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.

If you tell your child to urinate in a playground of a school or inside on a schools floor then you're a terrible parent.
And if your child does it then they're a disgusting human. And would hopefully be excluded for indecent exposure. Fucking vile parenting.

@twistyizzy yeah but it's also because private schools do things their own way and they are usually less than half the size of an average state school.

Treat people as sub-human and they will behave that way.

True. But there are also many, many kids in schools who behave horrifically badly in spite of tireless help and support from their schools. Either because the poor children are broken before they ever get to secondary school and no amount of support can undo the damage, or because they (and often their parents) simply don't give a shit. Or a combination of both. Schools aren't shit or inhumane for not managing to turn these kids around. It would be a very difficult task even in a well-funded school. In poorly-funded schools, with behaviour problems sky-rocketing, it's almost impossible.

The preoccupation with stopping children going to the toilets during lessons is as old as the hills.

They used to think we were going there to try and smoke or meet up with friends but we just needed the loo!

In an office building with over a thousand staff there is always someone in the loo.
Why can't they grant kids the same respect and decency?

I agree with this. I was the rogue. My parents were fine, my brothers were fine, my friends were fine, but I was a total shit to teachers.

Of course and that's my point. It is much easier for them to manage behaviour and ultimately they cam just get rid of disruptive kids which state schools can't hence you get to a point with state schools where the only thing they can do is lock toilets. If state schools could get rid of disruptive/badly behaved kids and the responsibility of educating those kids fell on the parents then I think they would sharp start supporting schools better!

My nearly 15 year old left her pretty good state school two years ago to be HE and she told me they did not lock the toilets then. So this is definitely a newish thing in my area, I remember that when she was there, they had CCTV all over the school. Maybe they can't afford to run it any more?

They used to think we were going there to try and smoke or meet up with friends but we just needed the loo!

That may be true of you. These days, vaping, drug-taking, severe bullying and sexual assault happen in school toilets. And non-consensual intimate filming of other students. When teachers say this is about safeguarding, they aren't making it up, you know.

@twistyizzy exactly.

Because office workers don’t:

Smear shit on the walls
Deliberately piss on the floor until it’s about 5cm deep
Wank at the walls
Trash the doors and pull them off
Shove stuff in the toilets to block them
Set fire to bins
Smear menstrual blood everwhere
Leave the taps on to cause £10000’s worth of damage
Pkay truant with their mates
Threaten and bully other office workers
Perform sexual acts.

Unless they do in your place.

How would you feel at work if people were doing this EVERY SINGLE DAY.?

Respect and decency😂🙄if only…

Just to add:

Congregate in the loos to beat their colleagues up
Bash their colleague's head on the mirrors
Lean over the diving walls to point and laugh at their colleagues using the toilet.

⬆️ Everything @ArseInTheCoOpWindow just said.

Never heard of an office where this happens.

The damage is happens every day. The flooding is ridiculous and costs ££££ to fix. Schools simply cannot afford this crap.

My dd1 has various additional needs o e of which is related to her bladder so she had permission to leave classes at will anyway (due to autism) and her lanyard operated the disabled toilet door. When dd2 went to secondary we had issues of not being able to access toilets due to queues, they used to walk down and use the ones at Waitrose (who didn't seem to mind)

Why do you think that limiting the times someone can use the toilet to be an infringement of human rights? Be honest - a student can have a wee before leaving home for school at, say, 8am. They can have a wee on the way into school an hour later, then at break time 2 hours later, then again at lunch time 2 hours later, then again at home time 3 hours later.
I am a teacher. On the days I’m on duty, I get to have a wee before I have to be in class at 8.30, then again at lunch time 4 hours later, then again at home time at 3.30 unless I’m doing a club in which case it’s 4pm. I don’t think my human rights are being abused.

That is a top rated safeguarding issue. Did the school know?

Yeah, forgot to put drug dealing in there.
And also selling sweets in there.

Exactly, @ArseInTheCoOpWindow .It's almost as if people don't believe these things happen in schools, and that teachers are making it up to give us an excuse for our inexplicable desire to prevent kids from going for a wee.

At my school we have finally decided on a system where we will let any student go to the toilet at any time, but we have to log every toilet trip in lesson time on the school system. It's a massive pain. And even in a girls' grammar school with amazingly good behaviour, there's still vaping, bullying and occasional vandalism.

A teacher friend once told me, there are so many students asking permission to use the toilets because of

1. Periods (Some girls seem to have their period EVERY week).
2. Questionable medical issues

That sometimes there is only a quarter of the class left.

Problem is many moaning on here only think of their child, they fail to understand that the teacher is dealing with 30 odd such behaviours.

Eric has good resources. Aside from just having the right to go to the toilet as a general principle - which I think everyone should have, and not just adults - there are 900,000 kids under 18 living with bladder or bowel issues in the UK.

https://eric.org.uk/

We had quite a lot of issues at primary 'he's going to the loo just doesn't like maths/assembly' type comments, before our son was finally diagnosed with chronic bladder issues, still ongoing now and he's 13.

So yeah, I've thought a lot about school toilets and rules/attitudes over the years.

Not this saga again. It’s been raised a million times and every time teachers and senior managers have commented on why this has to happen in a lot of schools- vaping, bullying, sexual assault, truancy, upskirting.

I forgot- taking drugs, drug dealing, ringing parents to tell them about a behaviour issue before the school ring. Etc etc.

If that's happening why isn't it made public? It sounds worse than a prison.

School should keep the toilets open, and accessible at all times, then nobody would even think to look for other toileting options.

Come on then @DancefloorAcrobatics, how are you going to stop all the issues listed above?

They don’t need to. Unless they have a medical condition then they go at breaks.