AIBU to be angry that this is still happening!

[CosmicCanary]

Bristol News

I know this is not the only girl this has happened to. I know there will be many many girls who have suffered the same humiliation in school just today.

I was one of them many years ago.
So many times i bled through my pad in lesson but I knew asking to go to the toilet in would be met with a NO so i didn't bother. It was a humiliation in its self for the whole class to know you needed the loo. Such a public audience for an other wise private act.

I have already told my DDs should they need the toilet they must ask but if refused walk out of lesson if they absolutely cannot wait and I will deal with school.
They will not suffer the humiliation and shame of leaving blood on a school chair as I did.

Oh you are funny.

Really? How? What I said is simply what happens in schools where I am. And when I was in school myself before mobile phones were even around we used the office phone. Sometimes at my last job at a primary school working in the admin in office, parents would ring up to get a message to their child that so-and-so can't pick them up today so they will need to catch the bus, etc. It was my job to relay that message. You seem to be living in a different dimension if the office phone is foreign to you. I can only hope you are trolling or playing devil's advocate because surely you cannot be serious.

@jacomax Why would then being well maintained even be an issue? They are toilets. They are there to be used. Denying a child their basic human and health rights is sick, depraved and sociopathic.

@Anewoneforme That is so terrible! I cannot believe we are talking about the UK, a supposedly first world country. Here, parents support the school if the school explains to the parents fully why the strike is, what it means, what it means for the school/what they are trying to achieve, etc. A couple of parents might whinge a bit but the overwhelming majority will support the school teachers and the school. Which is why striking always works here. Then again the unions don't throw in the towel so easily, they care about their schools and are determined to stop at nothing, even bring the schools to a standstill - which they have on a couple of occasions - to get their way. And it always works.

@jacomax I doubt very much the toilets are vandalised that much that they require locking. And if they are and the education system over there is in such a dysfunctional and chaotic mess, the toilets can just as easily be vandalised during break, as outside of break, anyway. It is no reason to lock toilets up, it fact it is absurd reasoning.

@jacomax My country does not seem to have the vandalism problem that you seem to have. Clearly as I've said twice before in this thread, the toilet vandalism (that is usually done during break or before school anyway) is a symptom of a school system that is dysfunctional and where the Principal and school has lost control. Strange many other schools/countries don't have an issue. The schools there clearly need to change their management style if vandalism is happening so much, because most schools I know don't seem to have that problem. You are trying to tackle it the wrong way, by locking toilets and stopping children from accessing toilets, and not using proper management/behavioural procedures. The toilet issue is a SYMPTOM of your dysfunctional and mismanaged education system over there, it is not the cause of it.

Salem

You say you don't know and are asking but then you proclaim as though you know it all. Where have you got 4 blocks taking ages to lick and unlock? There are 1 set of girls and 1 set of boys toilets in the main building - about 2 minutes apart. Another set in another building 2 minutes walk across the playground. Why is that an onerous job?

And no, I'm not trolling about office phones. Pupils can't just go into the office and use the phone. Plus by the time they had walked to the bus stop realised they had missed the bus and then walked back to school the office would have been shut.

You have to accept that the UK is different to wherever you are from. Things here work differently to what you are used to - that doesn't mean anyone is lying.

Teachers can stand "toilet duty" at break. Teachers don't get a loo break themselves at break as they are too busy doing playground duty or standing guard outside toilet blocks with an ear out for yells or smashing sounds. Seriously i am not making this up.
Teachers are well known for getting a stupid amount of UTIs as they don't drink as they don't get time to go to the loo. A friend of mine even ended up a whisker away from kidney failure as a result and was very ill for months.

@SaIemTheBlackCat

What country are you in?

is correct it is not nation wide.
Weet i was agreeing with another poster that the toilet ban is not natione wide not bad behaviour.

My children's secondary school banned them from bringing phones to school because some children had been misusing them -

Phones are not a natural bodily function

Students used to be allowed of campus at lunchtime until some started causing issues so then no one was allowed to leave. Why was that fair?

Not leaving campus at lunch will not affect your health and wellbeing.

Used to be able to take children out of school for 10 days. We never did it. Until one time when we really needed to take them out for 2 days but by then it had been banned due to other parents abusing it. Why is that fair?

Again not being able to go on holiday is not remotely like being banned from using the toilet.

Your comparisons are verging on the ridiculous now.

Your comparisons are verging on the ridiculous now.

They aren't comparisons.

They are examples of where others bad behaviour cause rules to be made that adversely affect innocent students, as I said up thread

One school I worked in only had one toilet block unlocked in lesson time - next to the deputy heads office who would work with his door open listening out for trouble.
Sinks ripped off walls, doing heroin, having sex, setting fire to toilet roll, self harm, suicide attempts etc.
Yup it's a cake walk being a teacher in the UK for 60 hour weeks for £25,000. But of course we get the holidays

@Weetabixandshreddies If you really think a Janitor's job is to sit around locking and unlocking every hour, then, I just..... can't. That to me is beyond absurd, in fact here we would say it is beyond a joke. The Janitor would not get anything done because if he was doing maintenance work and it was going to take an hour or so, he'd have to stop what he was doing and leave that to unlock toilets, then wait around for half an hour, to go back and unlock them, return to his main job only to go and lock them again. Who has time for that? Seriously just imagine it, it sounds unbelievably ridiculous.

Here, the school office is open generally half an hour to up to an hour after school has let out. That is to ensure bus duty is seen to, any other child safety issues etc. If a child misses a bus (or their parent doesn't pick them up/is late) they wait in the office foyer while we phone the contact numbers we have on the student data base. E.g most schools let out at 3pm and office hours are til 4pm.

@Weetabixandshreddies I'm in Australia.

Personally I plan only to do another year of supply then retrain in something. Anything
And the UK loses another science graduate with a good degree from a "red brick" university. Because it's not worth mental health. And when my kids get to secondary I may well pull them out to HE if they don't get into the grammar. Because I've taught in the local comp.....

What does teachers being attacked have to do with children using the toilet?

Quite frankly Jac and Weet each of your posts does nothing to back up your argument that children should be denied the human right of going to the toilet.

Weets posts are getting more daft by comparing needing the toilet to having a phone.
Jac you just sound like a nasty power tripping teacher that cares nothing for the health and wellbeing of the children you are trusted to care for.

Salem not all teachers think like these two. I feel most genuinely care about their students and would not want them distressed or ill because of their actions.
Luckily there have been a few such teachers on this thread.

Like you I question any adult who would want to control children in this way and see no wrong in doing so.
Schools are not prisons and children are not criminals there to be punished. Even prisoners have the right to access a toilet whenever they need to.

Why does not letting children go to loo during class imply I don't care ?

I think you used the words tough if they need to go in lesson on a previous post.

You are adamant that because you an adult cannot go then children cannot either.
You care nothing of the health implications, the discomfort, distress or humiliation that a toilet ban can cause to children.

You only care that your lesson is not disrupted and that children behave.

I find it sad that you can't trust your year 5 students. People always think it's secondary schools that are like this and yet it's often primary teachers I read on here refusing to let students use the toilet.

It is tough when they have had an hour for lunch and then claim to be desperate.

DD told me her timeline and i posted it on this thread.
Lunch is a choice between eat or use the toilet. I know from previous mn threads this is not unusual in schools especially Academies.
Plus when it comes to periods using the toilet 15 minutes ago will not change the fact you can suddenly come on or have a "flood" which requires attention.