Teachers: do you find it hard? (high school toilets)

[Fillyfrog]

DD started high school yesterday. We had a transition support meeting before starting (possible asd) and SENCO offered a toilet pass due to lots of anxiety over needing a wee and not being able to go or find a toilet (this is long standing and not just due to new school)
Children are allowed to go at break and lunch and that's it, if they need it any other time it's tough.

Toilet pass wasn't sorted for today and DD begged to go in her last lesson. She said she was close to tears and the teacher still said no. Absolutely not.

I know they have rules for a reason. But, even if she didn't have anxiety and a possible toilet pass

What if someone gets a sudden stomach ache and needs to go to the toilet for a poo quite suddenly?
What if a girl comes on their period suddenly and needs to go and it can't wait until the end of the day? I can't imagine how heartless the teachers must feel to look at a child close to tears on their first day, desperate for the toilet and to just say no and that's it 🙈 it's hard to comprehend as an adult who is able to go to the toilet whenever they want to. It feels like a basic human right.

Schools are the one workplace where the staff aren’t allowed to go to the toilet whenever they want though.

It is so ridiculous and draconian. If the girl had wet herself on the first day of senior school she would never have lived it down.

I actually think that if kids ask to go to the toilet they should be able to go.

A toilet pass where they need to be accompanied is ridiculous too.

OP, in your shoes, I'd email the SENCO and ask them to get the toilet pass done. (My DCs' school had all teachers email addresses on their website).

Noone wants to stop them having a wee but if you only knew the amount of g grafiti, vandalism , bloodied self harmers I have dealt with in the toilets, or the he amount of bullying in unsupervised toilets , where kids have arranged to meet up at certain times during class to do something horrible you would understand

Secondary teacher and HoY here.
The SENCO offered a toilet pass. I’d phone the school at 8.30 and ask a secretary to message the SENCO to phone you after briefing and before period 1. Without relaying your DD’s upset, what was discussed at your meeting or staff being alerted on inset day, very briefly say you’d appreciate the pass being issued before lessons begin tomorrow morning. Just get what you want in a calm manner and thank in anticipation. If you get no joy, do it again at lunch time.
At the beginning of the school year staff are getting to know students and establishing discipline with a year group who are not familiar with them. Teachers don’t know at that point who are the chancers.
Hopefully your DD won’t have a repeat experience.

Even if you let one child go, sometimes (often) they text to arrange a meet up with one child from another class. And yes lots of major safeguarding issues happen in loos during lessons. One school I did supply in had a team of 4 TAs just to supervise the loos all day every day. So even if a toilet pass child used them they were supervised. Big school and huge issues which took expensive staffing just to try and keeping top of issues.

Showing my age now but in the 80s we were only allowed to go at morning break or lunch. I remember my period starting in maths one time and being glad my school skirt was dark. Not saying it’s right or wrong, just that it’s not new. During my working life I couldn’t always get to a toilet quickly so I suppose at least I was used to it.

In my long experience, in top sets kids rarely ask to go to the toilet, in bottom sets kids ask a lot - it's a behaviour thing far, far more than it's an actually needs the toilet thing. Vaping, meeting up with mates, or just fancying a break from the lesson.

My school allows teacher discretion so I'd have let a Y7 on their first day go without any issues. You get to know who the piss-takers are.

But it is a pain in the arse to manage. And if you let one kid go you can easily end up with "you let him go so it's not fair if you don't let me go" which can lead to a queue of kids waiting for one kid to return so the next can leave.

Every year
Every school
Pretty much every parent

It's inhumane.
I have some awful stories from my own kids being put in those positions.
I just don't understand how small children can be trusted to know when they need to urinate, or when they're too hot, but secondary school students are treated like robots.

I'm sorry your child struggled. Complain hard!

I just don't understand how small children can be trusted to know when they need to urinate, or when they're too hot, but secondary school students are treated like robots.

Primary school children don't tend to meet up in the school toilets to vape whereas this is an absolutely common occurrence in secondaries. And vaping is the least of the things they get up to in the toilets.

I know a secondary school near us keeps ALL toilets locked except for break time.

to access the loo during a lesson first you need permission or a pass to get out of the class then you have to go to reception (large secondary school with sprawling campus so could be a good 5-10 min walk if you are at the top of the science block etc) to ask them to unlock a toilet . Wait for them to do so.

It is absolutely disgusting what they do to these children - as someone with a bowel condition if this was me at 13 I would have now soiled myself as there is no way on earth I could have waited that long. Let alone girls with periods or anyone with IBS etc…

I can’t believe it is legal. I do understand the difficulties with bullying and vandalism but I can’t believe in 2025 in the UK that children are being denied access to toilets.

the child I know that goes there won’t eat or drink at all in school as they don’t want to risk needing the toilet. They come home starving and thirsty .

It is awful .

How draconian. When I was at school we just announced that we were going to the toilet and off we went

I left teaching 2 years ago and even though this was a rule at my school, most (not all) teachers used their professional judgement.

As a teacher and parent, I had very mixed feelings on it because of course, it is a human right but did some pupils take the absolute biscuit…100%. I had one class where everyone I set up a writing activity, there were always 3 boys that miraculously needed the toilet. Added to that the safeguarding risk that some pupils behaviour poses and the vandalism etc and it really is a minefield.

My school really cracked down on it in the last couple of years though to the point that SLT were monitoring which teachers were letting children out to go to the toilet. A member of SLT once came into my room, bright red in the face, absolutely mad, demanding to know why I’d let 12 children out of my lesson to go to the toilet…well, they all had toilet passes (that are SLT issued and the child has to be allowed to go) was my answer…don’t remember getting an apology for following the school policy.

It’s seems to be the norm in school now to refuse children access to the toilet. Our schools started back nearly 2 weeks ago now and my nephews friend has very heavy periods and was left bleeding through her clothes on her 2nd day and as a result is now being bullied about it. The toilets are locked except break and lunch so just being late to a lesson to go and get cleaned up wasn’t an option. He mum has now reported the school to the education board and is seriously considering moving her schools.

Nah it’s mental. I have Crohn’s and there’s no way I’d have had to time to even ask at school if I had it when I was there. I did suffer migraines and once knew I was going to be sick, the teacher refused to let me leave until the bell rang at which point I vomited in front of scores of people in the hallway and collapsed, resulting in me being sent home and my Mum having to call out of work to come and get me when if they’d just let me go when I asked I probably could have powered through. Completely humiliating and dehumanising.

Bang on about a workplace never doing this, because it’s absolutely absurd.

I've told both of my girls, if they genuinely need the toilet( and not just trying to get out of class for a skive ) and the teacher doesn't allow it, they are to get up and go to the toilet. Teachers cannot physically stop them leaving the class and I will not be mad if I get a phone call from school to say they have left class. Its a basic human right and the teacher has no right to deny it if they genuinely need to go

This. Secondary school Teacher. I would never say no (unless blatantly obvious they are messing around) many schools monitor this on the register so they know who was out of class if an incident occurred.

Sorry to add, I know teaching is a tough job (my mum just retired from it after 30 years) but it’s really not setting them up for the real world to deny them use of a toilet and in my opinion, increases the risk of rebellious behaviour because a bright kid won’t like being denied something so simple if genuinely needed once in a while. If little Darren is asking 17 times a lesson and comes back stinking of smoke or with a chocolate bar or whatever that’s different but it’s not fair to punish those with medical needs or even just genuine kids who might for whatever reason just need a pass once in a while. How does it prepare them for absolutely anything about the real world apart from doing whatever you’re told and getting UTI’s or bleeding through clothes. It’s ridiculous

The OP's DD is getting a toilet pass. The only issue is that the toilet pass hasn't come through yet.

OP I would email the school and ask that an email be sent out to all her teachers to say she should be allowed to go to the toilet while waiting for the physical pass.

SEN or no SEN, as adults we would not tolerate being told we couldn’t go to the toilet. My children have my full permission to drop their trousers and urinate on the floor if they are told no when they ask to go to the toilet. Oh, and I’m an ex teacher.

It's a complete nightmare to be honest and there are no right answers.

There is a VAST amount of lost learning in my school due to studens leaving lessons to go to the toilet. A significant number of students ask to go every single lesson without fail. Depending where their classroom is, this can mean they are missing ten minutes of five lessons a day. Fifty minutes lost learning each day for these kids.

Plus the high number of kids at large, unsupervised in the corridors leads to all sorts of problems as you can imagine.

The constant ingress and egress of kids in lessons obviously disrupts the flow to some extent also - not the end of the world, but it is annoying to a degree.

HOWEVER, for the reasons you state - stomach upsets, periods etc, it is not humane to flatly ban toilet visits.

Generally we try to "use our judgement". I err on the side of letting people go, because I obviously I would hate for a student to wet themselves in class, have a leak or similar.

Other more hardkine colleagues generally say no.

I am sure we all get it wrong sometimes. I genuinely don't know the answer. I think so much of it is down to phone addiction - I think students are desperate to check their phones, and that's why they ask to go all the time. And a lot of them also are just bored and fancy a walk, want to see who else is out of lessons and on the corridor etc. It's an epidemic!

Anyway, to solve the immediate problem, send your child in tomorrow with a handwritten note by yourself, either ring her planner or on a piece of paper, saying that while you are awaiting a toilet pass she needs to ve allowed to go as there is a genuine medical need. I don't know any teachers that would ignore a note from a parent like this.

I'm a secondary school teacher and in my school we have this same policy. I broke the rules and let a student go one day last year. Guess who got told off.
Teachers don't take any pleasure in it (we all know the pain of a full bladder as we REALLY aren't allowed to go when we need to), management make the rules.

As a teacher who bled through to my dress during a lesson (and had a student very discretely tell me!) I feel your and your daughter's pain/anxiety.

I always weigh up what I know about the student. If no toilet pass exists: how regularly do they ask to use the toilet in my lessons? Do they look desperate? 9/10 I always let them go despite being in a school that has a zero tolerance approach to going to the toilet during lesson time.
I tend to ask them if they can wait and ask again in 5/10 minutes and if they are still needing to go, then I let them. Often the ones who don't need the toilet forget to ask again. If they're hopping up and down or wiggling, I send them straight out.

I would rather get a shitty email about the FREQUENCY OF STUDENTS GOING TO TOILETS IN MY LESSONS then for a student to have an accident in my class.

Secondary Teacher here. The OP doesn't say how old her DD is ...

If Y7, I'd have let her go and on-called it at the same time so people (i.e. pastoral) knew where she was. I can control a classroom, even of completely new kids, and I work in a really tricky environment. Your DD's relationship with that teacher will need to be rebuilt. That's on the teacher.

If older than Y7 and on a managed move or something, I would've on-called it. If no one came in 2-3 minutes, I'd have let her go.

Re: the overall toilet phenomenon, and everyone agrees it's got worse (the number of kids needing to go), couple of points:

1. Water bottles. Jesus. The average kid is drinking double what they need and putting a huge strain on their kidneys. This needs sorting out because it has health implications.
2. Refusal is about safeguarding.
3. Going to the toilet isn't a human right. Human Rights are outlined in the UDHR.

Ok, so I am a teacher and yes it is hard. These are often rules dictated from above that we then have to follow, usually for the reasons outlined above.

As a more senior member of staff/someone who has worked in the same secondary school for a long time I often use my discretion from knowing the child and seeing how desperate they are. Less experienced staff may be less likely as they fear going against the school rules.

I also find it interesting as you point out that adults can toilet whenever they need - This definitely isn't the case for teachers.