Does my daughter need a toilet pass?

[BeFunnyAmberPlayer]

My daughter who is in year 8 has told me that toilets are locked all day and are only opened at break but they are too busy and she can’t find the time to go. She has stopped eating or drinking at school as she doesn’t want to have to use the toilet but this is really stressing her. She wears 2 pads on her period because she can’t change it at school and I wanted to email the school asking for a toilet pass but she told me I will be denied as she doesn’t have any medical conditions. Do you think she needs one?

So.... you think they should be allowed to vape?
Seriously?

I said I was playing devil's advocate. It was just a question.

Do I think kids should vape? No I don't at any time. They shouldn't be able to get their hands on them. Am I realist that know that it will happen no matter rules schools put in place for them? Yes I am. We all smoked in school when i went, I'm not saying it's right, but it still happened.

I personally think schools need a total rethink on how behaviour is punished. At the moment the majority of the schools are zero tolerance for anything other than a standard robotic behaviour, and to me it seems that students are rebelling against that in any way they can and not get caught. How are these kids behaving like this in school and suddenly going to uni and none of these issues happen. Are we saying it's only the kids who don't go to uni that vandalise toilets and vape/smoke at school? As I can assure you plenty of students smoke and vape at uni.

I personally just feel things need looking into more, and maybe zero tolerance of anything is maybe not the right way to go.

@LuckysDadsHat - I know lots of people smoke and vape at university. They're probably having sex and drinking as well.
We're dealing with children. So no vaping.

Are we saying it's only the kids who don't go to uni that vandalise toilets and vape/smoke at school?

I am willing to be that there is a correlation between not going to lessons and not going to uni.

But the student are obviously not spending all day in the toilets from the many on here that say they are locked all day so they are attending school! If they are not attending school they are not smashing up the schools toilets are they?

So you're saying that locking toilets during lessons is effective at keeping students in lessons who would otherwise be in the toilets vaping/vandalising?

No I'm saying despite the toilets being locked it seems on here that the toilets are still being smashed up and students vaping in them.......... so all this rule is doing is making other students terrified to attend school, making themselves ill by not eating and drinking all day because of the failing zero tolerance approach.

Because, like many institutions, smoking (including vapes) is banned on site by most councils. Plus illegal for school kids to buy and smoke.

Staff can't, so pupils really shouldn't be able to vape on site.

As for staff and toilets we had one unisex one on each floor in my last job. You need the bladder of a horse to be a teacher!

No, that is explaining why the toilets are being locked.

It was even worse during the pandemic, because we had to keep them in the room at lunch and break time as well. A rota for teacher relief was set up - sometimes the delay was excruciating!
(Students were allowed to go on a supervised rota).

Vaping illegal substances, snorting others, drinking, self harm, sexual activity or sexual assault, storing weapons in the cisterns for later use, production and transmission of images of child sexual abuse, causing somewhere in the region of £85,000 worth of emergency drain works from deliberately blocking the pipes leading to flooding of classrooms with foul waste, the digging up of the pipes underneath classrooms, followed within a week of reopening with further blockages and then the day after they were fixed, the sinks torn off the walls and every toilet smashed - stuff like that also goes on.

Can imagine it wouldn't be easy - but do kids ever get caught and prosecuted for this sort of thing [particularly the plumbing disasters] - almost all of what you list is illegal to some degree or other?

But it's obviously not working! If things are still being smashed up or people having sex or people vaping locking them is not working. Maybe, just maybe they need to look at other methods rather than punishing students who just want to use the toilet when they need to go like all of us can do on a daily basis at work.

Sometimes. But that's then complicated by things like 'It wasn't her, she just happened to be there at the time', 'You're not allowed in the toilets, so you're just making it up/are you saying that a teacher went into the toilets, that's not right, what they were really doing in there in with children?', 'Don't know what you're talking about, my child would never so much as take a sip of coffee, much less be doing lines with their mates and sharing it on SM', 'It must have haven't just before he went in and you're blaming him because you don't like him', etc, etc.

It does work. It has significantly reduced vandalism, bullying and vaping. In tandem with no phones rule we now don't get them filming each other under the cubicle doors.
It's far better, the stats bear it out.

To the detriment of other students who behave and just want to pee in peace!

Then can now pee in peace because it's unlikely someone will have trashed the place, produced a cloud of vape, or will be filming them under the cubicle.

@LuckysDadsHat - are you a parent governor?. If not, it's a good idea, because there's usually a shortage.

Vaping is addictive, dangerous sometimes, causes bullying and antisocial behaviours and is disruptive. No we can't just let them do it. We have students who are buying cheap vapes illegally and they're no doubt full of toxic crap and they use them so frequently that they can't cope without them. I've seen students shaking with need in the middle of an exam. I repeat, no, we can't condone it.

Before I started teaching, I had no idea what was actually happening in schools. Because my dc are pretty well behaved and go to school to learn. Same as my friends' dc. Same as nearly all MNers. Just this week I've seen things which the average parent would not believe and that's in a v good school. A tiny minority are complex and devastating and will wilfully cause thousands of pounds worth of damage.

We aren't penalising the majority. We are protecting facilities they deserve. If there's an alternative to monitoring toilet use and locking them between lessons, I'd like to hear it.

People asking why toilets are locked in lesson time are told that it’s because of the vaping, vandalism and other undesirable behaviour that happens in unlocked toilets during lesson time.

The locking of the toilets is in response to, and prevents that behaviour.

Anyone who demands that students have free access to toilets is either declaring a free-for-all to unruly students, OR have to explain which other measures they would implement apart from locking toilets to prevent this behaviour, bearing in mind that schools have no money.

Well they can if it's between the hours of 10.30-10.40 and 12.30-13.15 and queue up with the other 500 students who behave and have had to bleed onto their clothes or have painful stomach ache from holding their bodily functions in.

I am a governor in a primary school and have also worked in education for 20 years (not as a teacher) including 2 x secondary schools. In those schools no toilets were locked.

Have not rtft.
Ar my DDs college there are 'anxiety toilets' which those who need them can use.
V.good.

Absolutely, @noblegiraffe . It's very easy to be critical of school policy from the comfort of your sofa. Less easy to work out an effective policy.

Toilets aren’t locked at my school either. We are very fortunate with our intake and I’m not going to pretend that it’s anything other than that which means we don’t have to implement measures that other schools do.