What is normal in secondary school re: using toilets?

Quite normal for children not to be allowed to the toilet in lessons - unless it is an emergency. Not normal for them to be locked.

Locking seems odd. I would be worried that a student was locked in.
Most students can wait until the end of the lesson to use the toilet by that age. For those who have medical issues, teachers are emailed or students given cards to show.
Toilets are where bullying, smoking, vandalism, trouble and skiving occur!
Lessons are where learning takes place!

Locking the toilets in between lessons seems a bit extreme, but I expect a decision to do that by schools wouldn't have been made without a good reason. In my DDs school, you can't leave lessons to go to the loo unless it's a "dire emergency".

I'm surprised they are locked. Imagine if you suddenly felt sick or had diarhoea? That must happen sometimes and having to get a key in that scenario seems cruel.

I think it is normal.

DD tells me that in her school the toilets are kept locked during lesson times. If they really need to go they need to get a form signed by themselves and the teacher with the time on it. The form then needs to be handed into the office for them to collect the key for the toilets and they have to write their name down on another sheet of paper.
If there's any vandalism in the toilets a fine will be issued to the last known person to have had the key! I'm not sure how that could be enforced without checking the toilet after each use!

Not used to. I have 2 at secondary and one at college and she is still the same!

IME they rarely use the loos at school anyway as they are 'minging'.

Mine used to make a stampede for the loos at home when they got in and make ours minging.

gothmummy how horrible for you, I would hope someone in that situation would be given a toilet pass on medical grounds. Surely that's relatively unusual and thus would merit a pass.

It's not the norm, and it suggests to me that their had been misbehaviour in the toilets during lessons.

I can remember making plans with my best friends who were all in separate lessons to meet up in the toilets half way through a double lesson. God forbid we'd have just waited another 40 mins!

Wow. Im sorry to hear that this still happens. My school had this rule in the early 1990s and I had very very heavy periods requiring changing sanpro every 30 minutes. I was shouted at for wanting to go to the toilet in a French lesson, so ended up bleeding all over the seat, my school uniform and the carpet. I was also absolutely mortified. I had to be collected by my dad, as I had no dry/clean clothes and from then on just didn’t bother going to school on my heavy period days.

I would be very upset if I heard that my nieces or daughter’s school had this system, I would not want them to experience the distress that I still feel at that incident, 20 years on!

What would happen if a girl's period was really heavy in the middle of her maths lesson. I hope a decent teacher would let her sort herself out.

It's weird the way different schools go about it. We are a school that goes from primary to secondary in one big building. The primary is from FS1 (nursery) to year 6 and each year is a 5 class intake. Each class has its own individual toilet ( FS1 have small toddler size up to normal size for year 6. From year 2 onwards they are encouraged to use the communal toilets but obviously if there is an emergency then they use the class one. By year 6 they are not expected to use the class ones except in a real emergency.

Secondary they have the communal toilets and are expected to go in break. They can get a hall pass if they need to. We don't have paper fires, damage or graffiti. There is CCTV in all the halls though.

That's what it was like at my school 20 a few years ago.i thought it was the norm tbh. You were never denied going but it was controlled so no high jinx occurred!

Wow! They don't even have doors on our toilets. The cubicles obviously have them but there is a sort of dog leg to get into them and it is all open.

A very bright girl in our class sat in our English class one day, suddenly yelped 'miss' and urinated everywhere. The whole class was in uproar. It turns out she had been too frightened or embarrassed to ask before and suddenly it was too late....
The kids never forgot the issue and she was the brunt of many jokes for the rest of her school years.

I don't let students go to the loo in my lesson. Reason is that once one does, there is suddenly a stream of them. Kids walking in and out is somewhat disruptive to my leading a lesson or any of them learning much.

Also I take the view that they need to learn to go when they can - ie at lunch, break, before they get there, at the end of the day, between lessons if need be ... I have to! Seriously, who needs to go for a wee more than once every hour and a half? Might help if they didn't have a water bottle constantly attached to their lips...

Obv in the case of medical need it's fine, but those kids (eg diabetic, one kidney etc) are on the register and have a card. I had a parent complain to me the other day, but the wind was taken out of her sails a bit when I pointed out that the only lesson where I teach her child is right after break. Did she really need to go twice in 3/4 of an hour???

Fairly normal not to be allowed to go in lesson time (unless a medical need) but I can't imagine any caretaker I've ever know being happy at having to go round locking and unlocking the toilets several times a day !

My school's toilets have CCTV outside them which has mostly solved the vandalism issue.

Still get kids bunking off lessons and hiding in them though.

It was sort of normal in our school (way back in the 90's) not to be allowed though girls got to go for time of the month reasons etc. At our school Smoking was always going on in the toilet but also incidents of drinking, fighting, vandalism , drug taking and sex. There was normally a janitor or prefect 'patrolling' for this reason and if you were out you had to have a note.

Yes, I've worked in secondary schools where toilets had to be locked due to some rather disgusting and frequent vandalism. The only way to stop it is to lock them when they can't be supervised. I've known this to happen in 3 out of the 5 schools i've worked in and they are fairly normal 'good' schools.

Haha, just read the "it's not that kind of school" comment. I presume it has teenagers in it in which case it will have an element of these things. I went to a"posh" girls grammar and girls smoked and drank alcohol (usually baileys as it looked like milkshake to our naive teachers - this wasn't very regular an occurrence).

Dd is 6 and not allowed to use the toilet in lesson time! (I did have an issue with this in reception when dd was told she couldn't go and wet herself... first accident since before she was 3). Not an issue now though. By secondary they should be in control. Toilets are places kids gather and cause mischief... where I work we regularly had smoking and even paper towel fires, and I work in quite I nice school! Ours aren't locked but I can see why a school would.

Lessons are 40 minutes long here, children and adults are expected to go between lessons or breaks.

A break is every 90 minutes.