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?

@Hobbi Its not uniquely English. I've seen an article in the news today about Scotland.

As for countries that aren't in the UK, I suspect the reasons are multi faceted and possibly include:

Funded education and support systems in other countries.
Provision for SEN including schools for students with learning difficulties, non funded mainstream isn't working here.
Parents with boundaries.
Schools and systems that are allowed consequences for shit behaviour and the responsibility is with the parents, not school.
The UK has a low respect for education generally, and this attitude has got worse.
Other countries value education.

@crumblingschools

Not all schools are trying to solve the problem. The head in this article was found to have misled the public and press.

westleedsdispatch.com/farnley-academy-students-protest-over-locked-toilets/

And I'm afraid a lot of other countries don't have anything like the agencies and SEND support we throw money at. I agree they value education more though.

It's not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of costs and they have been successfully used to deter toilet vaping in many schools - the presence of the detector alone would deter a lot of students who are presumably doing it in the toilets to try and not get caught

It’s not just about vaping though.

I was a secondary school teacher for 25 years. Yea we know toilets need to be open, but here’s a list of behaviour that stopped rh being opened in my school. They were only ever closed due to damage or vandalisation. But there was still one or two shut every day.

Pissing on the floor on purpose ( boys happened every week, enough to flood the toilets)
Turning the taps on and leaving them to floos
Kicking locks off doors/ smashing doors
Wiping menstrual blood or shit everywhere
Deliberately cracking basins
Setting fire to bins

One of these things or similar happened every single day. In an Ofsted outstanding school in a wealthy area leafy suburb type place

Every day.

Not enough money for teaching and support staff. What are schools supposed to do about toilets when this happens? Keep them open until the school floods or burns down?

@Hobbi do countries with less SEND funding include SEND children in mainstream school or just let their families look after them outside of education

Restricting access to toilets isn't "keeping children safe". It's barbaric and isn't the answer.

We had to close one set of toilets last year after they were blocked and flooded. The site team did not enjoy literally paddling through shit.

This happened at my school back in the day. Most frustrating part was that the teachers weren't aware so if you asked out to the toilet, they would ask why you didn’t go at lunch and then didn’t believe you when you said it was because all the toilets were locked

How would you solve it then? Bearing in mind there’s not enough money to pay teaching or support staff.

@INeedToClingToSomething sometimes children aren’t safe if they use the toilets

Schools are certainly not stricter then since the 60's. I was in high school in the 90's and my school was way stricter then the schools I've had experience of now. We weren't allowed to loiter around the corridors during lunch every child was outside unless it absolutely bucketed down, even if it was freezing we were out. We had to stand up whenever any adult entered the room, there was no going to the toilet during lesson time. Forgetting your PE kit resulted in litter picking for the whole lesson. Those are just some of the rules I remember.

And I would never go to the toilet during the school day unless desperate as that is where the bullies hung out.
The toilet situation is no better now, my current school converted all the old ones into unisex so at lest a teacher can be on duty by the open ones but we still have lots of issues.
My kids have said at their school, they also won't use the toilet unless absolutely desperate even with open plan unisex toilets.

And who said you need 1 toilet for every 20 pupil, most schools in the UK are to old to have that many.

I found a very different experience. I was at school in the 70’s/80’s in a good school.

We were absolutely wild. The schools l taught in just weren’t ever that bad.

Maybe we were just extra bad?

I'm not sure how this is relevant. But, on the off chance it is, I'll summarise the Swedish situation: no, they absolutely do not leave it to families. They are broadly in favour of inclusion and integration but are constantly reviewing the evidence as to how this approach affects different children. It is illegal to keep a register of disabilities in Sweden and therefore less categorisation of children. In Italy, inclusion is preferred but individual needs are considered. Again, in Italy pedagogy is more important than clinical diagnosis and this is reflected in teacher training. The recess good work regarding SEND and teacher training in the UK up to about 2012 but the obsession with breaking teachers as quickly as possible and allowing MATs to train their own teachers according to their own ethos has, in my opinion, severely limited this.

According to the data, the UK has 5 times the rate of SEN than is average in the EU - make of that what you will in terms of who diagnosis actually serves in the UK. 5 times.

I'm still not sure of the relevance to the current topic, children with genuine SEND are more likely to be affected negatively by a 'no toilet' policy.

A strange but perhaps apt analogy might be in what has happened in football stadium toilets over the last decade. They used to be almost literal cess pits, were heavily policed and were foci for violence and vandalism. A trend of making them attractive, clean and properly equipped began with the building of new stadiums; they are no longer policed and fans seem to have responded well to being trusted and treated like humans. There is almost no violence and vandalism is practically unheard of.

My personal experience of European schools is that students are trusted more in all aspects of school life and respond positively. When I was part of SLT in a school, some of us advocated trying this approach - it wasn't perfect, but the vast majority of pupils appreciated not being forced to suffer because of a minority of offenders. We had a period of time when SLT focussed heavily on behaviour in communal spaces and we sanctioned, excluded and, in some instances, prosecuted those who didn't buy into our sense of community. I know this was reversed since me and some other leaders moved on and behaviour in general has deteriorated significantly.

@MigGirl

A little bit of reading comprehension failure there on your part. I specifically referred to the strict, zero tolerance policies favoured by many MATs over the last 15 years or so - that wouldn't nearly take us back to the 90s. I don't think you'd find children hanging around near toilets or inside during breaks in most schools now - partly because there are very few schools that actually provide breaks as we would recognise them.

I think you’ve missed my point.

My Y10 DS has never been to the toilet in school, he's too scared. I'd much prefer there was one locked block that the teachers patrol, so he can feel safe going for a bloody wee. The state of behaviour in schools is shocking.

That hasn't been my experience of current schools, my current school has only just introduced constant supervision around toilets during break and lunch. Until then they had tried making new shiny nice toilets technic so the kids would be nice to them, they just trashed them unfortunately.

I don't know what breaks are like in the schools your talking about as the large trust here and the LEA schools, plus the small trust school I work at still have what I would have considered normal break times 15-20 minutes morning break 40 minutes to an hour lunch very similar to what we had. Kids are allowed to do what they want with this time, only the school with an hour lunch runs lunch time clubs. The only odd thing now is that lunch always seems to be so late, anywhere from 1-1.30pm start time. We have no gaps between lessons, they did try that at one point but the kids would use it as an excuse to wonder around to much and not go to lessons on time.

@Hobbi My personal experience of European schools is that students are trusted more in all aspects of school life and respond positively.

I think this is one of the key differences. The children appear to be trusted so much more in schools in my country. My daughter is in her last year of lower school (13 years old so equivalent of year 8 in the UK), they are trusted to use the toilets appropriately and they do, they are trusted to go by themselves in cross-country skiing and orienteering and to come back and they do, there's no fences or gates around the school - they are trusted not to leave during school time and for the most part they do (there's a small shop nearby, sometimes some children will sneak off there during break but most don't), no uniforms or dress code, they are trusted to dress sensibly and they do (this I also see with the upper school teenagers, they don't dress ridiculously like people so often fear teenagers will do if there's no school uniforms). In the upper school she's going to in the autumn they are trusted, and expected, to get themselves from their school to the lower school a couple of kilometres away to get to certain lessons, within the 15 minute break between lessons. They are still trusted to use toilets appropriately and I haven't heard of any issues there (SIL is in her last year at upper school) but I know there are issues in schools in other towns (though I used to clean an upper school in a city and their toilets were always fine, no vandalism or even much mess)

SEN policy is to include as much as possible, though they have a separate class for those children whose needs are too great for the normal curriculum. DD's class is mostly children with SEN, they deal with it by making it a very small class (I appreciate that that's not possible in the UK at the moment) and having the same class and same teacher for the last 4 years so they all know really well how to work with each other. And the big thing is there's so much support for students and their families, I know that's something the UK is struggling with due to cuts and whatnot but here students have the right to meet with the school psychologist (every school has a local psychologist assigned to it) within a week if they need to (and the next day in urgent cases), as well as other pastoral care staff.

It is shocking that everyone is inconvenienced over this. It will be due to anti social behaviour. I'm a teacher and vandalism, vaping and anti social behaviour has resulted in some toilets being closed. Vandalism has had a knock on effect on teacher toilets too- same pipe network. When perpetrators are identified they should be dealt with severely and made to pay for the damage.

@Natsku

Thank you - you have backed up my points exactly. Hope your children do as well as they deserve.

@Natsku

It's a shame that so many people have such low expectations of our children as well - I've seen the trust model work. As for SEN, someone will be along to suggest that whatever country you're referring to must spend more on SEN provision, when that's almost certainly not the case. We love to label our badly behaved and not so bright as SEN here, especially if we're middle class.

I do think they spend well on SEN, don't know if it's that they spend more but at least they seem to spend well - every child in my DD's school gets regularly assessed by the special Ed teacher so anyone struggling with maths or literacy is quickly helped, DD's class gets several hours a week with the special Ed teacher helping those that need more help. Other classes get time too (but at least for DD's year group her class gets extra because of the extra need) and moving up to a higher level of support seems relatively easy (ds who is still in nursery has been moved up to enhanced support without any struggle)

They also seem to do a lot of work on emotional health and skills which perhaps helps with behaviour. This year dd has been doing aggression replacement training and I've even noticed a big change in her attitude at home since that.

My daughter who is 15 going on 16 says her school has 1 bathroom that all sexes have to use. I find this utterly disgusting. How are boys and girls sharing the same bathroom. It's a joke.

These issues aren't new, bullying in the toilets is as rife 40 years ago, we had them locked and had to fetch a key from the office during the day, at break and lunch a member of staff was on duty, there was two blocks for girls (9 toilets in total) for 400 girls (and same for boys) better but still queues.

Bullying is common elsewhere too, violence in toilets was a major issue when I lived in the USA and they had monitored loos etc. pretty sure there's problems elsewhere but English language publications don't report on them. The small minority ruining it for everyone else

How many pupils are there to each class @Natsku?

Do you bring your children up to respect school, education, teachers in your country? Is education valued?

Fences and gates on schools are not just to keep students in, they are to keep people out.

@Hobbi they obviously do spend more on provision if a child can see the school psychologist within a week. Many of our children are lucky if they can see one within a year.

Are the children brought up by their parents to be independent from a young age, to be responsible for themselves @Natsku?