To expect high schools to provide lockers?

[houseinthecorner]

My daughter starts year 7 on Thursday in her high school but they don't have lockers so my child had to carry her cost, PE bag, books and folders ect around with her all day. Am I being unreasonable to expect a Locket to be provided so she can at least store her coat? And other things ?

Interestingly the DC have the opposite issue - the school corridors are very narrow (cost saving exercise when it was built) so they have a "no bags" policy and the DC have to leave everything in their locker(except what is needed for next lesson) during the day.

We had lockers AND cloakrooms. Spoilt, obviously.

No hoods will be because there has been an issue with violence or bullying involving pulling or filling hoods.

A rule like that would be enough to get a school crossed off my shortlist.

Ditto, rules banning toilet visits outside lunchtime.

Ditto any school with the attitude that pupils can do without basic facilities because those facilities would "take up space".

I suspect many schools have lost space for lockers as rolls increase and the number of subjects covered also increases. That is certainly in issue in my school which has to accommodate 25% more children than it was built for.

Our pupils frequently ask for lockers but without a significant rebuild there simply isn't room. Bulky equipment is usually delivered to the relevant department first thing. Or pupils leave stuff in friendly departments. I am always housing violins and art wallets.

And just to add to the discussion on nomenclature, in Scotland I believe traditionally high school went to s4 and if you wanted to study beyond that then you went to an academy. I went to an academy and students from the very rural high school came to us for their final two years.

I think taking work home is good practice anyway as it can be reviewed regularly rather than important work being dumped in a locker and left there

Oh for the days when you could just hang a coat in the cloakroom without fear of it being stolen, your pe bag under the coat. Books, well they were in your desk, again no one touched them. Was this some long ago mythical age? Well I was at grammar school in the 60s and that is how it was. Isn't it a shame it changed so much. I feel for kids carting round so much stuff that they look life refugees searching for a safe place. I hope their backs survive the punishment, I can barely life my DGS bag.

Coat hooks would be bloody brilliant, as would somewhere to leave the sort of shoes in which you could comfortably walk to school (including massive furry-lined boots in the dead of winter)

Not going to happen.

DS got round it by playing the tuba, and leaving the huge case lurking in the music room, stuffed with everything else he didn't want to carry round for the day.

I would agree with you SerfTerf except some of us don't have the luxury of a short list. It's X School or home education.

Oh and I think the no hoods on coats rule is bizarre and a bit of a stretch. We ask that hoods are taken down inside but I have never even considered hoods not being allowed.

We have lockers but never use them as keep loosing the keys. Also DD had a habit of leaving her P.E. kit, coat or any homework in it and it was useless. Don't know hardly any children that take coats to school these days and we are in Scotland!

I started high school in 1992. Ours was the only class with lockers - others had desks or pigeon holes. The following year everyone had lockers. We went back to them at break and at lunch and at the end of the day. There was also a cloakroom for coats and pe kit. I think not having anywhere to store your coat is actually piss poor planning.

That is true peng. We had an incident which really only occurred because hoods were up so intruders weren't recognised as such until too late. We don't allow hoods up in the building at all or in the grounds. Obviously this annoys kids and parents when it is cold and wet but some arguments no one wins really

@redexpat you started high school around the same time as me. Our school was a big nineteen sixties, multi building much extended structure. I think we had around 1200 students. It was poor planning but that's what happens when you grow ad hoc around expanding demand. Solutions that were intended to be temporary fixes became long term solutions, like portacabin classrooms... there had been lockers but they were mostly removed in favour of other facilities.

We did have a swimming pool though, that miraculously still functioned!

Gosh, I would have loved a locker at school, but alas, our school didn't have any. We went to a coffee morning in a local school and they had lockers (and it was a really old building; over 100 years). I was very impressed

I went to a shit school with about 1200 kids. 1960's build and no lockers. I would have been satisfied with actually learning something tbh.

Fair point wombling, we have always at least had the advantage of being in a city.

I remember there was a news thing about the amount of stuff kids were lugging around School potentially causing back problems. That was 20 years ago and there was a call for all schools to provide lockers then.

It's all very well saying just take what you need in but my kids school expects them to take everything just in case a teacher is not there and they get another subject instead. My teens bag weighs a ton. I wouldn't want to carry it around all day. But they do have lockers for gym kit, coats etc . Even in the 70s we had coat pegs to put coats and gym bags on they didn't take up much room at all.

If they can't design a school without some sort of provision for coats (imagine carrying a wet coat around all day!) then they need new architects.

Ours is new but still has room for lockers for all the kids.

I remember there was a news thing about the amount of stuff kids were lugging around School potentially causing back problems. That was 20 years ago and there was a call for all schools to provide lockers then

Exactly.

I have spinal problems. I don't think anybody takes spines very seriously until they crumble 😏

Well I was at grammar school in the 60s and that is how it was. Isn't it a shame it changed so much.

Don't think it's so much that "things have changed" as that some places have always been more 'decent' than others. My DP went to grammar school in the '60s, and they certainly weren't 'naice' by his accounts. Other schools of the time, thanks to rampant violence by pupils AND staff, kids counted themselves lucky if they survived intact--let alone their stuff.

@willow2017 my school was a sixties build. We didn't have coat pegs for every classroom (and to be honest, no way I was leaving my coat out of my eyesight). Poor planning yes, but not limited to present day.

Re 'not enough room for the kids'. There are recurrent threads about the levels of fatness/obesity nowadays (whereas in my '80s childhood, few were fatand no, we weren't salad-nibbling MC kids). Maybe physical crowding in schools is another reason to be concerned by it? (slightly tongue-in-cheekyes, I know it's mostly blamed on the size of the school rolls rather than the size of the kids).

I was at school in the 80s.
we had no lockers - annoyingly there were some in a few departments but we weren't allowed to use them so they sat empty for all 5 years.
the school could have made money renting them to the first100 pupils to bring the money.

And they introduced a "coats must be in bags" rule after we all started refusing to leave them in the cloak room (I left mine there once, it got vandalised) so we all brought carrier bags to put the coats in once inside a classroom. utterly pointless.

No room for them in my school, the corridors are narrow enough as it is.