Erosion of Boundaries leading to Safeguarding Issues

You think the ordinary teachers are promoting it? They're really not. It's down to some of the councillors, two or three HTs and one bloke who won kudos for pushing it in one particular school out of the 17 secondary schools in Fife.

The facilities in the new builds are mostly fine. The problem is that the blooming sinks are open to the corridors - causing problems for girls and women. Also, historically for obvious reasons, staff and pupils were always expected to have separate facilities.

Children really do not want members of staff using the same facilities as pupils.

Agreed.

I think that BAM built most of the secondary school new builds in Fife. They initially posted pictures of the toilet facilities in the schools, but those were pulled after people realised that there was a problem with the open plan sinks. The toilet blocks look like normal toilet blocks and a bonus is that there are many more of them than you used to get in schools, but the open plan sinks are not good for girls or women.

I know of a situation where a member of staff had rushed to the loo because of endo and then found her male HT standing just over the line (where an outer wall and door should have been) trying to ask about a school matter whilst she was trying to wash and dry her hands in peace.

There's also the top to bottom cubicles that have been installed to mitigate the problem caused by the lack of a door to the sink area. As you've mentioned in other threads, the lack of a gap can be a health and safety issue.

I think I'm right in saying that all the Dunfermline secondary schools are now new builds. Two girls in one of them actually went to the press to complain about the existence of single sex toilets triggering their dysphoria: one claimed to be a trans boy and the other to be non-binary.

Following that, another school in the area went to great lengths to advertise that they were giving their pupils a choice between single-sex and gender neutral. It featured in articles in the local press.

I'll add here that most teaching staff in Fife are in the EIS - which seems pretty much captured so far as representation is concerned, to my mind. Most of the others are in the SSTA. Both these professional associations said that nothing could be done about the new builds.

I've just found this within an NAS/UWT document: "The School Premises (General Requirements and Standards) (Scotland) Regulations 1967 • In every school, accommodation (including cloakroom and sanitary accommodation) shall be provided for staff."

I'm betting that Fife is arguing that they've done what they had to - they provided accommodation. No mention of separate accommodation in the regulations, though that's what everyone has always understood.

https://nasuwt.org.uk/static/afddfe59-abb3-4d36-a655b3fc133a4650/School-Toilet-Facilities-Campaign-Toolkit.pdf

The Fife schools do have the toilet blocks as single sex, but the issue is that you can see right into the single sex sink area from the corridor - supposedly it stops bullying and vandalism. It doesn't.

I'm no longer on the teaching register, but I did a brief supply stint last year. Boys had discovered how to open the cubicle doors from the outside. Their victims had been other boys, but the design meant that as soon as the cubicle door was open it was quite possible for the person inside to be seen from the corridor.

The cubicle locks were in the process of being changed to a type which could only be accessed by a janitor. (The boys had discovered that you only needed to use a coin - the same type of lock used for accessible toilets at home.)

In another school, the architects had produced a design where you could see into a P.E. department set of toilets from the snazzy light well between two rooms above.

No one spotted the problem until the school was built and the kids started laughing about it. The SLT called them in to point out the flaw. I believe that the remedy was supposed to be frosted film.