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.

It's not to do with government. At least not directly.

Of course it is! If you stop funding a service then that service will fall apart. And all the people who work within it will (understandably) become disillusioned and frustrated. I had children at school under the last Labour government. It was not ever like this. Now, teachers are sometimes having to buy materials out of their own pocket. It's failing as much as the NHS is, by all accounts.

What really irritates me is the victim mentality and defensiveness that some teachers have on MN. You can't start a thread on here about schools without some people assuming it's an attack on teachers.

Also not one person has said that they would find it ok for their child to not be able to go to the toilet. As long as it's someone else's children?

At no point have I said that children shouldn't be sanctioned for bad behaviour. I wouldn't complain about a teacher shouting on occasion either. Nor have I said that teachers are the ones who implement these ideas. Governors tend to do that.

Being able to access a toilet is a basic thing. It should be a right. And if the current system of how toilets operate is causing safeguarding issues then there has to be a long term solution that is not locking the toilets.

'What are we supposed to do?' Won't change anything for the better.

How do you suggest they do that when their parents are happy they vape and don’t care when incidents are reported to them?

I'm pretty sure GP's can nip to the loo between appointments, ditto bank clerks.
I've worked in a public facing role for 20 + years and never had anyone tell me I can't go for a wee when I need one (my bladder deffo won't abide by a 2 hr schedule).

Weirdly I can't recall going out of class at school though, at secondary.
Maybe I just had better bladder control than now as a menopausal woman with poorly behaved bladder muscles. Does HRT help at all?

Holding in wee can cause bladder infections, esp for girls.

DS (14) had one end of last year that got really nasty . A and E job 2 x in one week. Secondary infection and double strength antibiotics before we got on top of it. Week off school. He'd asked to go, teacher didn't hear so he kept it in til break.

Just asked him about loos at school, aside from odd blocked ones he says they are OK, but I do get not all schools like this.

Don't know what the answer is re bullying and vandals.

Holding in wee can cause bladder infections, esp for girls.

Exactly.

I can completely understand this. Lessons are one hour long, kids should be able to wait an hour. I think it is also for the safety of the kids. Once they are not being supervised there is a danger of bullying and self harming as well as vaping etc

Secondary schools are far too big for the staff to manage them properly. There's absolutely no reason why older teenagers have to attend school every single day. It could easily be done online at home and as WFH is on the rise it would give them head start. My son passed all his exams, he taught himself from age 13 and off to Uni later this year.

It’s certainly a one way ticket to a suspension for exposing himself to others……

Problem is, they don’t keep their vapes in their bags or blazers so searching individuals is pot luck.

I suspect you’ve forgotten what it was like to be a kid a school. Going to the loo in lesson was rarely to actually go to the loo.

You mean there aren’t enough staff? A massive school needs masses of staff. And therin lies the problem.

Mine hated online learning. It doesn’t work for everyone.

MyopicBunny

What really irritates me is the victim mentality and defensiveness that some teachers have on MN. You can't start a thread on here about schools without some people assuming it's an attack on teachers.

What really irritates me is that posters project a victim and defensiveness mentality on teachers when teachers are trying to explain what is going on in schools.

And you can start a thread on the teachers in your children's school without it being an attack on teachers.

Its very simple you don't start with dross like 'why do all teachers get defensive' or 'why do teachers do X, y or Z'

it easy, you even managed it on this thread, so others should be able to to do it as well.

No child is born wanting to flood the toilets or assault a teacher. The awful state of our secondary schools is a consequence of things going wrong at home and in school at a much earlier stage.

Significant investment in social care, early years and primary schools would resolve a lot of this quite naturally. But there's no political will to do so.

Especially when the government can load all of it onto teachers and then blame them for any issued caused.

Children use the toilet though. Before school, at break, at lunch and after. If they have a genuine need they can get a pass to access the loo whenever. If they’re really struggling with periods parents can speak to a pastoral member who will also ensure the child gets a pass.

You are making out that children are forced to go all day without the toilet when this is simply not the case.

Parents haven’t got a clue. Especially when their perfect diddy darling is involved. No way they could have done anything like that…

You have responded really oddly to my quote. I said it isn't a direct result of government, because in your OP you suggested that the PM had a implemented a policy on teenagers accessing bathrooms.

I said it is not a direct result of government and you argued back with an indirect result of government.

Anyway, I disagree that funding will fix the current systemic behavioral challenges in young people. It would help, of course, but a significant minority of young people are being raised to rebel and disobey. This is not government. This is parental and societal attitudes. Not of all people, but a significant minority.

Weirdly I can't recall going out of class at school though, at secondary.

I pointed out to one of my year 7 classes the other day, after I had let 9 of them out to go to the toilet in one lesson, one after another, and recorded each one on the school system that I have never once left a lesson to go to the toilet in 29 years. Including either time I was pregnant, or during my currently very heavy perimenopausal periods (obviously I didn't tell them that bit).

I remember it clear as day thanks. Most of our lessons were 35 minutes so we had more opportunity to pop to the loo's between subjects. Doubles were 1hr 10 and only 3 times a week.

Every lesson seems to be 1 hour now and the kids get a detention if late to class so I guess there's less opportunity. My son says the queues in their 35 min lunch break are massive so sometimes he doesn't eat so he can go to the loo, or vice versa.

I don't know the answer.

Long lessons and short lunch breaks are another result of overly low staffing levels, overly full buildings and poor behaviour though.

Basically the need to minimise student movement around the school and requirement for supervision.

An awful lot of it does come down to money.

I remember it well. Rendez-vous by text for a smoke in the Year 10 toilets...'Miss, I GOTTA go! I'll have to pee in the bin if you won't sign me out!' Little charmers. Then they'd block the basins and turn the taps on until we were flooded. Happy days.

This is great - but I teach in a school with multiple buildings. Just altering one toilet block out of the 7 is going to cost us in excess of £40,000.

If toilets are left open many students won’t use them due to the type of behaviour listed in the above posts.

This happens at my child's primary school, they can only use the toilets at break or lunch times. I think it's terrible. Totally unfair for girls having periods and anyone with medical condition.

The more I think about this the more I’m on the fence. Its easy to say how bad it is but I was a teenager in the 2010’s and things have changed massively now.

Kids have so many more resources to misbehave. If we wanted to smoke in the toilet we didn’t have vapes we had fags, they stunk and set the smoke alarm off
Our shitty phones didn’t have the capacity to video any bullying
We didn’t have the vast social media to post unpleasant videos on that can go viral

These kids nowadays are way more advanced than the adults in charge of them and it’s fucking scary. Just a shame there isn’t a middle ground so that those who genuinely just need to go to the toilet don’t have to suffer.

This. Parental responsibility has gone out the window. I work in Primary and the lack of respect from the kids, lack of responsibility from parents and the growing sense of entitlement from both is shocking. Schools are there to educate children, parents need to parent.