Children being allowed to go to the toilet at school

When we don't have kids who smash up toilets and shit on the floor for fun.

Why have this rule?
When toilet use is a free for all, naughty students damage the toilets. We have had one occasion where we had to close the school during period 2 and send the children home because there was no longer a single working toilet for any child in the school. Multiple other days when students had to share one boys' cubicle and one girls' cubicle at break time.

Why not just fix the toilet and not treat everyone the same?
We can't always get a plumber out within minutes. We also had a year where we had to make a teaching assistant redundant to pay for the repairs to toilet vandalism.

Why not just punish the vandalisers and vapers?
We do. But that doesn't change the fact that they already destroyed the toilet and your angel can no longer use them.

Why not accept parents' word for it on toilet passes?
Most (not all) naughty children are naughty because they have bad parents. Those bad parents are happy to enable their child and demand a toilet pass so that their child can continue to run around the school at will. This then creates an environment where nice children with genuine toilet needs are too afraid to go because the toilets have become a mad max style lawless wasteland full of the naughty kids.

Why not just get a toilet monitor / toilet monitors?
Okay. Who would you fire to get the money to pay for it? A teaching assistant? A teacher? The librarian?

This shows wider problems at your school.
It does wider problems in society. This is happening everywhere.

But we were allowed to go whenever we wanted when I was at school.
I highly doubt it. I was curious about this. I asked some older/near retirement teachers at a bunch of different schools when I met them at union events and they all said that they've never had a time in their teaching career where it was normal for schools to let people out for the toilet. There may be some rose tinted glasses involved here.

Ask for a letter from gp, school should accept that.

I agree with those saying a toilet pass should be given after a conversation with a parent and some kind of understanding of the situation is established. However, for many parents who haven’t sat in a lesson in a challenging school, it’s hard to conceive of the chaos that is instigated by a series of children who constantly put their hand up to go to the toilet as a way of disrupting a lesson - and then shout about their human rights. I observed a lesson last week where a gifted but young teacher was trying to manage this and it was hugely disruptive to everyone’s learning. Such children getting up and down from their seats as part of going in and out of the classroom and disrupting others on the way really has to be seen, to realise quite how bad it can be! It’s all a really hard balance. It sounds like a minor thing, and reasonable for anyone to go to the loo when they need, but when you have 2-3 kids who have behaviour issues and do this, it really does cause problems. It also makes it difficult in the toilet areas for any children who really do need to go for medical reasons - students who have tried to escape lessons arrange to meet friends, smoke or worse, and it’s difficult to have staff on all corridors during lesson time to police this.

Right, so all the children in the school might do that? So you make a blanket rule impacting hundreds of children because a few kids are capable of doing this. OK then.

I mean, some druggy might leave an infected needle in a shopping centre toilet, thus creating the risk of being sued if someone gets injured by it. Lock all of the toilets!!! Or maybe say to people (if you are feeling nice) they can only go at midday in a 15 minute window. That sounds fair to the shoppers. Actually come to think of it, this could happen in a hospital, or maybe your own workplace....

It really is a poor and unimaginative solution to a problem, cooked up by someone who can't see the difference between how they would treat themselves and treat the children they are supposed to be teaching and rooting for in life. There is no mutual respect whatsoever.

Regarding your statement about treating children in a way we wouldn't treat ourselves. That's not true at all. They have more opportunities to use the toilet than the staff do. Most of the time we can't go at break either because we're on duty, and we can't leave lessons to go.

Girls can't regulate when their periods start though, and it's not a medical issue, it's normal biology.

Imagine how embarrassing it would be for a girl to bleed through her underwear, all because she wasn't allowed to go to the toilet to sort out sanpro?

We set a lot of children up to fail at the job marked. Most people can't run off to the loo then they are bored.

@DaisyJohnson I know this is horrendous, but it is not the other students' issue to solve. They shouldn't be holding wee and poo in and having long term issues from doing this because of other kids misbehaving. The only way to stop this is to recognise it is an issue in schools and have resources in place for this.

And yes I would rather my child have access to a toilet than a librarian. I think people are not putting themselves in the shoes of children who have done nothing wrong. I did not have a diagnosed bladder condition as a kid, my mum wouldn't have recognised it, but I got anxious needing the loo in lessons, so always used the toilet after each lesson. I would have really struggled with this.

And yes, kids still fucked around in the loos, threw soggy tissue on the ceiling, shat everywhere and smoked in them 25 years ago. This behaviour is not in any way new or a sign of the times! Didnt happen often, because there was always a teacher about in between lessons.

I said in my reply that HQ are 'looking at' for some reason that I do actually pretty much always let girls go for that reason.

@Urgentbiscuitrequired and there's the difference. Teachers now do not have time to be monitoring corridors in their free periods. Any attempts at CCTV to see who.is going in amd out of loos is usually opposed and can you imagine the allegations that would fly around if a teacher a actually went into a toilet? No one sensible would leave themselves open to that. Its simply not as easy as all the non teachers on here think.

As I said in my post, if we don't have a blanket ban with exceptions for toilet passes and real emergencies, the children with the toilet passes and real emergencies can't use the toilets because they're all out of order.

There isn't always a teacher out and about. Teachers have fewer frees and higher workload now than when we were children and are more likely to be pinned to a computer trying frantically to tick a few points off their to do list.

I have seen the use of toilet pases. 80% didn't needed them. They enjoyed the time off lessons.
It's a wonder we still have staff at schools.

I certainly can't go 4.5 hours without peeing, apart from when I'm asleep.

When my work involved visiting clients in their homes, I used to try and plan my visits so that I visited a home where they had clean bathrooms that I'd feel comfortable peeing in at least once during the morning and once during the afternoon.

Honestly toilets are a nightmare, ours get vandalised, children vape in them, hide in them, have fights in them etc etc during lesson time you just don’t have the staff to man them, so we have this policy as do a lot of schools now! Parents just don’t see the reality of everyday school life and the reasons these decisions are made.

In fact, toilets are often seen as one of the least safe areas of the school in safeguarding reports, so we try and mitigate risk and then get angry parents, barking on about draconian measures etc etc, same parents bark on about lack of safeguarding when their child is put at risk in those toilets. It’s exhausting.

Just adhere to the policy and get the relevant medical info for a toilet pass. Your daughter clearly needs one so get the proof.

I get things are harder for the teachers now, as parents do push back more, but it does feel like there are lots of teachers on here justifying this because of resources. Plus sometime parents do have a point with rules like this. Obviously resources are an issue, but I don't think it should result in a child potentially pissing, shitting or bleeding themselves in class, or having long term health issues because they don't have access to a toilet. It feels like it is made to be the children's problem genuinely needing the loo when it's a resource issue.

My point isn't denying there is a problem. Just with it being dealt with in a way that it impacts well behaved students badly. Locking the toilets is just bloody awful. That alone would have made me really anxious when I was at school.

How would you know they didn't need them?

They are believed. They often don't go because of the 80%.
My guess is that 8 out of 10 don't have a medical need. They are just bored and shipping lessons. And they ruin things for staff and other children. Schools 2026 are sinking.

They wander round the halls. But never to visit a toilet.

You need to tell her to go at break and lunch. She is choosing not to and could be making herself ill.

The queues may be large, she may be late for a lesson but if she needs to go she should wait.

On the other hand if she is choosing to wait until the end of the day she can clearly control her toilet needs and may just want a toilet pass to avoid using the toilets when they are busy.

Either circumstances is in your DD control. It's not a school issue.

Out of interest, what would your solution be?