AIBU to think that my secondary age child at Harris Academy should not have to be “accompanied” to the toilet by a member of staff.

[Beetrootmashup]

The policy at Harris Beckenham is that any child who wishes to use the toilet/bathroom for any reason, sickness, genuine need i.e. caught out, ( it happens to the best of us adults even.) period management the runs. Must be accompanied to the loo by the assistant principle of their house. The principle must be contacted by the teacher, I don’t know how, taken out of lessons (they teach.) make their way to the class room, before your child has time to be sick/wet themselves/bleed through.
I think it’s crazy. I thought we were teaching children to be independent self sufficient members of society but we can’t trust them to trot of to the bathroom sort themselves out and get back to class in good time? Does your Harris academy have this crazy rule?
So the vote is ;
Should Harris academy Schools insist that any child who needs the toilet or bathroom at any time during a lesson must be accompanied to the bathroom by the assistant principle. Yes or No?

Wrecked your innards? Really, if you used breaks to go to the loo then how long would you need to "hold on" to wreck your innards. I assume you could never watch a film at the cinema without having to go to the loo, never go on a journey that lasted longer than what 90 minutes from door to door, lots of jobs would be a health hazard.

How do teachers manage, do they often have to rush out of a lesson.

I'd have wrecked my innards holding on in a school like that.

Unless you have a medical condition, surely you wouldn’t need to go during lessons often enough to ‘wreck your innards’?

1forsorrow, teachers manage by restricting their liquid intake and essentially dehydrating themselves on a daily basis. This is because the sands of the job - early starts for setting up, teaching, playground duty, meetings etc, actually make finding time to get to the toilet really difficult. I know this because both DD teach primary. Both limit their drinks through the day. Both get in around 7am and leave between 6pm and 7pm, in order to have as little weekend workload as possible. They both know it's unhealthy and could lead to UTIs. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Demands of the job, not sands!

I bet there is a small group who are taking the piss, or not as the case may be.

I've done supply so I'm used to different school rules, I have been in aael tst one classroom where students would walk in on their way to/from the toilets, for really important reasons such as hand over a hairband, tell me I was shit at my job or to sing.

Lots of schools lock the toilets during lessons.

Ok so re independent young people and being able to hold your bladder. Most of the time most adults with no medical needs relating, will not get caught short. Sometimes we will. Same goes for kids. I’d say actually for children the proportion would be higher and they will be able to hold their bladder for less time overall. A child who uses the bathroom at 6.30 travels to school at 7.30 registers at 8.30 does not have a 20 minute break until 11.35. That’s a long time. They have two back to back double lessons in the morning. If the odd kid forgets to use the loo during those 20 minutes-( I’d suggest there wouldn’t be enough loos thinking about it for a 20 minute dash by most of the school.) then the assistant principle must leave their class. It’s a nonsense. What about the kids in that class?
No I don’t want every Tom Dick and Harry nipping our every five minutes that would of course be silly and disruptive. But I think that this practice has not been thought through. It’s a very very blunt tool.

If the odd kid forgets to use the loo during those 20 minutes-( I’d suggest there wouldn’t be enough loos thinking about it for a 20 minute dash by most of the school.) then the assistant principle must leave their class. It’s a nonsense

But if it’s the odd kid (as it should be) it shouldn’t be that onerous for the assistant principle. But anyway, that’s a management issue. The odd kid being accompanied to the toilet on the odd occasion that they might need it during a lesson (for me, probably five or six times in the whole of school) isn’t a huge issue that’s going to affect their growth as independent adults. They know they are capable of going to the bathroom alone, I assume, as they do it all the time at home. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I work in a secondary school and this policy will be to stop students leaving class unless they really need to. Students are repeatedly reminded to use the toilets at breaktime. We have a number of LSAs who support children with needs - so some of the examples given in your OP - would not be dealt with in that way.

We do not have the same policy but any student in corridors at lesson time is challenged. (Under guidelines from SEND and Pastoral teams). But despite this we have still had vandalism.

What was interesting was during the recent mocks the number of students who needed loo breaks during a 1hr 15 min mock. They lose that time. So really need to be learning to manage this.

I think yabu.

A secondary school child should have better ability to hold on. They won’t have damaged pelvic floors like many of their mothers.

It’s a long long time since I left school but once I reached secondary I don’t ever remember a fellow pupil (all girls) asking to leave class in lesson to go to the toilet. We went on the breaks. It’s training for the real world. People don’t suddenly leave meetings, lectures etc for the toilet. People can hold it! In a medical emergency we had to be accompanied by another student. I don’t remember that ever happening. But nobody was dealing drugs or fighting or having sex in the toilets. It was the 80s.

Pp I hadn’t thought about the knife crime angle. If I’m honest I hadn’t really thought about the drugs angle either. I wonder if either of these things are an issue or if it’s purely a disruption issue. Makes you think twice though about how safe your children are at school at breaks and lunch and going to and from school. 😬

Knife crime is an issue. And as a PP said, it isn’t just on television. I have confiscated a machete off a 13 year old pupil who was dealing drugs both inside school and outside school - a victim of country lines really but very deep into it. The pupil was excluded but he isn’t the only pupil we have who is involved with drugs/gangs.

From the school staff who've posted on here it doesn't seem that much is being done to tackle the knives and drugs though. Suspended a student isn't enough.

Social services and the police need to be involved every single time.

From the school staff who've posted on here it doesn't seem that much is being done to tackle the knives and drugs though. Suspended a student isn't enough.

In any school I have worked in, police would be called and SS informed of incidents involving weapons or drugs. That’s not the problem here. The problem is that even at that level, the threshold for exclusion very often isn’t met, not least because the students involved in such things are often highly vulnerable and exclusion would make them more so. So they win their appeals and come back to school, quite often.

Makes you think twice though about how safe your children are at school at breaks and lunch and going to and from school. 😬

Yes, it’s a scary world. That’s why teachers have to take safeguarding seriously.

@Tunnocks34
Wtf!! My god that’s horrendous.

“**So they win their appeals and come back to school, quite often.”

No that’s bloody worrying for so many reasons.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/education/weapons-knives-school-children-police-crime-gangs-violence-latest-a9156761.html%3famp

It’s all horrendous.

But what bothers me in addition to it, is when teachers are doing their best and very often putting themselves in harms way to protect their students from incidents like this, parents still moan about measures taken to try to manage it.

No that’s bloody worrying for so many reasons.

No shit. But there are myriad reasons an appeal can succeed, even when there is a wealth of evidence that a child is unmanageable in a mainstream context. There is also a very vocal minority (backed by a press campaign) who want exclusions ended altogether.

Which is why schools need to communicate their issues with parents properly and with a good and pertinent amount of disclosure. So parents can say my school doesn’t seem to have a problem like knife crime and drugs in the loos however they just have too much disruption.

And ofstead too. That would be handy. What about a section on any ofstead report that details the amount of times a school has had to contact social services or the police over crimes on school grounds or involving school pupils. People really don’t know what they are sending their children into because of the veil of safeguarding.

Which is why schools need to communicate their issues with parents properly and with a good and pertinent amount of disclosure. So parents can say my school doesn’t seem to have a problem like knife crime and drugs in the loos however they just have too much disruption

Define good and pertinent. Safeguarding leads would be pilloried (and rightly so) if they went about disclosing incidents to the whole parent body. They can’t.

Take an example like a pupil is caught carrying a knife. School tells all the parents. Before you know it, the student’s rival is carrying a knife, and you have a death in the school, directly attributable to the disclosure. It’s a very bad idea.

Heads and teachers run schools. They deserve the leeway and trust from parents who choose to put their children into their care to do it as they see fit, obviously within the law.

Given the amount of time this will take staff to implement, there must have been serious problems.

What about a section on any ofstead report that details the amount of times a school has had to contact social services or the police over crimes on school grounds or involving school pupils.

That is outside the remit of Ofsted, really. Their job is to evaluate the effectiveness of the safeguarding and the quality of education, not to act as an information conduit for parents. Although I sympathise with your opinion there.

Thanks, that’s the issue also. This school is rated outstanding on every single level. Including behaviour. So as a parent am I supposed to imagine that ofstead’s report isn’t actually worth the paper it’s written on? If behaviour is outstanding it would be reasonable for a parent with no teaching insider knowledge to imagine it is a school without any of these serious issues. God it’s a minefield.