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.

But are you happy for your child to be subjected to this as well? Or is it just everyone else's kids that are little hooligans?

My 20 year old went to an academy school where the toilets were kind of built so they they were open and anyone walking by could see what was going on in there (not the actual cubicles). They looked a bit like a cloak room. The purpose of this was to stop truanting and also bullying and other things mentioned.

I one let a pupil out to toilet in lesson because in most schools you do have some discretion. He looked pretty pale and complained he was going to be ill. I let him go and advised the pastoral staff.

While he was there, he decided to shove a load of sweet wrappers down one of the sinks and flooded the corridor.

This meant room changes, toilet closed to everyone for 2 days when the queues were bad enough already.

Toilets are locked for a reason. Pupils are allowed passes and exemptions if they have good reason. Use of sanitation is a human right; use when you demand it is not. Young girls are given toilet passes when they start menstruating but as a rule in older years they are expected to manage just like female staff have to do.
If they come on unexpectedly a discreet word just outside the classroom is all that's needed. If teachers turn them down it might be because they have form for meeting up with mates in lesson time etc

I'd be ok with searching bags. Much better than making kids bleed over themselves or piss themselves.

And let me guess that was an invasion of privacy and against their human rights? Because who wants to take a dump in a cubicle that leads straight on to the school population?

This isn't a new thing. When I was at secondary school (1986-92) the toilets were locked outside of breaks and lunchtime. If you needed the toilet during lessons you had to go down to the school office and someone would give you the key.

Yes the teachers generally do. But try maintaining classroom discipline with inconsistency. Your give permission for one pupil to go during a lesson you can't then refuse the next without being challenged and accused of discrimination. You either have a revolving door and risk the vandalism etc or let no one out. So the well behaved are punished too.

Again I agree it's not right. Only solution is empowering schools to apply real sanctions. Doesn't happen. Restorative conversations won't cut it.

@GoodnightAdeline I thought it was a good idea. So stop putting words in my mouth. It was a good way to make sure students weren't getting bullied in toilets.

No one is stopping any child with IBS from going to the toilet for god's sake. The school will be aware of any medical issues with students and give them a pass if necessary. Girls on their period can still go to the toilet to change their pads or tampons during break or lunch or to the school nurse if it's urgent.
I'm a teacher and I regularly go from 7.30am to 3.30pm without going to the toilet at all (I wish I was exaggerating but it's true).

My experience of being a teacher was the same. Pissing in the floor was a favourite, or turning all the taps on and causing floods.

You can’t ‘expel’ anymore. Theres no one to police toilets, so they get vandalised and trashed. They aren’t stopping kids from accessing the toilets and destroying their human rights. They are trying to keep them safe! And sometimes when idiots have trashed them all they have to lock most of them.

The most they get is a fixed term exclusion. This is all schools can do.

Schools are not run by toilet denying teachers. They are run by harassed staff who don’t have the time or infrastructure or money to deal with the constant toilet vandalising.

And l worked in a posh school. And the toilets were still trashed all the time. It needs government support for policing of toilets. But there’s no fucking teachers so toilets are kind of bottom of the lists in schools.

@GoodnightAdeline bizzarly enough the toilets aren't locked on planes and service stations 🙄

Schools can’t search the bags of every child every day. They can’t guarantee that kids who go to the toilets during lesson times aren’t doing things other than vaping.
And as for comments about sorting out the behaviour of those students causing the problems? Great idea. Just how? Often parents don’t care. Kids aren’t bothered by consequences. Some of the posters on here clearly don’t have a clue about secondary schools!

Secondary school teacher here too!

We do this. Nobody wants to do it but the deliberate floods and the vandalism such and ripping taps off and cracking tiling and mirrors is a constant problem. Add to that the systemic issue of vaping and just generally using toilets to truant and you have a massive problem that costs time and money every day. Time and money that we just don’t have spare.

Teachers shouldn’t be put in a position of needing to judge whether a teenager needs the loo or wants to vape or even maliciously wreck the place. It’s insane that we needed to spend 25k putting lockable doors on toilet blocks.

We all hate the idea but none of us can deny that having done it, attendance in lessons is up and wilful damage is down.

No it's Biology. And of course contributes to the lack of ability to wait. There is literally no need to drink constantly all day long so long as they have access to water at breaks.

As teachers well know as they can't use the toilet during lessons either.

You really wouldn't have though.

We get that threat ALL the time and mostly from kids who are part responsible for them being locked in the first instance.

And for previous posters who say about toilet pass - no one bats an eyelid.

My school has locked them for over a year now out of absolute necessity. Smoking, vaping, bullying, sharing cubicles (8 to a tiny cubicle) and wrecking the seats, kicking the toilet paper off the wall, flooding the sinks, pissing on floor, excrement on walls, graffiti.

It's a staffing nightmare and impossible to police. This is the best and only option we have.

At break and lunch, SLT certain toilets and for the rest of the time, pupils must request a toilet pass from staff.

You think toilet cubicles opening straight on to the general school population are a good idea?

How about we just cut the absurd mitigations and actually pass laws backing teachers in properly disciplining kids, what they say goes, not being suspended because they raised their voice slightly at some child throwing chairs across the room and pinned the responsibility where it lies, with the parents?

Bending ourselves into pretzels thinking up novel solutions can only go so far, the root issue is the behaviour.

@Caravaggiouch schools aren't going to get any parents onside locking the toilets.
They haven't even got back to me so yeah my current respect for the school is 0.
Noone is going to respect anyone with barshit polices.
Sounds like you are going to be one of those yes sir parents.
Good luck with that 😂

Water bottles were introduced at the start of the century as research discovered being properly htdrated made for better learning.

So they do need to drink in lessons.

Agree. Literally nobody needs to be sipping water every 10 minutes. We had a drink before school, at break times, lunch times and after school. That’s plenty and if you’re thirsty in between you need testing for diabetes.

It's basically because it's a safeguarding concern. We are worried we can't protect children.

There's a number of issues, and they are VERY DIFFERENT from many adults' memories of school.

1. The first is that students go to the toilet significantly more than they did in the past. For most of my 20 year teaching career, when students asked to go to the toilet it was rare- so you knew they really needed to go. However, it's now 5 or more each lesson. That's huge amounts of children walking round unsupervised.
2. It's affecting students' learning. I let a Year 10 boy go this afternoon. It's his fourth time during my lessons this week. That means he's missed more than 40 minutes of my lessons this week alone- and that's typical. It's not generally the top set students. It's the weaker ones (mostly). This is a pattern that lowers their outcomes.
3. It's obviously unsupervised during lessons. In my building, assuming 5 students per lesson is typical, that means 100 unsupervised children per hour. That is a potential nightmare for so many reasons.
4. Yeah. Internal truancy. We have removed the front wall of our toilets to try and prevent this (and vaping), but that was expensive, and students can still hide in the cubicles. In the past if students wanted to truant they generally went home- but we now have loads of our most vulnerable kids hiding out at school. Having loads of kids in the corridors because they're going to the toilets makes this much more difficult to deal with.

I don't have an answer. We're currently letting the students go whenever they want, but are tracking those patterns. In a previous school, however, we had an extremely serious incident happen when children were unsupervised in the toilets- so I am very anxious about the situation!

There’s being better hydrated by having plentiful water fountains and encouraging their use, then having kids glugging water from bottles constantly and needing the toilet every half an hour.

It’s pretty awful but it happened at my school. I got locked in the loo at the end of morning break circa 1982. The male teacher who locked the door was far from sympathetic let alone apologetic.

No the research showed that they needed access to water all the time.

Theres plenty of adults who do this.

I am currently teach in a comprehensive with a range of the issues over toilets described on this thread. All schools have these issues and sexual assault is another one to add to the list.

However, the posh private school I was at before had endless toilet issues too, including vandalism. But they had more money to fix the damage.

What a disgusting and totally irresponsible attitude to instill in your dc.

No. I would have. I very rarely caused trouble at school but I've got a backbone and am a bit shameless