Toilets in mixed secondary schools

I am delighted you started this thread! I am grateful for everyone arguing and discussing it. The DfE will hopefully be looking for guidance to from the EHRC so I want everyone to think carefully about safe design.

The first thing is that the 2023 School Output and Annex 2A document is what new schools will be using, or any big refurbishments.

It doesn’t actually have to be followed as long as you say in your school specific brief why not.

I have argued so much for people to think about design I haven’t actually got round to composing an argument if schools say they want one! I am out now so this is rushed….

Off the top of my head ‘these are the toilet designs we are having. They are single sex and have a floor to door gap of 150mm or 200mm (whatever you decide) as we have a cohort which includes children with invisible disabilities eg. diabetes and epilepsy so the design is for safeguarding them if they collapse inside the toilet. A mixed sex or disabled toilet design would not be suitable due to the private design. The single sex design with door gaps, would provide the visibility to keep any child safer in the event of a medical emergency happening inside the cubicle, enables us to ventilate and clean the cubicle effectively and allow quicker detection of occupants in an emergency building evacuation.’

There is an argument to have a gap above the door to the ceiling. This aids ventilation, and therefore health, and is useful to see a big emergency light and light flashing alarms on the main ceiling in front of the cubicles, especially for a deaf pupil. These seem to be the gaps that boys/men use to photo rather than getting on the floor in the examples I have info on.

What I would really like is for designers to sit down with safety experts and all my examples of what been going on, and come up with a plan. With the emphasis on safety. Rather than complete privacy at all costs.

School layout our school has and I assumed OP was on about was mixed toilets.

One room open to corridor (now with metal shutters like in shops) toilets cublicles down both sides one side supposedly male one female - down middle of room breaking room a row of two sinks down middle. You can get to either side before sink begins or at end where mirror are.

They are not single sex - as it's one large room with some seperation as cubbicles one side being male other female and bank of sinks in middle - but not two seperate rooms.

The building is about 20 years old. The old building would have traditional toilets! It was demolished in the 00’s and rebuilt.

DC secondary has these same time frame - wales though.

No-one accepts they weren't legal. They were put in as prior to rebuild was school known for bullying.

Few years ago they put shutters in to close them - as vandalism got so badn This all despite apparent supervision and CTTV In corridor. Access is extremely hard now as they aren't as available as stated as not unlocked.

DD2 refused to use them few years ago - there was spate of door kicking in and filming and vaping. She seems to manage fine - but we do live close by -so dire prediction of health issues from MN when previously mentioned lack of access haven't materialised. DS hated them but DD1 couldn't ever see an issue with them.

I haven't heard any plans to change them and soon youngest will be done with school entirely.

These kind of toilets aren't illegal because they're still single sex. I think posters are not understanding what OP is describing.

Imagine one room. Cubicles on either side. Sinks at the end. But the whole room is ONLY for girls.

Then you have a completely different room, same set up but ONLY for boys.

These kind of toilets are much safer for school pupils because any bullying can easily be seen by the supervising teacher. Vandalism is also reduced (they can still vandalise inside the cubicle) and vaping is more difficult to hide.

I have toilet duty twice a week and we have the traditional, old style toilets. It is the worst part of my week.

It seems to me that irrespective of the design that vape detectors in school toilets sound like a sensible thing to install.
But in traditional toilets you'd only need 1 or 2, whereas with fully enclosed you'd need one in each.

The New Aviva studios in Manchester has an arrangemnt like this....fully mixed sex, but also very open to the central atrium where everyone gathers. The washbasins are in almost full public view. Not a comfortable experience in any way.

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/23848248.st-josephs-rc-high-school-installs-vape-sensors-toilets/

This is the lengths school are going to now:
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-install-toilet-sensors-that-actively-listen-to-pupils/

I would say a door gap is cheaper, is more likely to work because someone having a seizure isn’t going to have the capacity to say ‘help me’, especially if they are doing something banned in the first place. I would not fancy being in a toilet that actively listens to me. But this is the bizarre state schools are in.

Question: Do smoke detectors not detect vapes? And/or are there not vape detectors that could go in school toilets?

Yes I agree it’s bad but it’s so difficult to find an ideal. That’s when I get enthused when people start thinking about design solutions!

Did you know the young woman from the Game of Thrones felt really awful at the gym, rushed to the toilet and was scared she was probably dying and it tried not to lose consciousness. Another lady either saw or heard enough to get her to a hospital, where doctors did brain surgery on an aneurysm.

There’s the problem with mixed sex toilets that are designed to be acoustically sound.

There will not be problems in private schools because private schools can expel anyone who misbehaves. State schools do not have this luxury and have to think about the child that’s being expelled.

It’s interesting in which schools it ‘worked’ for behaviour and which it doesn’t. If you look at the group of women in Wales who are also trying to fight against private mixed sex toilet cubicles in schools, they are saying behaviour got worse and reported dangers of full height cubicles too. In other schools in England I have seen reports where they have had to introduce more supervision with the new designs, reduce access or even put up heat detectors! I think boys and girls being able to use the same private toilets is always going to lead to behaviour issues.

https://merchedcymru.wales/school-toilets-campaign/

DD's school took the outer doors off during covid and then never put them back as it made it easier to spot groups hanging out in there.

DD found it very embarrassing as she had stomach issues and sometimes had to go during lesson times, and the pupils in the rooms opposite could hear the noises.

they did make it clear that the girls and boys toilets were separate though.

These are a few of the more recent ones of sexual assaults and rapes in school premises from Freedom of Information requests. Obviously the exact location is not noted but it is reasonable to assume most serious assaults will be in a private, unsupervised area open to mixed sex:
Essex Police
Metropolitan Police
Warwickshire Police

Can I just add I understand the challenges. The child I had to try and resuscitate had no known issues beforehand. This could be any child.

As it is, there are schools that just have all full height cubicles. This is happening across the country in venues and offices. It is discriminatory for those with disabilities and, I believe, for women. The statistics are bad.

But behaviour issues are different to disabilities. Are you saying 'fuck you' to the epileptic and disabled children, who can't help having epilepsy (or other conditions) because other children behave badly?

Why are the teachers in that situation not clamping down on the bad behaviour and excluding the children who exhibit it? If there was zero tolerance things would change quickly.

What about a few assemblies highlighting where children with disabilities have died due to these new designs? Explaining good behaviour in the toilets is so important to be truly 'inclusive'. Or is disabilities the 'non-cool' type of inclusivity?

I have to say my DD's secondary school has exemplary behaviour and it's a very mixed school in a city. But they are pretty strict and they have the highest rate of exclusion in the area. I think the two things are probably linked. The Headteacher is amazing. And she thinks low expectations and no consequences is not fair to the children. And they have single sex toilets with gaps under the doors (at least on the floors I've been on). The toilets are labelled Female and Male.

What @Keeptoiletssafe said earlier was The cpr that has been done when children have been retrieved from these toilets has not been successful in the cases I have seen.

So it's ok for disabled children to die because other children can't behave sufficiently to have a safer toilet design? FFS.

That shouldn’t happen and is against guidelines in annex 2A of the School Output specification. Look at 3.2.3 and 3.2.4
Of course not being able to fully secure the door is also fun experiment for boys!

I have also never been in a school where I would know the special ways (eg keys to reverse hinges) of opening the cubicle.

If you could read some of the links @noblegiraffe and come up with some answers I would love your input.

As far as vaping is concerned it’s a new nightmare for schools with due to seizures from them being spiked:

We know children can have cardiac arrests when they smoke spice, and I believe some have come quite close to death. Headteachers are telling me pupils are collapsing in the halls and ending up with long stays in intensive care.”

“What do we do if it happens again and we’re unaware? One incident occurred on the playground, where many people were present to help. But what if it happens in a bathroom cubicle, and they are alone? It would only be when they didn’t show up for class, were marked absent, and we started searching for them, potentially finding them too late. We’ve been fortunate so far, but I believe it’s only a matter of time before serious injuries or fatalities occur.

https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/english-school-children-unwittingly-smoking-spice-spiked-vapes-finds-university-of-bath//

I think you know that isn’t what I mean.

I agree! Which is why the unisex toilet is always placed at the entrance near to the desk.

(because that’s the one designers used to understand carried most risk and could be used universally)

The type of person who would apply for the job of standing all day in a toilet watching children go to use them is not the sort of person we would want doing that job.

With people not CCTV.

Just to add, I understand the challenges this creates, and will likely to need additional staff to facilitate it, but that is a small price to pay for the dignity of girls.

Yes! I know. It’s nice to debate. If pupils didn’t have phones it would be a lot easier.

But turn it around:

By having full height private doors, who does it damage the most: the most vulnerable medically (both physically and mentally) and girls (because of assaults).

How many deaths and assaults that might have been prevented because boys want to take pictures of girls on their phones?

Also: re vapes. Children vape in the private cubicles. The problem with that is that if they are spiked and lead to seizures they can’t be seen.