State schools around me are locking toilets for students

[MyopicBunny]

Has anyone else heard of this happening? The students are told that they may only use the bathrooms at set times. The rest of the time they lock them. Apparently, this is Rishi Sunak's idea to help improve attendance to lessons. I think it's an abuse of human rights. Nobody should be stopped from going to the loo. Imagine a girl who needed to go urgently because her period started or a student with IBS?

I think it's completely batshit. It doesn't affect my children because one is at nursery and the other HE.

Do you also wonder why so many public toilets are also closed? Society needs a rethink. What can be done? CCTV in toilets? I think not.

Completely agree @MumOfStarWars

Kids are rebelling because school is a hell hole, stressful, worse than a prison, too many rules and cruel punishments. They are nasty little exam factories where children's spirits and love of learning, go to die.

I'd trash the toilets too.

So you will be home schooling your children then?

Yes. Absolutely, I am. Loving it too.

At least you are standing by your principles which is more than some do on here.

The council have permanently closed three of the public toilets where I am. It’ll save £100k a year the bulk of which is staffing costs. Unmanned toilets attract vandalism and drug taking etc They have kept open the ones on tourist stops that charge 50p to go in though.

😂

Don’t be on here moaning in 10 years when your ‘free spirited, free thinking’ kids can’t cope with life in society.

We’re preparing them for the world they live in, not a bygone era which ended hundreds of years ago.

@SwordToFlamethrower SwordToFlamethrower
Kids are rebelling because school is a hell hole, stressful, worse than a prison, too many rules and cruel punishments. They are nasty little exam factories where children's spirits and love of learning, go to die.

I'd trash the toilets too.

But they get to go home every night. How is that worse than prison?

I am interested in the assumption that parents can deliver a well-rounded education on their own, with all the grades needed for further education, especially if - like most of us - they have to work. :-) But if you're in favour of your free-spirited offspring trashing the toilets, perhaps it's a good thing!

Tell me you have never worked in a state secondary without telling me you have never worked in a state secondary

Schools can’t afford to replace vandalised rooms, they aren’t allowed to search bags, or exclude for poor behaviour. Parents are complaining on here if their child gets a detention or if they think a teacher might have raised their voice. You can’t remove a school’s funding, stop them using sanctions and then expect them to keep paying out to rectify the vast damage that some pupils have caused.

//

Absolutely. There was a thread last week in which a poster was upset the work "exclusion" was being used in front of and relation to a young student who had tried to strangle another child. Their child was the victim too

Our schools are in crisis. I feel for teachers.

Word, rather

Sorry to hear that. Has the child who attacked your colleague been excluded?

My two both have toilet passes - loos are unlocked but you are only allowed to go at curtain times without a pass.

However - neither use them because they can't manage to use the loos - both due to hassle and behaviour of some children and also they are wet and filthy, door locks not working and frequently; shit smeared on walls, loo seats, floors, even in sinks.... so they both leave school bursting to go; my son's medical condition means that he often wets himself on the way home, but he'd rather this then go to the school bathrooms. ☹️

Couldn’t agree more and you’ve put it far less politely but more succinctly than I could!

I also home educate and have never been more grateful to do so. No money in the world would persuade me to put my kids into a school today. I do however feel so much sympathy for other kids especially as I’m an ex teacher and actually went into teaching as I believe in our young people and their education 😔

😂

When people ask how my home educated children will learn how to cope in the ‘real world’ I reply ‘by living in it’? 😆
(Actually no one ever asks me that, just in MN).

If the toxic school environment is seen as ‘the real world’ then you can keep it. What exactly is that preparing kids for?! To put up with bullying, to put up with manipulative, draconian rules, to make zero decisions about their own lives, to bow to authority at all costs, to learn what adults decide they should learn, to have no responsibility or authority over their own lives?

I would argue that ‘the bygone era’ you allude to is exactly what school IS trying to prepare kids for. The world has moved on and the education system hasn’t kept pace at all. It’s lagging behind in so many ways. It’s outdated and out of sync with the digital modern world we live in.

Like I said, they are in the minority and we DO consider them. They are issued with toilet passes when parents communicate that there is a medical reason for it.

In general though, as a population, we naturally bladder train. I cannot nip out mid lesson to relieve myself otherwise my class isn't being taught (and the curriculum pressures are woefully unrealistic) and some kids would be climbing the walls, absconding, throwing thing etc.). So while we all know toilet ring is a basic human right, training the bladder is also a human function that must be done in a civilised society.

Unbelievable that this has to be explained tbh.

*toilet ring is a basic human right

Bloody hell what is it with my annoying typo!

TOILETTING

As my Texan family would say, bless your heart.

Behaviour had deteriorated since Covid. My school.lock toilets. Why? A few spoil it for the majority. There are pupils willfully damaging toilets, vaping snd smoking. Often the well-behaved pupils complain.

Hi, I have a daughter who’s 10 so going in to high school next year…. She’s very quiet and timid and would be humiliated to ask, she’s sometimes need a poo urgently and can’t wait (we think ibs tied in to her allergies) my question to you as a high school teacher… do you think it’s right that she would have to announce to the class that she’s desperate for a poo infront of her peers (especially boys) ? Would she then have to go and find someone to open them up, and stand at the door listening to her use it?

I'm not that poster but at my school she would have a toilet pass that would open the loos, so she'd just have to show it to the teacher.

Have you had her tested for gluten intolerance? I used to have that issue before I realised.

This is terrible 😢

Unfortunately the way behave children pay for the rest.

Not sure what the solution is? Is someone really need a toilet go to the one near the school office? Put a camera outside?