Hello
Apologies for the length. On phone, travelling.
This is the DfE specification for schools.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65803d561c0c2a000d18cf3c/GDB_GenericDesignBrief-A-C17.pdf
And the annex for toilets.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6380b52d8fa8f56eaf2f924b/GDB_Annex_2A_Sanitaryware-A-C12.pdf
If you search ‘changing rooms’ it says they have to be safe!
Primary is fine- mentions gaps. Secondary toilets don’t mention safety at all just privacy- a 5mm gap. This is what I have lots of correspondence with the DfE about. You will also note a completely new addition for the 2023 of a private toilet ‘identified as gender neutral’ on each floor. The language ‘identified’ jars with the normal tone and it has been tacked on with no explanation, since the 2020 documents. I am presuming this is to do with Stonewall membership the DfE had?
You can’t have both complete privacy and safety. Safety should be paramount (everywhere else in all DfE documents a ‘safe environment’ is the overriding factor).
What I have learned is:
@AnSolas
These are only guidelines. The DfE says you don’t have to use them. As long as a school says why, for example, they don’t want full height cubicle toilets, in the school specific brief, then you can go with the more traditional toilets with door gaps.
This, I know from experience, is actually the only way to ensure all pupils are as safe as possible. There have been instances recently of children dying in full height cubicles in schools, I know from one school they were new and called ‘gender-neutral’ as it had been announced in the press.
There was a campaign to have a defibrillator in every secondary school because children do collapse and if you get to them in time you can save them. Toilets are where people head to when they feel ill. The DfE mention the ‘safety’ feature listed in their documents of being able to open a locked toilet door outwards from the outside to get a body out, so they are not totally secure. But this is retrospective and too late. It can be hours (in some public toilet cases) days before people are found. It takes 4 mins without oxygen for brain damage to start.
Unless a secondary school governing body goes against the ‘standard’ specification listed, then designers will now put in full height cubicles. These are for all new schools and refurbs. Manufacturers are designing full height stock for schools. I know once we get more of these into the general school system, there will be more incidents.
This is what I think (but it hasn’t been tested yet):
There are children in each mainstream secondary school with conditions that mean they could collapse and need help before they become critically ill. Anyone who works in a school will know this happens. Some of these children will have conditions classed as a disability (diabetes, epilepsy, heart conditions etc). They have a right to an education and reasonable adjustments (Equality Act 2010). There are now no toilets suitable for them if schools follow the guidelines and I think it’s unlawful. Just taking one condition epilepsy, that’s 1% of children and many more may be undiagnosed or have one off seizures. For example there have been children having seizures through spiked vapes. Children go to vape in the toilets.
I really hope, by raising awareness by my FOI and correspondence, the DfE realise why gaps are more important than total privacy. I am presuming they get data about deaths and ‘near-misses’ in schools because then hopefully they will see a connection. It’s usually only when you have personal experience (like me unfortunately) that it hits home.
I am not convinced they do have the data though. Because they don’t seem to have linked sexual assaults to private spaces in schools. If you look back at my previous posts you can see why I think full height cubicles are discriminatory against girls in terms of the Equality Act too. It’s girls who are most at risk for sexual assaults.
@WarriorN the toilets you described have been called ‘rape cubicles’ by a parent, for obvious reasons. Yes you will find lots of incidences on Everyone’s Invited, of assaults happening in lots of toilets. It’s difficult to know what design but, in the past, it is reasonable to think that the disabled toilet was mixed sex and private, which it where many assaults took place as well as store cupboards. I detest the fact I can’t find anyone who has centralised data on this because it’s horrific to have to research. There are many girls, boys and women who have been forced into toilet cubicles. If they are private, mixed sex, acoustically sound and can be opened from the outside, who does it benefit? Yet this is precisely what we have in the DfE guidelines for a new gender neutral toilet - though remember it is not obligatory. And it’s what every toilet cubicle becomes if you don’t enforce toilets being single sex.
It’s not just school toilets, people get forced into toilets in train carriages, stations, shopping centres etc. which is why the ‘but we have mixed sex toilets in trains etc’ argument falls flat.
Back to legislation, when I questioned the DfE originally about the private v safety toilet situation, before they told me they had no records of equality and impact assessments done on their standard designs, they said that schools should know their cohort and have appropriate supervision. Which I argued was unworkable in a mainstream school. Then afterwards, they referred me to 1974 legislation as detailed in a previous post. And said schools should act like ‘prudent parents’.
To conclude, it’s very complicated, there’s so many documents to get your head round and it’s difficult to know when guidance is actual law, and no one seems to have collated data to assess toilet designs for risks of safety and health (inc lack of ventilation, disease prevention and for fire evacuations) leaving the most vulnerable in an unsafe environment.
I will put in a disclaimer here in that I am an ex-teacher, not an architect or lawyer and what I have found out is from reading and corresponding with various organisations and doing research because I want to keep everyone safe. They are various organisations and groups of parents that are doing the same. Mumsnet has helped a lot of us have discussions.