Children being allowed to go to the toilet at school

of course they do! as do people in many other jobs. Hence why our bodies are designed to give us fair warning of needing the toilet.

Posters are right to some extent that it is a resource issue. But the schools cant do anything about that. They are doing their absolute best with what they have and cant do more.
As for disruption in class..honestly, you'd be amazed how much disruption can be caused by one child noisily scraping their chair, comedically stumbling over someone's bag, 'accidentally' swiping someone's water bottle or book off the table on the way past, knocking into his mate on the front row....and again on tje way back.

I think k this is disgustingly. Nobody does this to adults, so why do it to children? If I need the toilet, I need the toilet. What a phenomenal waste of GP time having to write letters.

it is shocking. There is zero respect for their environment and zero respect for each other from some young people. Toilets are a huge safeguarding concern in schools. And it is the genuine children in need who are suffering. FWIW I don’t agree with this at all and I’d love to see schools with more staff to manage this.

I would get the medical evidence, but I would also argue the point with the school that requests that bathroom breaks are coded as neutral not trigger negative points as that bit is utterly ridiculous.

You enter the line. Simple as that. Choosing not to us just bonkers.

If your pupil then get a detention for being late at class you ask for a meeting with HT to sort things.

See my post above. I assume when you go to tje toilet during the working day, you quietly step out, do what you need and step back in. I'm guessing you dont announce to the room loudly that you need to go, describe how huge the shit is that you need and do a lap of the office first? Thars why children have different rules.

It happens in LOTS of jobs. There are a huge number of careers where if the staff don't go when they have an opportunity they are stuck waiting a long time, potentially hours, until the next opportunity. Truckers missing a service station, medical staff getting stuck in tasks, teachers, cashiers, delivery drivers who didn't use a convenient toilet in the first part of their route and there isn't one on the next part of their route, people working in warehouses and manufacturing, people in outdoor jobs where they have to go off site to get to a toilet, surgeons, people who have to go to remote areas or climb, police, people in monitoring such as air traffic control and energy, construction workers, bus drivers, agricultural workers, call centre workers, and more. Being unable to access a toilet for hours, or until your boss tells you you can, is the reality of millions of workers in the UK every day.

Your child does sound like she has a medical need though? Has she been tested for coeliac? I have it myself and I used to have that kind of issue before changing my diet. 32 kids in an average class do have sufficient opportunity to go before school, at break, at lunch, after school... it's an unusual school that would have more than two hours of lessons without an opportunity to use the loo. Once you've got 4-8 kids continuously holding up the class for things other than learning, very little learning takes place and that is after all what they're in school to do.

We didn't have water bottles at school. I think we actually all drank quite a lot less liquid back then.

It's totally different to office type workplaces where the employees aren't all doing the same thing at the same time. There are plenty of jobs where you can't just nip to the loo though. Imagine if everyone had to sit there on the bus because the driver hadn't been organised in his or her break.

And teachers!

If I don't go before school or at break, I've got to wait until lunch. That's just how scheduled jobs work.

You seem to be confusing your medical needs and your daughter's. You also KEEP saying that GPs are dismissive, but you have made zero attempt to get your child the medical help they may require. Going for a poo several times a day with urgency isnt normal and there may be factors in resolving this, but you've said "GPs are dismissive and I didnt get diagnosed for many years".

Your daughter will never get a diagnosis or help if you have taken this long to even consider a GP appointment.

Your poor child.

I'm sorry your daughter has this problem, and hope you can resolve it soon.

It set me thinking though - when I was at school, nobody ever went to the loo during a lesson. You either went before or afterwards. How has this changed so much?

Because "no" isn't a word today in schools. Schools aren't allowed to set boundries or say no. Today parent and children run the schools. That's it.

I've taught plenty of kids where their behaviour is disruptive and the parents appear to be quite able to behave in public. I think a lot of parents would be surprised to see how their teen behaves in company. The difference is of course that adults quickly find no-one will employ them, serve them or want to hang out with them, whereas 15 mins walking veeeery slowly to the most distant toilet and back is presumably more fun than [insert whatever lesson is hard work].

Children don't legally have to go to school. Not in the UK. Parents are required to provide a suitable education. In most cases they delegate that to schools. Possibly sometimes without sufficient checking on the school culture.

That's why they have on-call staff and can ask a teacher in another room / on a free to briefly watch the room. Teachers are allowed to go to the toilet when needed. It's a human right and basic employment law.

It’s been like that since at least I was a teen. I remember one girl soiling herself in class actually poor thing she was bullied for years. My best mate bled through to the chair but we covered it up and nobody noticed.

I’d just ask the doctor. They won’t give her tablets as you say it’s not causing real issues. GPS tend to under medicate where possible.

It's not up to me to come up with a solution, I am not a teacher, but I am a parent that doesn't agree with how children are being treated and them not having access to something that is a basic human need. It's like asking me to come up with a new government policy because I don't agree with it. I am allowed to disagree with a policy that affects my child, even if I am not a teacher. If things are not working for everyone involved it needs to change.

It is clear there isn't enough staffing in schools and it is more challenging dealing with parents and children.I think there was an element of picking battles more when I was at school. Kids did smoke and do allsorts in the loos, but less so because we did have more staff around, or they just knew that parents would not have accepted their kids not having access to a loo back then.

Some schools do get the balance right, but some go to the extreme. It's just sad well behaved kids are treated badly because of a few bad ones.

Hahaha haha. In some schools maybe. My last classroom was nowhere near anyone else and staff on frees are not wandering about popping in.

Some kids aren't allowed in between lessons anymore, just on breaks. That would be part of the solution. I coped well with this at school, despite having the world's smallest bladder!