Children being allowed to go to the toilet at school

What nonsense. The majority of your examples can use toilets or outdoor facilities or stop at a cafe.

Yes I imagine this could be an issue, but the fact kids cant access the loo between lessons should be owned by the school and dealt with. And yes, I know there is no money, but they have to do something because all that is happening now is kids need to go in class which is more disruptive. Not the naughty ones, the normal ones who just happen to need a piss after being in school for three hours already! The school haven't built enough toilets, they need to deal with the issue, not the kids.

There was a thread on here recently where a kid hardly ever ate lunch because lunch was too short, not monitored, so kids pushed in and there wasn't enough staff. It is mad in this day and age that schools are not staffed well enough so kids can eat and use the loo at school.

What nonsense is this ?
Locked loos ? I bet the teachers can go when they want to.

If there are issues around children going to the loo and misbehaving in some way, deal with that. But you don’t deal with it by locking the loos.

In every secondary school in the country the very small minority of students who e.g. need to poo multiple times a day will have a different process to the rest, and those students will be known to their teachers as well as have a MIS/planner note/pass.
And I’d have thought, like our school, the system for everyone else serves multiple purposes.

And to be cynical, that is not normal for a 11 year old and the OP has never bothered to have it investigated by a medical professional.

And if we’re talking about weeing a lot, an enuresis clinician would possibly suggest bladder training, ie waiting a little longer each time, as they did for my son who was a bed wetter well into secondary school.

But the OP would rather complain about a standard school system that find out what is wrong with their DD. I’d argue that denying medical investigation or treatment could be considered as neglect- which is absolutely not an accusation that the OP is neglecting her DD

The first stage is a complaint to the head. Then I’d go to the governors . I used to teach and I hated this rule. You know who is taking the piss(goes every lesson, doesn’t come back etc) and who actually needs to go. I’d rather let them go. When i was a trainee, i saw a kid wet themself in class. It’s cruel.

The schools know about the UN Rights of Children. Not having to piss themselves in public is a basic right I’m sure.

Even as a teen I didn’t like it. I had no shame and would tell the teacher, in front of the class, I needed the loo as I’d bleed everywhere otherwise. The male teachers always let me go 😂.

I cannot imagine teenage students wanting to use a toilet in the classroom at all.

What i do believe parents should do is lobby the government to have a minimum number of toilets per child of the sex. 3 toilets for 130 girls, and 5 for 130 boys in one year group is inadequate. Add facilities checks to Ofsted inspections. Actual things that matter.

toilets in schools are just inadequate for everyone.

our victorian and georgian school buildings, drainage were not made for 2000 students.

When?
I can’t just leave 30 kids to go to the loo!

Let me tell you why they lock the toilets....
My husband worked as a caretaker in a secondary school. The amount of vandalism that occurred during lessons time was unbelievable! Kids would actually 'arrange ' with each other to leave lessons at a certain time to go to the toilets and just wreck them. They knew there wouldn't be any teachers around.
The level of vandalism was shocking. Toilets and sinks smashed off the walls causing flooding to classrooms was a regular thing.
As soon as they're replaced, it happened again. Or walls were covered in graffiti and spray paint.
Girls were just as bad!
So I'm afraid you can thank kids like that for your daughter not being able to go to the toilet.

I feel like your story has changed slightly but regardless just FYI my eldest son who’s now 21 used to run in the house after school pretty much every day to do a poo because he didn’t want to poo at school. Are you sure she’s not feeling the same??? And it’s easier to go along with mum blaming the system than admit she’s just embarrassed to go at school?

I'm a teacher and can only go before school, at break, at lunch or after school. Same as the pupils.

Also, I have to clear up after lessons, set up the next lessons, deal with my tutor group, break duty, so actually get less time than the pupils.

Go and work in a secondary school and you will change your mind on this topic.

Perhaps parents of any pupils caught mis-using the toilets should have to come in and supervise the toilets at break/lunch to make them a more pleasant environment?

No, teachers can't go when they want to. This has been explained.

Nooo we can go before school, at break, lunch etc. And sometimes there is a queue.

The worst thing about teacher loos is they're often unisex!

Seeing as all of those contain foods that somebody with Coeliac Disease would react to (including porridge, either because oats are contaminated with gluten, because there's also an autoimmune response to avenin, the protein in oats that is very similar to gluten or because there has been damage to the gut resulting in lactose intolerance) and both constipation and diarrhoea are typical, I'm wondering why you've been so resistant to taking her to the doctor's in the first place.

If you really needed to I am sure you could.
My teachers used to.

I don’t know the answer.
But I do know that not allowing children to the loo when they wish is some sort of madness.
I say this as someone who went to school years ago. And the loos were never locked. And teachers occasionally did pop out sometimes too.
The underlying problems need sorting out. Not the loos locking.

I left a Year 13 class once to go to the toilet urgently. I was reprimanded by the deputy head for it.

I hope anyone reading this thread with a child in upper primary (especially if they have medical needs) is giving consideration to how they will support transition into a school with at least 1,500 pupils. It's possible to train your child to be strategic about things like breaks, just like you train them what to do if public transport goes wrong etc.

Which is mad. Especially if there is a teaching assistant. Or another teacher who can pop in for a moment. I made the point to emphasise that I am sure their loos are not locked. Should they absolutely need to go they don’t have to ask, nor a record kept.
The overriding thing for me is that a policy of locking a loo is slightly mad.
And thinking it as a normal is very disturbing.
Sort out the underlying issues.

I seriously think that is insane.
I have worked in a variety of places and always been able to go to the loo when I need to. Even when I worked on a till in a supermarket.
I can understand a limit if you were performing an operation of some sort. But most jobs should be able to let you go to the loo should you need to.

Pooing multiple times a day is not unusual at all. 3 times a day is well within the normal range for healthy people.

A lot of the comments on the thread seem to be based on the assumption that pupils all want to visit the loo for its official purpose. Many do not! And the laxer the policy is, the less safe an individual year 7 would be coming out of class to use the loo for medical reasons would be.