To expect my 11 year old to be able to use the toilet during the school day?

[bendy75]

Is this the norm? My 11 year old started in at secondary school last month and has had two warnings (or stage 2 - Low level disruptions) for asking to use the toilet.

I told him to try and go at break times but he tells me they are locked, confirmed today by staff when I asked, children who have a medical need can apply for a toilet pass but he does not, so has to try and go from 8.00 am until returning home around 3.00pm without using the toilet.

AIBU to be shocked by this?

You really need to look up the impact of school closures on children if you think that option 2 would only have an impact on their education.

I mean, part of the issues here with toilets were caused by schools being closed for extended periods.

Which means we need to find a way to solve the problem that lockdown turned kids feral, not turn them even more feral by restricting their access to toilets.

We could start by parents supporting schools in their efforts to keep their children safe and educate them.

Perhaps we'd have fewer staffing crises that way, and perhaps then we'd be able to build better relationships - the ones you never get when you have to cover yet another lesson because your colleague went home crying (happened 3 times this term to me alone (the covering for that reason)).

Perhaps if we didn't have to deal with missing equipment, incomplete uniform, social issues and reminding kids to not leave the canteen a giant mess every day we'd have time to talk to them and get to know them better.

Perhaps if our pastoral staff didn't have to deal with students making a game out of truanting and then running away from them all day long they'd be able to staff toilets.

Perhaps if more parents lobbied their MPs alongside us we'd get more funding to build more toilets and perhaps, if our kids were raised to not vandalise them regularly for tik tok likes, we'd be able to trust them to use the toilets during lesson times.

Until parents take education, and the raising of their children to obey the social contract, much more seriously we'll have to keep on finding ways deal with situations as we see fit.

@MargotBamborough so if the feral kids have free access to the toilets how much do you think the other kids will use them?

”We” would be people in the U.K.

You know, there was a pandemic here too, and yet the same thing doesn't appear to have happened in French schools. What are UK schools doing wrong? Why do teachers in the UK have zero authority over children?

And what are they doing differently in the schools in the UK where toilets are available?

Why do teachers in the UK have zero authority over children?

I don't know about French parents but a significant number of the worst behaved students I teach have parents who are totally disengaged from their children or who refuse to discipline them in any way for anything. I have no backup from home.

A teacher was stabbed and killed in a French school the other day, and another one severely injured. Perhaps look to your own problems.

I'm not sure how a terrorist attack is relevant to this thread tbh.

Because you're on here talking about what "we" need to do to address the situation in UK schools when you are not part of that "we" because you aren't even in the same country. And perhaps "we" meaning you and people in your country should be looking at the situation in France. Or do you want me to start giving ill-informed advice about what your country should be doing to address terrorist attacks in French schools?

Enough with the whatabouttery, it's a logical fallacy and bad-faith debating tactic.

I wonder what the prevalence of toilet locking is in LEA secondaries versus academies?

I think anyone suggesting that schools should close should specify whether their own child would be affected by said school closures or whether they are merely recommending this for other people's children.

I'm a British citizen with the right to vote in UK elections and the impression I get on Mumsnet about what the education and healthcare systems are currently like directly influences whether I ever choose to come back to live in the UK with my children or not, so yes, I am part of that "we".

Islamic terrorism is a completely separate issue. The attack you are referring to didn't involve any students at the school.

Former pupil.

so yes, I am part of that "we".

No skin in the game when it comes to recommending large scale school closures, right.

Actually, what I'm recommending is that teachers look at what they are doing and look at what is happening in other schools where they manage to keep the toilets open and try to figure out where they're going wrong.

Must have been someone else berating teachers for not immediately downing tools and walking out.

It would be interesting to find out, but academies also have a habit of getting rid of undesirable pupils.

You were insisting it was a funding problem.

The fact that other schools manage to keep their toilets open would suggest it is more of a discipline problem in certain schools but I was willing to humour you.

I suggest that I actually know more about what's going on in English schools than you do.

Aren't teachers allowed to be more physical in France when it comes to discipline, and how inclusive are they with SEND pupils?

So how are other schools managing to keep the toilets open then? What's their secret?

No, that's absolute nonsense, as you could have found out for yourself if you Googled it.

It's like we haven't had five million posts discussing this already.