School bathroom

[SomeoneRandom]

My child has come to me and said her school has locked every single bathroom minus one. That one bathroom has about 8 stalls. 3 girls. 3 boys. Yeah 7,8,9 and 10 all now only have this one bathroom. This is about 1000 students. Is this legal? All the other bathrooms are locked completely, one of the bathrooms even has a wooden panel covering the doorway to make sure students don't get in. My daughter also said outside the one bathroom, they now only have, there is a teacher with a desk. I'm not sure what she does. I'm guessing they're keeping track? What should I do?

I forgot to add but two of them aren't in use.

It may be for safeguarding reasons. If there has been an incident in a toilet, students need monitoring and there's not enough staff to watch all sets of toilets so they get shut.

It will be because of anti social behaviour.

Sadly not uncommon. A MAT local to me blatantly lied about this policy to the media until it was forced by student action to change. It's abusive and inhumane and, if any child has medical needs requiring a toilet, discriminatory. Ask the school if this is true, and if it is, how they expect children to go to the toilet.

Nowhere near enough for the regulations around number of toilets needed and if boys and girls are sharing the same ‘block’ then they have to have completely enclosed individual cubicles.

This is really common in schools, they lock the toilets during lessons

You could try contact the school to find out what’s happening . I assume there’s been some incidents in the toilets and this is how the school is dealing with it.

It isn't during lessons. All the bathrooms are locked completely, there is only one bathroom during lessons and at break and lunch.

Nowhere near enough. I get that they need to know who is going where in lesson time and have enough staff to monitor at breaks, but the DFE guidance ‘advice on standards for school premises’ advises 1 toilet per 20 students.

Even at break and lunch, if it's not safe to open the unsupervised toilets, schools won't.

I know it's awful and stops children going to the toilet. But what else can schools do? They're stuck in a funding and retention crisis, no provision for the most extreme behaviour, so they have to resort to this type policy to keep studets safe.

Regulations state 1 toilet per 20 children an, after the age of 8, separate toilets for the two sexes.

There is no law requiring schools to allow children to go during lessons but health and safety law trumps most other laws and should be cited and used where schools are doing this.

It is legal and has been in the news. It's to prevent bullying, phone use, vaping etc. doesn't make it right though it's just barbaric.

Sexual assault happening in school toilets is barbaric.

I'll ask my daughter more about it tomorrow, She described the assembly they had talking about it. It said all years are too use this one bathroom. She said the toilets in science block, Dt block, maths block and a few others are locked or blocked off.

Students caused £20k worth of damage in toilet block at local school

There will be apologists for the policy on here but the policy is barbaric. There are problems with behaviour around toilet use in schools but that isn't a problem that most children are responsible for. The right to sanitation is part of article 11 of ICESCR. Schools seem to have the resources to strictly police whether or not a pupil is wearing the right colour socks or shoe soles but are seemingly unwilling to station a staff member near toilet facilities at set times.

And where would you divert staff members from to staff this? It would mean closing the school library, and probably taking support from echp students who have an entitlement to TA support. Although it my school TA’s would refuse to be doing such a duty on minimum wage.
Parents need to support schools and ensure that when their child has misbehaved or behaved anti-socially that they back the school to the hilt.

@Querty123456

Of course parents should back the school when their child had done something wrong. What a strange non sequitur. I've visited dozens of academies over the last few years and there's never a shortage of staff roaming the corridors with walkie-talkies looking for behaviour indiscretions or hauling kids off to the Orwellian named 'inclusion.'

I rightly predicted someone would defend the policy. I would be interested to see what parents with children in school in other countries think of this, and why they think English children are uniquely deserving of this restriction of their rights.

So needing to urinate is a child misbehaving or behaving anti-socially? What about a child with incontinence issues or a girl who has her period?

@Littlestlolo are you deliberately being obtuse. Vaping, vandalism, sexual harassment, fighting and just general hiding out in the toilets is rife in school toilets. You would be amazed by how many parents don’t bat an eyelid if their child is involved in anti social behaviour and won’t back the school up if their child is caught.

Many children won’t use school toilets for the above reasons, Wouldn’t make any difference if the toilets were open throughout the whole school day they still won’t use them.

Please feel free to give the schools more funding so they can have staff available to supervise the toilets and other staff to help manage behaviour throughout the school

@crumblingschools

The question remains, is it reasonable to expect children to go without toilet facilities? It's not up to us to fund it. Is it reasonable or not?

Lack of funding doesn't excuse teenage girls bleeding through their clothes as they have been denied use of a toilet.

No, not being obtuse but pointing out that not all children are misbehaving. To deny a child the use of a toilet is barbaric. You say children wouldn’t use the toilet but sadly some just don’t have a choice, they cannot wait a whole school day.

whilst I recognise schools are extremely poorly funded it doesn’t detract from the right to be able to use the toilet.

Schools are in a really hard place, for every parent complaining that a number of toilets are locked, there will be a parent complaining that their child is too scared to go to the toilet even if all toilets are open due to the behaviour in the toilets. Schools don't have the funding/staff to supervise toilets all the time.

Although they could have CCTV at the opening of the toilet block they obviously can't have it in the cubicles or facing near the cubicles. So if there is evidence of children vaping, all pupils that are seen going into the toilet block could be accused of vaping as would not be possible to see which one was involved. Again you would have a parent complaining that their child has been unfairly punished.

And there will be examples of students having accidents rather than using toilets.

If any of you have the answers which don't involve spending any additional money schools would love to know.

I think it's cruel and quite horrible. They have issues with vandalism of course in schools in my country but no one thinks locking the toilets is the answer. At my DD's school they can go to the toilet whenever they need to, even during lessons if necessary, and the toilets are individual self contained loos dotted about the school so no one has to go far to get to the toilet (there might even be one per classroom, I'm not sure)