Should I complain about this?

[hollywally54]

I know this has already been done recently but my year 7 ds came home from school with a letter yesterday regarding toilet use. From this week, only children with a pre approved toilet pass will be able to leave lessons to go to the toilet. And in order to get one of these parents will need to provide medical evidence of a long term health issue.

They have generously said that children suffering from temporary issues such as infections or periods (?!?!) can get a pass but these will also need to be approved.

I feel outraged to be honest. Of course there will be kids who take the piss (no pun intended) but there are a hell of a lot of shy, genuine children who are probably going to feel really uncomfortable about this blanket ban on toilet use. What if someone has an accident in class? Can you imagine the shame? Surely teachers are able to quite quickly determine the kids who are trying to skive and those who are genuine? Is it worth complaining about this?

You can pee before and after school too. Or is not being able to pee on a bus a human rights infringement too?

Not this again.

Of course a policy like that is needed.

We have found children in our toilets who had disassembled sharpeners and cut themselves or tried to take their lives.

We have had students hide drugs in roof tiles of toilets for others to later on take - dealing on premises.

We have found numerous students vaping, smoking (setting off fire alarms regularly, even during official bloody GCSE exams!).

We have found one particular couple having full on sex, and a few others where blow jobs were being dealt for money.

In each case, the teachers who let the kids out were held to account, because at the end of the day, they were in loco parentis.

That is not even mentioning the hundreds of students disrupting the flow of lessons regularly. You're explaining something, ask a question and get hands up, only to get a "can I go to the toilet". You get children leave lessons (with permission or without), creating disruption to those who have to move their seats, those who get distracted, both on the way there and back. You get hundreds of children arriving late to every lesson because they spend 10mins finding a toilet between every lesson. You get bullying, popping heads into other lessons to chat to mates.

If you think I'm exaggerating, please visit an average large town comp.

Toilet passes are a pain in the arse, too, because I have to check every time, because the kid will inevitably not have theirs and I have to look their name up every time. But they're still preferable to the disciplinary I could face if a kid comes to serious harm and I let them out.

I have girls on their periods all the time, too. I apply discretion and I never allow more than 3 kids to go in any one lesson (and yet I have one class where I will have 3 asking to go every lesson, and try to be the first of my 3 max). I make them wait, too. I insist on work being done, because I will often get asked when they have to write something or think independently.

Please do provide an alternative. I'd love for the issue to be solved.

I have 2 teen DDs and their senior school has the same rule. I have told them that if they are ever desperate enough to need to go to the loo during a lesson, they are to ask the teacher and if they are refused permission, they are to go anyway. Dealing with a phone call from school about disobedience or them having to complete a detention are far less of a concern than having a toileting accident, or bleed in class.

My girls are Yrs 10 and 12, and neither have ever needed to ask to use the toilet during lessons, but I would be happy to stand up for them if they got in trouble because they did need to.

Children need to learn basic body management. That includes preempting toilet trips and going at breaks or between lessons. I really shouldn't be that hard for the majority of kids the majority of the time. Illness, sudden periods etc, of course are a concession. My daughter (age 9) has a medical need to toilet hourly, but as a teacher I know how disruptive to her education and others that could be. So she goes at appropriate times between lessons. Following school rules works better for everyone.

When I was at school we didn't have a policy on this. Just teachers using their common sense when someone asked to go to the toilet. Usual suspects that they knew would mess about would have been told no, and anyone they thought was genuine was allowed. There were a few people who had passes that were for a variety of reasons which meant the teachers weren't allowed to question it.

Throughout secondary school I had hideously heavy and painful periods. I didn't have a medical condition, I was just an 11 year old trying to figure out how to manage periods. Sometimes that meant that I overestimated a pad's absorbancy, and having to stand in front of a class and explain to a male teacher that I think my pad had leaked in order to leave the classroom would absolutely have meant I would have been off sick instead of being at school for a week a month.

Can you imagine the uproar if a typically disruptive student kept saying they need the toilet and the teacher decided to use their 'judgement' and said no and said student shat themselves, wet themselves or bled through their pants when they genuinely needed to go?

It's everyone or no one, you can't cherry pick based on the students who you probably just dislike...

I went to a very strict school and you weren't allowed to go to the toilet in lessons. I think I only ever asked to go once and was denied - almost wet myself. There was a girl in sixth form so we were 17 who was also denied and ended up not making it to the loo, sitting down on the steps and pooping herself - this is on the main staircase between lessons so surrounded by students. She never lived it down.

I think if I had a well behaved kid I trusted I would tell them to ignore the teacher and go to the loo anyway if denied and in an emergency situation and we can deal with consequences later. My partner is a teacher and he said he assumes if a kid it super desperate he'd be able to tell but I think that's underestimating how embarrassed kids can be sometimes.

This is such a mechanical answer. No empathy.

You can't 'learn' body management ffs. Sometimes our bodies act out. Maybe not often but occasionally. Get a grip on reality.

When I was in middle school, year 5 I think it was, we had a rule that we were not allowed to go to the toilet in lesson time. I was too scared to plead my case to the teacher and I wet myself, I remember the feeling now. I was only 9 ish and i think back and what an awful thing to stop a child going to the toilet when they need to!

You are being totally unrealistic OP

By your account, you would simply let children go to the toilet if you liked them and not if you didn't.

Rude, untrustworthy obnoxious piss takers are just as likely to have a genuine need as your precious little snowflake. You expect teachers to say no to them, then can equally just as fairly say no to your child too.

And no, there is absolutely no staffing to supervise lesson time toilet use. Maybe you would like to volunteer to do it?

Teaching has become a leftist institution in and of itself. We know the left love control and schools are a fantastic place to exert that power on voiceless young children. Look at the way they control lunchboxes, question absences and force sick children in attending and now natural bodily functions are up for grabs. And let’s not even think about the mind bend undermining traditional family values. No way would I send an innocent child into one of these gulags.

The policy at DDs school is no one goes to the toilet in lesson time unless they have a pass. And I'm glad! It keeps her safe, away from bullies, violence and the vaping crew.

She goes to a good school but life in secondary schools these days is tough. Parents of Y7 children are usually horrified at the differences primary and secondary school but it quickly settles down when they realise the rules are there for a reason, which is mainly to protect your child. I wouldn't want my DD anywhere near a toilet during lesson time, god only knows what could happen to her.

I can't wait for her to finish secondary school. Head down, get through it.

eh what!? Absence and attendance policies are not in the hands of the school, and lunch box content instructions is due to life threatening allergies. Bodily functions are not "up for grabs now" but have been regulated to break and lunch times for a couple of hundred years, as they are in many work places, so your outrage is a bit late 😂

Out of curiosity, what do non teachers suggest we do to stop 26 out of 30 kids going to the toilet in every lesson? Seriously?

Those that complain about these policies on similar threads never answer this question!

Ah ok, we'll just ignore all the 'unhealthy ones' shall we?

As your OP said, there are passes avaliable.

As teachers keep saying, discretion is used!

It would be awful. Thankfully it'd also be extremely rare. We are (hard as it may seem for you to believe) pretty good at telling when even those students genuinely aren't putting it on.

Again, I've been teaching since 1994 and yet to have anyone in a class wet themselves, shit themselves, or have blood seep into their clothing.

It's not cherry picking. It's common sense. We use it quite a lot.

Might also be worth mentioning that MN is full to the brim of piss/shit/period trolls and from the language used by some posters on here, they're flocking round this thread like flies round the proverbial getting their sick rocks off.

First break is 10 minutes. Lunch is half an hour. The school has 900 students and 16 toilets for the girls.....

That's ridiculous. They must spend most of their breaks queuing up to have a pee. The HSE recommended no of toilets is 5 per 100 staff, so 900 people in an office should ideally have 45 toilets. And in most offices, you don't have set breaks where you can uses them, so not everyone's going at the same time.

I just counted up the number I can remember from my school, and we had at least 28 for 600 pupils (single sex school) plus more in the gym block and one in the pavilion.

You mentioned the fact that students with medical needs get a pass. How is that ignoring them?

I think you must know you are being irrational if you resort to being abusive to anyone that disagrees with you.

Don't forget namechanging to start the eleventy millionth thread on this in about a month.

So many posters enjoying talking about children's bodily functions.

@hollywally54 why did you namechange?

I really think a lot of you are missing the point.

Most teachers like children. It would be a weird career choice if they didn’t. The teachers on here have said a) they can use their discretion and b) they’ve never seen children wet/soil/flood.

The rules mean that your child is kept safe. They mean that if a child really does need to use the bathroom, they will be in the bathroom alone, or with other others who also really need it. They won’t have an audience of vapers.

@TheLongGloriesOfTheWinterMoon I'm not sure what you're implying but I NC all the time. As do many posters.

And the reason there are so many threads on this lately is probably because more and more schools seem to be rolling it out and parents are understandably horrified by it.

I hope as some of the teachers on this thread have suggested that it will ultimately be down to their discretion. And the 'rules' are just there to try and put people off. However if my ds ever finds himself in a position where he's being prevented from accessing a toilet when he needs to go I will be furious. It's just not right.

What the hell is a shit/piss/period troll?! So people now can't say how they feel about a policy like this without being deemed a sick fuck? 🙄

MN is getting more pathetic by the day. We aren't talking about piss/shit/periods, we're talking about a school policy. It's bad enough that people can't discuss IBS issues on here (because y'know it can be quite an embarrassing topic to talk about in real life) without being labelled a "poo troll".

If you genuinely believe that someone is posting with dodgy intentions why not report it to MN so they can do a check on the poster instead of trying to derail the thread and accuse the op?

Grow up.