything needing setup is abandoned within a term.
• The school production. Twice a year the room is a theatre: wireless channels on children who cannot project over a band, foldback, a lighting rig, somebody mixing live.
• Sports day. The kit leaves the building: portable, battery powered, audible across a field with nothing to reflect off.

Job one wants everything locked down, job two adjustable, job three mobile. So build three layers on one budget: a preset speech system for daily use, a portable production kit that plugs into it, and a battery rig for outdoors.

The room is the problem, not the equipment

Hard floors that get mopped, painted blockwork that gets scuffed, glazing for daylight, a high ceiling, no soft furnishing. Every one of those choices is right for a school and wrong for speech. The result is a long reverberation time, and late reflections smear consonants, which is where the meaning lives in English. So a hall can be loud and still unintelligible.

The design goal is therefore speech intelligibility, not loudness: maximum direct sound at each listener, minimum reflected sound. That means loudspeakers with tight vertical control, and it means a feedback trap, so read how to stop feedback first.

The speech-first system

Build this first; it runs 190 days a year. Two large speakers on stands at the front is close to the worst option in a reverberant hall: too loud at the front, straining at the back. Better options, with sizing in our small venue PA guide:

• Column loudspeakers. A tall narrow array has tight vertical and wide horizontal coverage: it throws down the room while spilling little at ceiling and floor. Most column PA systems are portable, so one pair serves hall and field.
• Distributed install speakers. Several smaller install loudspeakers along the walls, each covering a zone at modest level. More cabling, but everyone sits close to a speaker, so you need less level and less reverberant energy.
• Point-source two-way cabinets as the show system.

A wall plate for staff, the mixer locked away

Specify the staff interface before the mixer: a wall plate with an on switch, a microphone input, a laptop input and a volume control with a sensible maximum. No EQ, no routing, no screen. Behind it, a compact digital mixer stores scenes, so one assembly scene holds the gains, EQ, filters and levels and recalls on power-up. A mixer on an open table gets reconfigured within a week, so rack it in a lockable cupboard, use the panel lock most digital mixers provide, and mix from a tablet.

Wireless for productions: how many channels a musical really needs

Count principals, not cast. Eight named speaking or singing roles wants eight channels, and double-casting needs a pack-swap plan rather than a ninth. Add one or two spares, because a pack will fail and a capsule will get sat on. A mid-sized musical needs six to twelve channels.

Then the constraint nobody mentions. Licence-exempt Channel 70 (863 to 865 MHz) is only 2 MHz wide and supports about four systems at once. Channel 38 (606.5 to 613.5 MHz) needs Ofcom’s UK Shared wireless microphone licence, which covers the organisation UK-wide however many Ch38 systems you own, and Ofcom publishes a ten-channel plan for the band. Ten is the practical ceiling; beyond it you need coordinated frequencies in interleaved TV spectrum. Our Ch38 guide has the detail.

Digital fits more channels into the same spectrum and is easier to coordinate; entry-level analogue is cheaper and fine at four. See our wireless buying guide and the BLX against SLX-D comparison: the step up buys rechargeable packs with a runtime readout and multi-channel receivers in one rack space.

Headset mics on children: the honest version

A headworn microphone sits a fixed short distance from the mouth, giving far more gain before feedback than a lapel mic on a costume. In a reverberant hall with a band, that difference is the show. But they have their own realities.

• Durability is the specification. Reinforced cables, replaceable booms and a re-bendable frame matter more than frequency response.
• Hygiene and spares. Wipe down frame and boom between wearers, fresh windshields per cast, per the manufacturer’s instructions. Treat headsets as consumables: spare mics as well as spare packs, same model throughout.
• Placement and taping. Boom along the cheek towards the corner of the mouth, off the skin and slightly to the side, which controls breath noise. Cable behind the ear and down the back, taped under costume. Document it, and have the same adult fit every mic.

Headworn and lapel mics live in our body-worn microphones range. Bodypack connectors are brand-specific, so a mic for one will not fit another.

Bodypacks and batteries for a week of shows

Ten packs on ten children in a classroom dressing room is what most often derails a school show. Number everything to match the desk, use numbered hooks so a pack is on a hook or on a performer, and put one adult in charge of fitting and collecting. Mute at the desk, not at the pack.

A production week is a tech, a dress and three or four performances. Rechargeable packs with docking chargers show runtime on the receiver, which prevents mid-show failures, and charge as the curtain drops. On alkaline cells, fit fresh batteries every performance. Keep two spare packs powered up and on frequency at the desk.

Monitoring for the band, comms for the crew

A cast that cannot hear the band cannot sing in time, and upstage of a side-stage band they cannot. One or two wedges on the downstage edge fed band plus a couple of vocals fixes it; keep that mix minimal, because more foldback means more feedback risk. Separately, a wired intercom with a comms headset at stage management, lighting and sound beats shouting cues.

Projection, screens and getting a laptop onto them

Ambient light beats brightness, so blinds buy more than the next projector up, and in a smaller hall a flat panel wins outright. Then connectivity, where it really falls over: every visiting speaker brings a different laptop, so provide one labelled HDMI socket on the wall plate plus a drawer of adaptors that lives with it. Get the laptop audio into the PA on a labelled line-level input: the projector’s own speakers are the most common complaint about school hall AV.

Long runs need help. HDMI is not designed for wall-plate-to-ceiling-projector distances. Beyond a few metres, particularly at higher resolutions, a passive cable goes intermittently unreliable in a way that is maddening to diagnose, so use an active or optical cable, or an extender over structured cabling. Our HDMI versus SDI guide explains why; video cables are in stock.

Lighting for productions on a modest budget

You need three things, not a theatre rig.

• A wash. Even, warm front light across the acting area: faces first, colour second. LED PAR cans are the workhorse and the safer choice for a rig students operate: cool running, low draw, no hot lamp changes. See our LED battens and PARs guide.
• A few profiles. Two to four narrower-beam fixtures for a downstage special or a lectern.
• Simple control. A small DMX console with faders and a few recordable scenes beats one nobody can drive. The test: can a Year 9 learn the show in one session, and can a supply teacher find the house lights?

Sports day and outdoor events

Outdoors there are no reflections to help you, but the requirement is simple: one voice, audible across a field, for a few hours.

• Portable and battery powered. A battery column removes the extension-lead-across-a-field problem, a safety gain as much as a convenience. Treat quoted runtimes as optimistic at volume.
• Height helps. Above head height does more for coverage than extra power, because bodies absorb sound at ear level.
• A handheld, not a headset. Wind noise is brutal on a headworn capsule.
• Plan for weather. Most portable PA is not weatherproof. Never leave mains kit outdoors unattended or wet, put the rain plan in the risk assessment, and move it in flight cases.

Procurement realities for schools

Capital against revenue. Equipment and installation sit in different budget lines from consumables, maintenance and licences, and the rules differ across maintained schools, academies and trusts. Split quotes so capital and ongoing items are separated, and treat the ongoing items as real: licence renewal, batteries, headset spares, inspection. Year ends create sudden approval windows, so keep a costed specification ready.

Quotes, frameworks and accounts. Ask every supplier to quote against the same written specification with model numbers, so you compare like with like, and establish spend thresholds and framework agreements first. Get support terms in writing: warranty length, UK repairs, loan kit.

Buy for a decade, and standardise. Kit bought this year will still be in daily institutional use in ten years, run by people who never met whoever specified it. Consumer speakers, home cinema amplifiers and household cabling are built for a living room; in a hall they fail as a slow accumulation of dead channels. Then standardise: one wireless family in one band, one headset model, one bodypack connector, one battery type, so every spare fits.

Records, storage and accessibility

Electrical inspection records

The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require electrical equipment that could cause injury to be maintained in a safe condition, but do not specify what, by whom or how often, and do not make annual PAT testing a legal requirement. The HSE calls the belief that everything needs a yearly PAT test a myth, and asks for a risk-based approach. So a rack in a cupboard needs less than kit carried to a field. The IET’s Code of Practice for In-service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment (5th edition) sets frequency and scope.

Storage, security and labelling

A dedicated lockable store, not a corner of the PE cupboard: packs are easy to pocket, and a system missing three cannot do the musical. Label every case with a packing list inside the lid, foam cut per item so an absence is obvious (see our flight cases guide), and keep an asset register.

Hearing accessibility

Schools have duties under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments so disabled pupils are not put at a substantial disadvantage, and since September 2012 that has included reasonable auxiliary aids and services. Assistive listening equipment is a recognised example, and the cost cannot be passed to the pupil or their parents. Start with your local authority sensory support service.

Training and the one-page operating sheet

A system is only as good as the least confident person using it, so laminate one side of A4 beside the plate: how to turn it on, which input is which, where the volume is, checks for no sound, who to contact, in photographs. Then train in tiers: all staff five minutes on the assembly preset, interested staff an hour on the production rig, a student crew properly on mixer, lighting and comms.

A phased plan

In a smaller school one portable column covers phases 1 and 3.

Common mistakes

• A system too complex for the staff using it daily. A large desk with no preset is unusable within a term.
• Too few wireless channels. Buying four, then finding nine principals on the cast list.
• No charging plan. Ten packs and a handful of drawer batteries.
• No spare headset mics. One broken cable should not silence a principal for the run.
• Domestic AV for institutional use. It fails slowly, with no support behind it.
• No storage plan. Kit in a corner of the hall gets damaged and lost.
• No named owner for inspection records, licence renewals, the loop certificate and the asset register.

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Frequently asked questions

What sound system does a school hall need?

A speech-first system: column loudspeakers or several distributed install speakers rather than a pair of large boxes at the front, driven from a compact digital mixer that recalls a saved preset, with a labelled wall plate as the only thing staff touch.

Why can we hear the PA but not understand it?

Because the hall is reverberant. Late reflections smear consonants, so speech loses intelligibility even at high volume. The fixes are tighter vertical coverage, more speakers at lower levels, mics closer to the mouth, and treatment.

How many radio microphones does a school musical need?

Count the principals who have to be heard and add one or two spares: usually six to twelve. Channel 70 supports about four systems, so anything beyond a small play needs the Ofcom UK Shared licence for Channel 38 and its ten-channel plan.

Do schools need an Ofcom licence for wireless microphones?

Only outside the licence-exempt bands. Channel 70 at 863 to 865 MHz needs none. Channel 38 at 606.5 to 613.5 MHz needs the UK Shared wireless microphone licence, which covers the organisation UK-wide however many systems you own. There is no schools exemption. See our Ch38 guide.

Does all our AV equipment need annual PAT testing?

No. The HSE is clear that the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require equipment to be maintained in a safe condition but do not specify what, by whom or how often, and do not make annual testing a legal requirement. Take a risk-based approach.

Do we have to install a hearing loop in the school hall?

Schools have duties under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments, and since September 2012 that includes reasonable auxiliary aids and services, of which assistive listening equipment is a recognised example. Whether a venue-wide loop is right for your hall is a specific assessment, and your local authority sensory support service is the first call. Any loop must be commissioned to BS EN IEC 60118-4 by a competent installer.