Doughnuts in the school toilet

[Pate101]

Just had a chat with my two kids, boy age 15 and girl age 13.

They told me that they hardly ever use the loos at school because they are so disgusting. They don't drink all day so they don't need to go.

The whole school only has 45 mins for lunch, there's nowhere to sit so kids eat their lunch in the loos.

There's food in the toilets and urinals, floating sandwiches, crisp packets, cakes 🤮 Some of the toilets don't lock and there's often no loo roll.

My daughter avoids using the loo even when she's on her period.

Is it unreasonable to expect my daughter to be able to have a reasonably clean toilet to use at school?

Yes vaping is a thing as well. Maybe that's why they eat in the loos. 🤢

I work in a school and we’re at a loss at how to deal with this. It’s mainly due to staffing at lunchtime. Teachers aren’t paid for lunches so are entitled to a break. Support staff could do a minimal duty but they too need their break as they’re hands on with kids in contact time. Mid day assistants are difficult to find so it leaves SLT who usually manage the queues and playground areas. There has been some awful vandalism in our toilets alongside whole groups eating and vaping in there 🤢

My daughter's school is the same ( with regards to nowhere to eat ). There is 30 minutes to get 2000 kids through the dining room, absolutely nowhere near enough seating fir them all. They grab the food and wander round outside eating it generally.

This is me three times a week. Loitering outside the boys toilets. Moving people back outside rather than hanging out. Stopping people going into cubicles in groups. Preventing sneaking vaping. Being there so they are not tempted to break the handdriers/sinks/doors etc. If anyone started eating their lunch in there I would move them outside!

Three other lot of loos in our school is 1 unisex, 2 girls also monitored over lunchtime to prevent vaping/vandalism.

The final sets of loos (another 2 girls, 1 boys) are out of bounds (whole block is....as these are the loos with the dodgiest pipes so were routinely blocked by kids...hence only open in lesson time).

The staff loitering is working though. Less/no vaping. Less loo roll shoved down to block/vandalism. The younger kids don't feel intimidated by crowds of "cool" badly behaved Year 11s hanging around them. It is not the most delightful way to spend 30 minutes - but it is worth it for the results.

Oh, and we have magic things called benches/picnic tables on the playground.

There are easy solutions for the school.

But guess what - they cost money (and school have none as the govenernment has reduced their budget by 5% due to the unfunded payrise).

I remember our school toilets were disgusting. I can't imagine eating in them 🤢

The same at my daughter school. She buys lunch on the walk in now as it’s so abysmal there. The ‘canteen’ is tiny. It’s more like a canteen for a small office her primary schools was bigger as it was in the hall. The food is disgusting and there is no chance of healthy options.

Yes, the should be, but where is the money going to come from?

@Boomboom22 are you offering to clean the toilets

The problem with school toilets is that the kids make a disgusting mess in there and you can never actually catch the culprits. They are probably being cleanef daily but it is a loosing game.

Sadly, and against all my principles, we had to severely limit use of the toilets during lesson time last year in my primary school as the girls kept writing nasty messages in there about each other, had several suspects who were questionned but they never own up as they know you can't prove it. Half the parents complain that we're not letting them use the loo. The other half complain that their child has had graffiti written about them in the toilet.

Ultimately, the kids will have to take collective responsibility to keep the toilets nice but the school are not helping matters if there is literally nowhere to sit & eat. That said, I would rather stand outside in the rain than eat in a toilet.

That’s vile! I’d be complaining.

Pupils don't eat in my son's school toilets. But they are very grim and my son won't take a drink to school so he can avoid using the toilet.

If there isn't enough seating they'll have to stagger lunch.

Supervising the loos at break will be the first thing to drop off if they're short staffed.

There should be somewhere to sit for lunch but even if there isn’t, who eats their lunch in the toilets? So weird to choose to eat in the toilet. It’s disgusting.

Surely as a last resort they could eat their sandwiches on the grass outside? Or tell a member of staff there are no seats in the canteen so maybe they can help find somewhere other than the toilets 😂

This doesn’t ring true.

Reading this thread is bizarre.

My secondary school had perfectly fine toilets which could be used any time of day and we all were able to eat in classrooms or the canteen as required. Or outside in summer.

Why are all these children being treated like prisoners 😖

I'd be taking this to the Daily Mail.

Older Secondary school buildings probably house more students than they used to, so canteens are no longer fit for purpose when it comes to space.

Many schools have very poor facilities. And most don’t have grass outside! But even if they did have seating outside, it’s not a very appealing option for at least 50% of the year, when it’s cold or raining.

Even at my DD’s private school the dining room was quite small, but they managed it by having different groups eating at different times, as they had a long lunch break (and a long school day). I can imagine this would not be an option for many much larger comprehensives.

Yanbu. But isn't this just another example of public services being decimated by Tory austerity? Taxes need to go up massively to get us back to a reasonable level of service.

It's really hard to believe that the school doesn't have a plan for where pupils will eat lunch. Are you sure they don't just prefer to eat - and muck about - in the toilets than in any of the designated areas? What happens if they tell a teacher that there are no seats and then ask where they should eat their lunch?

Some unbelieving people on this thread obviously haven't been in some secondary schools lately. They're overcrowded, underfunded, falling apart at the seams. No money to improve matters and no space to accommodate the huge number of students that seems to multiply every year.

A it disappointed that the thread isn’t about people driving their car round in circles in toilets

The school needs to get senior teachers in the toilets on duty, before the breaks to stop bullying.Then those eating need a letter sending home pointing out the unhygienic nature of eating in the toilets and the outcry there would be, if it was encouraged in the school prospectus!
It soon sorts problems, I know I was that teacher!😂
Before anyone mentions teachers workloads, breaks etc. those on the Leadership scale are paid to go above and beyond.

Why can’t they sit in their form rooms? That’s where we always used to sit. Our school had about 800 people in it but the canteen probably sat 200 at a push. You just had to make it work 🤷‍♀️ I would never have eaten my lunch in the bogs, how stupid.

The average size of a secondary school in the 1950s was 300 students, it is now about 1000 students. Some of those buildings are still in use, with a variety of extra buildings added. Not all canteens have grown to be able to take this increase. Schools don’t have funding to build bigger canteens. Schools don’t have funding to have staff in all classrooms where students could eat

We used to have a MEGA scary deputy head who prowled the corridors and breathed fire if anyone was messing about! "Green's coming" was enough to make anyone scarper!