To expect the loos at my ds's secondary school to be cleaned and usable?

[Noellefielding]

ds says that they were so bad that they were decorated not long ago but within two days they were disgusting again.

He says they are covered in rubbish, urine, the loos are blocked, the locks are broken.

He will only pee in them if he has no choice. He says they were done up last year...

Is this usual? It's an all boys' school, very tough in discipline but they are unsupervised in the loos, I wonder if that's why they let off steam there to such a horrible extent.

So is this common?
Why don't the school address it?
Are there ways that it could be addressed?

Ours were perfectly normal and fine when I went to later secondary school (though my first experience of the toilets at my first secondary were to witness the beating of a girl so bad she had broken ribs. I left that school after two years, thankfully). These schools were in Australia.
Did a quick check with my son about his school loos - they're perfectly clean, though the paper dispenser is central and outside the cubicles. There's sometimes water around the sinks, but that's all. (French elementary school).

We have perfectly serviceable toilets and they are cleaned twice a day.

They are still usually gross. The kids don't look after them at all, it's disgusting.

The little ones don't flush or wash their hands and the older ones.... Well god knows what they do but it's not pleasant.

If they are going to behave like animals then it's their own fault they don't have anywhere nice to go to the loo.

I'm in a new build high school. We have unisex blocks of about 5 cubicles dotted over the floors, with very open area for basins. No mirrors.
Staff on duty at breaks in handwashing area.
Other than some not flushing, we don't have any problems at all and it is a very tough school in a deprived catchment.

One of the things I REALLY like about my DC's secondary (state comp) is that one of its stated ambitions (in lots of handbooks, documentation etc) is to have the best school toilets in the country.

I just think that their determination to get even the most humdrum part of every pupil's school experience to be excellent (their food is also great, healthy and cheap) is really admirable.

Schools toilets are always disgusting but you have to ask who makes them so horrible? Its some of those who use them and there is very little anyone can do about that.

We have cctv in the toilets of the school I work in. Just facing the outside of the cubicles.

I also left school over 20 years ago and yet can still remember the smell of the toilets. Well, more accurately, the boys toilets. Hideous.

The girls toilets were not that nice, always freezing cold, and didn't smell great but nothing like the hideous squalor described on this thread. They did however have two towels on rollers and no hand dryers or disposable paper cloths for drying your hands. The towels appeared to only be changed during each holiday, and these toilets catered for about 600 girls. They smelt rotten by the end of the second day of term. I remember in biology the teacher got someone to go out, wash their hands, then dry them on the towel, then press their hands onto agar plates. The stuff that had grown on those by the next week, as compared with the control version where another person with unwashed hands did the same, will never leave me. I am an obsessive towel changer in my own home as a result.

God toilets at my high school were utterly grim. They all seemed in be miles from anywhere and completely secluded. You were so scared to use them that you needed to as a group coz you never knew what you'd find! I once peed myself on the way home I'd held it for so lang rather than use them. I was 14!
I work in primary and despite being cleaned everyday they are also shocking. At the moment we have a persistent floor pee-er in the ks1 girls loos. I mean come on, surely it's easier to use the loo? But looking at the kids I couldn't imagine a single one doing it but there it is nearly everyday.

I've used the girls' loos at ds's school several times and found them clean, with soap and with working dryers. Also have never smelt anything walking past the boys' loos.

In the main this has been on parents evening, so maybe they make a special effort or something.

Oh, just remembered; I could smell the loos several corridors away at a boys school we looked at - put me right off.

Both state comprehensives btw.

We have lovely open plan unisex toilet. They are generally clean. The kids also have Dyson hand driers.

They aren't all grim.

Our kids have been to three secondaries, four counting 6th form, and three of the four have had reasonably clean or indeed sparkling loos.

The other one though...

Apparently at my DD's school (secondary) the loos are appalling. There was a lot of fuss because they were locked during lesson time due to vandalism...
The whole building is in a less than great state - there are plans for a new school, just lots of arguments about where they are going to build it. But what always makes me laugh is there is a group that are lobbying for the new school - they post photos of the (boy's) loos at DDs school and compare them to the lovely ones in a relatively nearby new build school...don't know when the photos were taken but I do suspect before any children had been in there....they are immaculate whereas DD's school ones have broken locks, loo roll on the floor etc - so do the children at the new school not write on the walls, break locks and strew loo roll around?
(In the new ones the girls have a large 'ladies' image on the wall (the one with the skirt) and the boys a 'mens' image. Even the child in me (and I didn't even do things like this as a teen) feels tempted to draw a willy on the boys and boobs on the girls...do wonder if they have cctv in there -I bet if they don't someone must have by now...).

I seem to have gone to the only secondary school with decent toilets! The girl's toilets had the occasional broken lock or a bit of paper on the floor but nothing gross (a least nothing that I remember).

Obviously I don't know how the boys toilets were but I don't remember hearing any horror stories.

Unfortunately I think it is a small minority of pupils being gross or destructive that make life worse for all of them. It is hard to see what they could do about it.

My dcs are at a very strict private school in France. They have neither toilet paper nor soap in the toilets. When I asked why, I was told that after many attempts to solve the blocked drains/ toilet rolls stuck to the ceiling etc, they put a dispenser outside the toilets. The next day it was set on fire. My dd goes to school with her own toilet roll but I don't think ds goes all day. Awful.

Apparently we have had two recent incidents in the school I'm currently working in, in which faeces have been spread on the basins and windowsills.

I'm new to the school and can't believe the light-hearted, gossipy response to this. I've taught for a long time but have never heard anything so vile. Behaviour is just awful, but we as teachers are constantly criticised for escalating disciplinary matters.

ERIC is an interesting group working for children's rights to go. Apparently there is no requirement in law to provide decent loos for schoolchildren.

These new unisex, open plan ones sound like a successful approach. They have to be central though and visible. Some places have had success when adults and children share the loo space, but I guess that isn't going to suit everyone.

For children with continence issues - it must be a nightmare, but maybe they get access to the disabled loos at least? Shudder at the thought of how a child could suffer over this.

lapsed20 that is horrific.

and completely unfair to the cleaners!

Ds's last school was the same, revolting loos and he would hold on all day.

Loves the toilets at his new school!

How odd. Ours are all absolutely fine.

The infant loo's in the school I worked in a while ago were disgusting, as were the junior boys toilets. They were done up and sorted a few times and always ended up in a deplorable state. However it didn't help that the caretaker we had at the time didn't give a damn about it, and would grumble and swear if it was mentioned by anyone, until someone went to the headteacher. Needless to say he was eventually sacked for being an ass lazy and not doing his job properly. After Mr sweary grumble caretaker left, the head at my place ensured the toilets were better cared for and the toilets were checked every so often in the day.

It may be worth mentioning what your DS had told you to someone in the school to see if anything can be sorted.