School toilets: How should they be designed?

[Watchagotcha]

With the potential return to school, school toilet provision is in the news here in France.

I’ve got two DSs, in primary and secondary. Throughout their school lives, toilet provision has been consistently dire - and nothing has changed since I was at school in the UK 30 years ago: vandalism, bullying, unhygienic conditions, dirty facilities.

Nursery - no cubicles, just small dividing walls between toilets. Large shared sink (taps to turn on/off), liquid soap and two small shared cloth towels for drying, changed at once at lunch time.

Primary & secondary: No toilet paper in the cubicles (as some children were using it to block the toilets and flood them), just a big shared roll outside the cubicles - often empty. Sinks with taps, cold water only, no soap ever, no hand towels (for environmental and economic reasons), no dryers = no way to dry hands. And poor behaviour as there’s no supervision / closed space: blocking toilets and sinks to cause a flood, making tp blobs to stick to the ceiling, etc. and worse.

So how can they be made to work better? How do we balance the right to privacy with the need to supervise children and prevent bad behaviour? How can we provide a space that promotes good hygiene and behaviour to a group that inevitably includes some bampots?

Oops meant to turn off voting - sorry

We have separate toilets for girls and boys, but no ‘door’ to close them off. The sinks are horizontal so from the front that’s all you can see. Behind the sinks are the cubicals. They have shutters to lock them lesson time and when open there is a member if staff on The entrance constantly.

The toilets at the primary are ok actually. Row of cubicles and a row of sinks. Dd says there’s never any soap though, and nothing to dry your hands with.

Dd1 won’t go in her secondary school toilets because they smell of wee apparently. She just doesn’t drink all day instead

However they design them, they need to have good airflow to reduce the stench in summer!!

The best solution I heard of, a long time ago when schools had more money, was a secondary school head who identified the toilets as a prime site of poor behaviour. He refurbished the toilets so that they were in good condition and arranged them as they are at a motorway services, with a room for a toilet attendant in between. Head employed a full time toilet attendant to keep the loos in good condition and a lot of the behaviour issues reduced.

@Sewingbea I think I remember reading that article too.

A toilet attendant, that would be a huge improvement. At DSs primary there are staff on duty in the playground (toilets are directly off the playground) but it doesn't seem to prevent bad behaviour - and they certainly aren't there to monitor hand-washing etc. And if someone asks to go to the toilet during lessons, the teacher can't go with them.

It just seemed dire to me that the education minister is on tv, promising something as absolutely basic as making soap available in the toilets, as a way of trying to reassure parents that it's a good idea to send children back to school... shouldn't this just be a given? Why isn't there any soap in the first place? Why do we accept such shitty (pun intended) conditions in schools for our children in the first place?

Are there any alternatives to adult supervision? Is there any way to design toilets that respect privacy but prevent anti-social behaviour?

At the motorway services they also have a continuous cleaning rota - someone signs every time the toilets are cleaned, every couple of hours probably. Maybe that's something that could be done: massively increase the frequency of toilet cleaning in schools?

Absolutely @watchagotcha, totally agree. But part of the problem is lack of funding, not just the money to improve the toilets but the heavy 'mental load' on staff in schools which means that creative solutions aren't found because staff are ground down trying to do everything that is already demanded of them.

It undermines any faith I have in the govt to manage a return to school TBH: if they can't achieve something as basic as getting soap, dryers and toilet paper in the toilets, how can they be trusted to implement anything else? Oops didn't want this to be a C-19 thread, I genuinely was wondering if it's possible to improve toilet provision in schools.

Just wonder how long it will be before transgender toilet issues etc are mentioned on this thread...

I visited a school where the sinks and dryers were divided, but fully visible, and the toilets all with floor to ceiling doors. It all opened on to the big communal space, so effectively monitored by being completely open.

It was also used by the staff and guests like us - completely above board, no way to misbehave or violate privacy as it would be immediately obvious.

I expected to feel awkward as an adult using the pupil's loos, but it felt very normal by the end of the day.

Do we really expect the government to manage getting soap, driers and loo paper into each of the 24,000 schools in England ? Surely this is something schools ought to be able to manage for themselves.

My children’s school has separate boys and girls toilets. The front “wall” of the bathroom is floor to ceiling glass. On the left hand wall is individual sinks with mirrors above, each with its own automatic soap dispenser and hand dryer. The toilets are against the back wall and each toilet is inside its own little room (like an individual toilet in the home). We also have beautiful chalkboard artwork with quotes on all the doors, which is changed twice a year. Both the boys and girls toilets are exactly the same.

We have never had any issues with the mess you describe (and I never experienced it when I was at school), so I would suggest teaching the kids to respect property to start with and probably packing toilet paper and soap for your children to use.

At the preschool my children attended they had mini cubicles (with doors), automatic taps and soap and a paper towel dispenser. A communal towel is a terrible idea for ge spreading preschoolers.

The new school building here has individual cubicles - a bit like the standalone disabled loos in shops and the likes. Each has its own sink and towel dispenser. Full floor to ceiling doors. They open out onto a narrow corridor that, unless there is a queue, no-one should be standing in, so it’s easily monitored.

The boys and girls toilets are also at opposite ends of the building and apparently that has helped no end. In the old school they were opposite each other.

That’s not practical in every school though I know.

Oh god. DS is always moaning about his secondary toilets. The "naughty" year 11's hog them and he said there's never any soap.
Exactly the same as when I was at still 30 years ago.
I trust nursery and primary to enforce handwashing more than secondary schools.

Frequent teacher patrols of toilets.

Floor to ceiling walls and doors.

Frequent cleaning.

And, not getting into trans issues, but girls need their own toilets for both toiletting and menstruating privacy.

Christ, it was bad enough making any noise or opening a wrapper with other girls about. Boys in the next cubicle a lot of girls will stay home a week a month. Obviously not a desirable outcome.

My daughter goes to the same school that I went to, 30 years ago. When I was at school we had terrible toilets, smelly, and there was one towel on a roller which was changed rarely. We actually used to take samples from it in biology class to grow bacteria. Now, the toilets are much the same except about half of the cubicles are locked because the toilets are broken beyond repair, and they have replaced the communal towel with a handryer that is always broken. They don't even have sanitary disposal bins.

They're an absolute disgrace.

Some schools are the same here. I was teaching an after school club in one (covering) and two girls had been a while in the toilets as we were packing away. I nudged the door open so I couldn’t see in but enough so they’d hear me ask if they were ok. They were messing about in a cubicle, together, with the door shut, but bloody hell Im not even tall and I could literally see over the top of the door completely! Year sixes are regularly taller than me so it’s quite shocking really !

Also my bug bear is no soap and nothing to dry hands with. I wouldn’t wash my hands either in that situation !

It would make sense to have a single toilet room per 4 classes in a little zone for during lesson visits. Only accessible via a teacher key so only used during the lessons time

Then, two large sets of communal toilet in the main areas of the school- one near the canteen and one near the outdoor space. Lots of enclosed toilets with no gaps round the doors. Communal sink area open to the rest of the school.

Or toilets in/attached to each classroom.