AIBU in thinking this could spread rapidly to other schools? Parents have to come into school to change NT DCs if they soil themselves.

[CwmYoy]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/schools-tell-parents-if-your-34349942

It's been a long time coming but I can see it will spread now there are fewer TAs.

As long as SEN needs are taken into account I think it's a good idea.

Another part of an article by TES

There's not an epidemic of children without SEND who aren't being potty trained by their 'lazy' parents.

There's an epidemic of children with SEND who previously would have been either in special school or in mainstream with support who are now in mainstream with minimal or no support.

There's potentially is also rising numbers of children with SEND and why this is is unclear but could partially be related to older parental age at birth.

For a small number of other children, there may be issues with toileting for other reasons. Society requires families to have two working parents and many of those parents work more than one job simply to feed their children. Kids may be in childcare which is not willing or able to assist with toilet training.

There also seems to be rising numbers of kids with chronic constipation causing soiling, this could be because of a change in diet or linked to the increasing number of children with SEND.

Either way this policy is unlawful but still potentially cheaper than funding adequate support for children with additional needs so I imagine that's why they've not backed down on it.

Then there’s others eg bbc

I can’t do links I’m afraid

I worked with young children in the eighties. A child who watched TV all day would have been seen as neglected.

Why are all these kids not toilet trained???

How will that work in commuter belt?

My DS started reception aged 4y3 weeks. He had the occasional accident.

I worked in London at the time, 60 miles away so waiting for me to arrive to change him would have been pointless. His df had wandered off by then so not around to help.

That said, my DS could dress himself at 4, and I always packed spare pants and shorts so he wouldn't have needed help.

I pointed out the same issue as dh and I were 2hrs away.
We also had no ‘go to person’ around near the school.
The idea falls apart in these grey areas I think.

I am genuinely unsure why you have latched o to my post. Can you point to where I mentioned "vast" numbers or indeed where I expressed any view whatsoever or drew any conclusions?

The reason we are talking about nappies is because the threshold for the very policy being discussed is whether or not a child is attending school in nappies.

And I am still none the wiser how precise numbers helps with anything. Either a thing is likely a problem or not. Hardly any regulatory or legislative changes are made on the basis of precise numbers because it's hardly ever possible to get precise numbers.

They would be expected to either have another family member or nominated emergency contact to be able to deal with it. I still believe that having an emergency contact able to attend quickly will be a requirement of most public schools.

Let me ask you, a child suffers a serious incident and is in hospital requiring an urgent life changing decision. Should the responsibility for that decision fall on a teacher?

Would you be happy that even in a realtively small incident, your child was lying in a hospital bed needing the comfort of a parent, that your job stopped you hearing about the incident for two hours and then another two hours travel to her?

Some of you really need to look at your priorities.

Very interesting and valid viewpoints. We are seeing similar in mental health provision, where care in the community replacing hospital set care is just pushing issues on to different services, at the expense of both the patient and taxpayer.

A lot of people have little choice about where they can work and where they can afford to live though.
Not everyone lives and works nearby and not everyone has family able to help out.
If there’s no one available in an absolute life threatening emergency in the absence of anyone else a school will obviously take the initiative and call an ambulance and they will do what they always do, their job of saving lives.

We are, however, not talking on this thread of life threatening situations, we are talking about wee and poo.
Parents should ensure their kids are ready for school. If they are SEN then the parents would have to agree to be around if no one can help and there’s no gp letter. One would hope as soon as they get that gp letter then the parent could go back to work because not being able to work on the off chance of a situation at school affects both the tax payer and the families ability to support themselves…which is their priority.

nb. Also for @Isatis

Of course you could live nearby. It would be a matter of cutting your cloth accordingly. In your instance, you made the decision to earn the high London wages but live somewhere cheaper. You could of course find a lower paid job nearby. Or you could live a lower standard and send your child to a London school.

To expect the school, it's staff and at the end of the day the taxpayer to do the parenting element, dealing with incidents like soiling or health decisions is unreasonable.

I can’t do my job anywhere near where I live.
I can’t afford to buy in London
My dh and I had seven years at Uni and training for a job we love and actually we do have a right to that. Just as we have a right to move to buy a house.

If you read my post rather than reacting quickly I said

1. Parents should have kids ready for school
2. Parents should commit to supporting the school If their kids are SEN without a gp letter
3. Parents with a gp letter for SEN kids can go back to work as the school will give the support

A previous poster said that despite a medical diagnosis, no extra funding for the school is available.

You may not be able to do the job you love and trained for, but you or hubby would be able to do a job local to the school. Alternatively arrange with another parent to perform the emergency contact responsibility.

In each class there will be circa 30 ish pupils with two classes per year group. So iro of 400 children. If one of them requires a member of staff to be tied up for two hours dealing with what a parent should be, what then happens when a second child has a similar incident, eg vomiting bug. Schools just do not have the resources (and nor should they) to be dealing with parental responsibilities. That is a selfish expectation to have which affects all the other kids negatively.

Honestly....
In my opinion, a lot of parents can't be bothered. Obviously, there are children with medical and psychological needs. However, I think a lot of people, when they find it difficult to potty train, give up.

There is also the issue as previously pointed out. That children with the level of need that they are incontinent, would be schooled in a suitably equipped environment until they were able to care for themselves.

We’ll just have to disagree on this I’m afraid.

Its simply not financially astute for parents to all have to do jobs local to their kids school just on the off chance. Any sane person in Government will eventually see the reality of such an insane idea.
Especially when new housing is often not close to schools anyway.

If The Govn doesn’t provide support , and one of the articles I posted suggests they are, then they need to.

Most children used to be potty trained by 18 months. This has crept up over many decades.

The use of pull ups seems to be one reason for this.
Another seems to be how efficient nappies are now, kids don’t feel the wet so much.
Have nappies got cheaper? They were really rather expensive 20years ago so the sooner you got them out of them the better.

Let me ask you, a child suffers a serious incident and is in hospital requiring an urgent life changing decision. Should the responsibility for that decision fall on a teacher?

Of course not, and no one would ever expect teachers to make those decisions, what a inane thing to say. It would fall to the trained medical professionals to make a clinical decision in the best interests of the child.

Some people's jobs are some people's jobs - you can't change that. You cannot demand that anyone who has children quit their jobs if they're not allowed a phone and only work within a 5-mile radius of the school they send their child to. Good grief, get it together.

Finally
Someone sees the point
🙏

I don't have kids and I genuinely didn't realise this wasn't already a thing.

When I was in reception all the kids were 4 years old and no one turned up in nappies. Peeing at school was the best because the toilets were child sized and it was all a lot easier.

I hear a lot of kids don't start until 4.5 or 5 now so I would have thought it would have gone the other way and kids wouldn't have as many accidents these days as they would have been out of nappies longer, apparently not.

I wouldn't expect a primary school teacher or assistant to change nappies in the same way I wouldn't expect them to be cooking the kids lunch or cleaning the classroom windows.

I agree. One article I read said one in four are still in nappies.
It varies by region also.
London its less of a problem than Manchester for example.
It varies by income too
More children on FSM are still in nappies.

Maybe if more kids go to nursery they will help support parents with toilet training.
According to a pp a child with SEN needs to be severe to be unable to use the toilet by school age.

I have a few different thoughts on this, but I suppose the main one is, what is school for when push comes to shove. Is it for education, or just childcare.

I grew up outside of the UK, and when I started school there was a list of milestones that should be met before starting. It wasn't a set of requirements, but rather a guideline, the idea being that normally developing children who hadn't met those milestones would be likely to struggle with many aspects of school, including schoolwork, and would benefit from waiting another year to start.

I think that's a reasonable general approach, there can be a lot of variation in maturity at that age and not all children are best placed to start learning to read, for example, at exactly the same age. It makes a lot more sense to have such a child spend another year at home, or a more supported environment, and let time do its work, rather than trying to teach the same material to children who aren't ready - which in my experience can not only lead to real reading difficulties later, those kids often hate school their entire lives.

It seems to me the emphasis now is more on school as a parental right to free childcare, rather than a child centered right to be educated. So that changes the emphasis.

All that being said, I think a major reason kids are being toilet trained later is that so many spend a lot of time in nursery. Which isn't really individually child-centered either.

I wouldn't expect a primary school teacher or assistant to change nappies in the same way I wouldn't expect them to be cooking the kids lunch or cleaning the classroom windows.

Those are not immediate needs. If a child soils themselves then it needs to be dealt with straight away, anything else is neglect.