To want to understand and get something to be done about the school toilet issue.

[Rasell]

Until a couple of days ago I was blissfully unaware of the fact that lots of children are unable to go to the toilet all day at school on a daily basis, because lots of schools countrywide lock their toilets during lesson time and then are either too understaffed to open them or there are just too many children trying to use them, there's not enough time to eat and queue up for the toilet so these children are forced to hold it in all day, every day.
This seems to be because of appalling antisocial behaviour, destroying the facilities, bullying and worse but I'm not clear as to whether that's always the reason why.
I very much sympathise with schools having to deal with this and am horrified by the utter lack of values, respect, care, integrity and common decency that some people are raising their children to have. I don't know how to solve that problem but it definitely can't be blamed on schools or government, in my opinion; if you have children, raise them to be decent human beings. That's your job.
Denying children the right to use the toilet is unacceptable, though.
No-one can expect older children to just swan off at any given moment for a wee when they're busy doing a task in a lesson; if I need the loo while I'm busy at work I wait until I finish it then I go. However, if I've got my period and am leaking, or suddenly get a tummy ache or something, then I go immediately. Why should that be different at school? Why should they sit there in a pool of blood or desperately trying to hold their poo? How can they focus or work to their best ability?
This feels like pensioners having to choose between heating their homes or eating, or children coming to school without having breakfast and not being able to concentrate. We can't allow our children to have to choose whether they eat or go to the toilet, or sit in a classroom unable to follow the teacher because they're worried they're going to wet themselves. Boys weeing in bushes and girls holding it in all day...this is madness!!
The thread I was following was a mix of people's experiences from either side of the argument and rants. I really want to understand what's going on because I think we need to do something about it. I'm no-one and don't even have any children going through this but I'm so shocked by it that I want to get some facts and start a petition, I don't know, do something! Please help with useful information and comments. Thank you!

This happened to my youngest in infants age 4/5 she asked to go the toilet welfare wouldnt let her guess what she an accident poor kid yes it was they left her in wet clothes and smelly all afternoon for 4 hours didnt give her spare clothes. well i lost my shit nicely lol threatened with board of education and demanded an apology of said dinner lady. didnt happen . i know kids can abuse it but they have rights to access toilets at all times. not all kids want to go at break times. i didnt dictate to my kids when they were little how often and when they could use the toilet so i sure as hell wasnt having a teacher do it (yes she was fully toiled trained )

Haven't RTFT but , on top of, or partly as a huge consequence of, the massive underfunding of schools for years, many young people have switched off from education. The increased focus on academic subjects (the E-bacc at GCSEs, for example, the confusions around technical/vocational quals always changing, the focus on STEM) is really off-putting to many kids. Then you have teachers leaving in droves, and kids know this and know that they, their buildings, and the people who are put in front of them, are not valued, not considered worthy of respect or investment. I don't mean only financial investment, but in a society where money/wealth is the way we value everything, it's hard to escape. I really believe this is at the root of the worsening behaviour (on top of the staff shortages, collapsing buildings, etc). A PP wrote about 'all the new shiny schools' - where are these phantom buildings??

& this, combined with severe bullying is why I took my daughter out of school completely. My eldest daughter had a toilet pass due to IBS & autism, but she still found it difficult to go at school. Consequently, she now has even worse stomach problems & has developed eating issues that she didn't have before this. There are more & more people every day, choosing to home educate, maybe once the government see the huge drop in students in schools, these & many, many more issues will be looked at. Too much stock is put into making kids into carbon copies, with "perfect" (read, expensive) uniform & restrictions on their choices. If we did away with uniform & gave students more freedom to learn what they were interested in, we'd be part way to a better learning environment. The education system is no longer fit for purpose & is making our kids miserable & ill. It needs a serious over-haul, along with our government & our country in general.

Dh is a locum teacher, ge says exactly the same.
How kids manage to get an education at all is amazing.
They don't even have teachers for cote subjects alot of the time.

But let's fix it from the bottom and sort out the toilets, pun intended but serious.

We were supposed to have a brand new secondary school to replace the one I’m working at almost 10 years ago. No sign of it happening- builder sponsoring it now says he can only break even if he includes hundreds more saleable flats/houses. The funny thing is that people chose the school for the brand new school plans - and now their children are in year 13!!!!!!!£

1. Afternoons in infants are not 4 hours long - usually just over 2 hours.
2. Dinner lady's aren't the people to ask about going to the toilet.
3. As you've said dinner lady, I'm assuming it was at lunch time. Toilets are never restricted in infants at break/lunch times. Never even in Juniors as far as I know.
4. Infants is a UK term and board of education is American. So which is it?
5. Teachers don't go round feeling kids crotch to check if their wet, so how on earth would they know unless your dc told them? By school age they are able to tell an adult they're wet.
6. At age 4/5 you should always keep a spare set of clothes in their bag. Even the most reliable child can have an accident or even just get soaked from playing in the water tray at that age.
7. You never dictate when your child goes? So you never take them out? No car journeys? No shopping? No public transport? No days out? More often than not, people have to hold it for a short time while they get to a toilet and quite possibly queue. Most infant teachers say no toilet during teaching input (~10 minutes) but OK the rest of the time. That really isn't a problem.
8. You agree to follow the school rules when you enroll a child at school.

Your "story" is quite obviously heavily embellished, if at all true. Why? What is the benefit of making something like that up?

I'd been teaching modal verbs when a student asked if they could go to the toilet. Knowing me well, they used May...

But we'd just been told no one could go to the toilet unless they had a card...

This student didn't look great.

So I asked SHOULD you go to the toilet? The student replied that actually he really needed to go so it was definitely a SHOULD. I think he mentioned something about if he'd been a girl, he'd have said something about periods...

I said I thought he OUGHT to go. I was risking my job a little but he rushed off gratefully. I did alert Senior Leadership that I'd had to send a student to the toilet. He didn't return but apparently he made it just before he lost the entire contents of his bowels...

If the toilets had required a key, I dread to think what would've happened or if I'd been a jobsworth. I think my carpet would've never been the same. Teachers know when students genuinely need the toilet and when they're messing around.

My friend and I was discussing safeguarding last night. I used to teach and she has a child that does acting. In the school setting, children are being slogged to death with workload, tests, crammed working days, lack of sports, poor diet, controlling lunch box behavior, and just recently reading about the lack of toilet use.

When her child is doing the acting, there are so many restrictions in place, they can only perform for 20 minutes then need an hour break, so much safeguarding is in place, if they want to go to the toilet, a chaperone has to stand outside and wait for them, risk assessments are in place.

The education system is broken and not really fit for purpose now. It's supposed to prepare young people for the world of work, I don't know any work place that locks their toilets and doesn't allow people enough time to go, or even eat and drink, apart from being a teacher.

I wonder if the issue could be solved by CCTV inside the sink areas of the toilets. Controversial maybe but I personally think it could solve a lot of the issues of pupils bad behaviour in there...bullying, loitering, smoking ect.
I really suffered at school as I've always had a weak bladder and normally need to go every hour of not more. Toilets were always horrible and scary at school with the older girls hanging around and you can't relax in there. Thankfully my school toilets were always open as I would go on arrival, at break and at lunch and before getting the bus home. I would of wet myself if I had to wait or ask for a key.
I can remember things changing when my son went to school. He was about 6/7 and asked how teacher if he could go and he refused. My son poohed his pants and was so embarrassed but he said he was too scared of the teacher to just go.
I went crazy and the other staff could not have been more apologetic. The teacher left not long after thank god but no one should ever be denied something that is sometimes beyond our physical control.

We have cctv. It doesn't help much because it's not actively monitored.

Unless a child has a medical reason there is no reason there should be no need to go in lesson time. I teach year 5 and never let them go in lesson time.

This thread makes for very sad reading.

It’s stuff like this that forces parents to consider private education, even if it nearly breaks them financially!

On the private school threads, you have posters denouncing private education as morally wrong, but what parent wouldn’t try everything they could to avoid sending their child into this broken system? It wouldn’t be about ‘buying qualifications’ so much as paying to avoid daily misery!

@GreenAppleCrumble exactly! So many posters say "state schools are good enough", well reading these posts they obviously aren't!
Zero regrets about sending DD private with free access to toilets throughout the day!

I think it's becoming clear why so many youngsters are developing mental health issues if they're having to spend their days in dangerous, uncomfortable, stressful environments like this. I was stressed out at school and developed school refusal due to autism and bullying, but it sounds like things are even worse now. They honestly sound like prison environments now.

For those who'd like to home educate, but have to work or don't have the skills I can certainly recommend online schooling. It's much more affordable than conventional private schooling and you can do it anywhere if the child needs supervision whilst parents work. They can get social interaction through sports, music, drama, art, cadet activities.

Some homeschooling parents have got together through homeschool clubs and networks and take it in turns to supervise each others kids whilst they learn and the other parents go to work. All the children need is a laptop and headphones with a microphone built in.

I appreciate that poorer families can't access these things, but some LEAs can be persuaded to pay for online learning if the child can't attend school due to disability - this includes SEN.

Exams can be sat at external exam centres, which most areas have now. You will need to pay for them, but the costs aren't high and, again, help may be available through the LEA.

Our autistic and bullied ds did this from Year 7 and thrived. He left at 16 with eight good IGCSEs and then went to the FE college. He did air cadets all through school which really helped his social skills.

I've emailed Gillian Keegan, I think every parent involved in one of these schools or outraged by what's happening in our schools need to as well.
My family isn't affected by this, we're lucky to have excellent schools and a great kids attending them. Nowhere near perfect but bloody brilliant by these standards!
I feel so sorry for the good children, their families and the teachers and staff being worn down by all of this. It's shaken me and I can't stop thinking about it.
I've had enough of MN, though! All this arguing, blaming and offending for no real reason.
Good luck to everyone 👋

One of the reasons that you don't get this in private schools is that pupils rarely destroy the toilets, or anything else as they would be removed from the school.

severe consequences for offenders, including having to clean the loos, exclusion etc. Oh boy! If you get the sad faces in the newspaper of the child who knew full well that the rules said they couldn't wear jewellery and got it confiscated, imagine the faces if they had to clean the toilets. And exclusion... I can tell you the headline now "Pupil excluded for needing the toilet.".

Not just going to the Press, can you imagine the outbreak of fuming on MN if a school had cameras in the toilets!
The bottom line of all this hand-wringing is that schools can't win. It seems that in the last few years pupils' bladders have lost capacity and periods have become so much heavier. How many of these pupils who can't go a couple of hours in school without a pee will stand for much longer at a pop concert or a sports event without needing to 'go'? When pupils are moving from one lesson to the next why do a dozen pupils need to go to into the loos together?
Maybe all that water they insist on being allowed to have in lessons is part of the problem.

You’re not wrong.

Yep…you sound just like a lot of the teachers at my old school!