Schoolgirl, 15, ‘stopped from using toilet while on period’

[WinnieSmith]

Schoolgirl, 15, ‘stopped from using toilet while on period’ then put in seclusion

metro.co.uk/2021/05/31/schoolgirl-15-stopped-from-using-toilet-while-on-her-period-14680071/

"...we do ask that students make every effort to do this during break and lunch time to minimise disruption to lessons..."

Again, problem behaviour in toilets isnt a new issue, why are schools still unable to find a way to deal with it?

Unable is insulting. Under funded and out of options is the reality.

This article highlights the lengths parents will go to, tk prove their child is "right". Imagine this on a small scale every single day. That's what schools are up against.

@Lulola

As a teacher I’ll just say that usually there’s a lot more to these stories than meets the eye. Even with a no toilet rule, if a girl asks who wouldn’t usually make demands, and gives you the look, you let them go. Or they can discreetly tell you (harder with a male teacher of course). Detentions would occur where there has been stroppiness, screeching “I’m ON my PERIOD” for maximum dramatic effect (usually roping in other screechers too), stomping out of lessons - all this is commonplace among a certain type of student and as they’re also usually prone to lying through their teeth at every given moment you’ve no idea if the period thing is true.

So while we’re all picturing a meek, shy girl who was too scared to ask and has been punished, which would be terrible, that’s quite likely not to be the case, especially with a mum who’s “livid” all over the papers.

Did you see the last line of the report? In principle, I agree it's atrocious, but it feels like there might be more to this story:

‘We have spoken with this student and her mother regarding the particular incident and have explained our rationale for the seclusion – this was because of her disrespect to a member of staff upon leaving the classroom, without permission.’

We only have 50 minute lessons. I have at least 5 kids a lesson ask, if I said yes then I would probably have 10. There are 70 teachers in my school so that’s 350 kids wandering around unsupervised every lesson, covid bubbles will be crossed..... it isn’t usually the well behaved pupils asking either, it’s the kids that vandalise the toilets and set the fire alarms off to cause maximum disruption. It’s unmanageable so they have to be told no. If they are flooding within 50 minutes, the longest they would need to wait then I would expect them to have a medical pass.

Due to covid breaks and lunches are half way through lessons currently so twice a day the longest they would go is 25 minutes.

A medical pass for flooding? I can leak through the biggest tampon plus nighttime pad within 10 minutes during a flood and I've never asked the GP for a medical pass or whatever. Some people flood, it's not abnormal as such.

To be honest, this is from Secondary school days, as I can't remember further back if they said it at Juniors. But we were told it was good for you to hold your wee in, I have heard so many stories since then that suggests otherwise!
I do get it in one way, all things toilet related that teachers have to get work done, and many did use it as a way to slope off etc. But there are also those who genuinely need the loo!
Plus with periods, yeah, you can't really plan around sorting it all out at lunch time!

God they'd have a hard time with me now, as mine are heavy and I need to go!
Reminds me of how work places can be, that it's hand to the grind and you are just expected to carry on, never mind that you could be soaked through 🤦‍♀️

At my school we have an On Call system.

Anyone with any sort of management responsibility (so SLT but also Heads & 2nds of Department, Heads of Year, Heads of House) has a weekly slot on the rota. If you're not in a management role but are ambitious, you can volunteer, which is quite popular as it definitely is one of the ways to earn Brownie points with senior leadership.

For any given lesson, there are at least 3 people On Call - more if it's an identified flashpoint time such as last afternoon of term or a mufti day.

If you're teaching, you email the equivalent of [email protected] if you need back up - an unruly student needs to be removed from your class OR someone wants to be excused to use the bathroom OR you need to leave the room yourself for any reason.

First On Call colleague to see it replies 'ok' - this goes to everyone else On Call, to let them know it's covered, & also the colleague who has sent up the bat signal, to let them know the cavalry are on their way.

On Call person removes disruptive student/escorts bathroom visit/minds class whilst teacher is out of room.

They then log this centrally, so if a given student is asking to be excused Every. Single. French lesson or regularly straight after break or just several random times a week, this can be investigated & dealt with - be it a quiet 'stop it, you're taking the piss' chat with the Head of Year, or a conversation with parents re medical issues.

We instituted this during covid to avoid bubbles being breached, but it actually works well & will be retained. Students who need to go know that they will be able to; lead swingers know it's not really much fun to be escorted to the loo & back with no opportunity for a little wander.

On a couple of occasions a student has said 'I'm so sorry I just can't wait for Ms Scary-Deputy to get here!' & basically bolted to the nearest loo. Fine: Ms S-D will collar them on the way back.

But yeah, it requires a fair bit of teacher input. However, after a couple of weeks once the system was imbedded, we really just don't get much in the way of unnecessary bog break requests.

If children are trying to escape lessons by going to the loo, then the school has bigger problems.

Yeah, they're trying to teach teenagers. As a teenager I would love nothing better than ditching geography for 10mins to meet my mates from another class in the loos for a cig.

I can well imagine this scenario, having decades of experience in classrooms. We've not got the full account, and no school is going to hang a child out to dry in the media, but I can well imagine how this went down, including why the family chose to go to the paper.

[quote WinnieSmith]@SirSamuelVimes

make teenagers behave themselves

Make teenage boys behave themselves?[/quote]
I did post a link to a previous thread that shows teenage girls can also not behave regarding this but I guess as with most things, this gets conveniently ignored by many as an issue that is inconvenient to acknowledge.

SirSamuelVimes wrote - "On the way there she runs into Boys B & C (aged 15). They have also "gone to the toilet", except they haven't. They've bunked off lessons for five minutes and have hidden round the back of a building. They see girl A on her way to the toilet and grab her, pull her behind the building, and sexually assault her."

I sympathise with the difficulty teachers have in dealing with this situation. I agree that managing a class of 30 teenagers is not easy.

I had hoped that making arrangements for girls to deal with menstruation at school would be solvable, but if the school is e.g. one where boys cannot be prevented from sexually assaulting girls, then the system is broken.

To the teachers on this thread: Who runs your school - the staff or the sex-predator boys? The teachers on this thread seem frustrated/demoralised/defeated by these toilet and sexual assault issues.

if the school is e.g. one where boys cannot be prevented from sexually assaulting girls, then the system is broken.

Have you looked at the stats? One rape a day in school. Look at the Everyone's Invited website to see how entrenched sexual assault and rape culture is in schools today. The system is so far beyond broken.

Who runs your school - the staff or the sex-predator boys? The teachers on this thread seem frustrated/demoralised/defeated by these toilet and sexual assault issues.

SirSamuelVimes has it spot on already. In addition, it is not just as black and white as ‘staff vs. ‘sex predator boys’’.

Teenagers and pre-teens do like to push boundaries and as my previous thread link shows, teenage girls can also be an issue that needs solving, without parents/carers jumping to conclusions (and the same goes for school staff).

Staff/schools do try and solve the issue by systems/policies that reduce the disruption caused by teens going to the toilet during lessons but as you can see from the OP’s article, even that can cause issues.

I would genuinely like those who don’t work in schools, to suggest solutions that don’t involve disrupting lessons and putting young people at risk (because I haven’t found a magic solution that caters to both and would love to help implement useful suggestions)

CorvusPurpureus the on call your school uses sounds fantastic.

Extra staff needed to run it but the kids who need to go get to go. And safeguarding is not an issue.

I do have one kid with a toilet pass who wouldn’t be able to hold on for a staff member to come. But we can adjust for that one kid :- “Billy, had gone to the toilet, please check on him”

—he’s not really called Billy obviously—

ChloeDecker wrote - "I would genuinely like those who don’t work in schools, to suggest solutions that don’t involve disrupting lessons and putting young people at risk"

I want to hear more proposed solutions from the people who do work in schools and in e.g. government departments, who are paid to solve these problems. Then perhaps we can move on to tapping the energy of the unpaid.

This thread has depressed me so much. I feel so incredibly sorry for the children today. I like @CorvusPurpureus solution, it sounds like that would work. I am not a professional though.

For us it works, it has worked both for DS who had a period of medical toileting issues (took 3 months to solve in year 1/2) and for DD the first few months when she first had her period. The schools worked together with us as parents, pastoral care and the teachers and our children were allowed to use the loos during lessons if it was an emergency. They didn’t abuse it, trouble makers were not allowed to go (no pastoral care + parent + teacher agreement) and the situations resolved. I do appreciate that our children go to independent single sex schools.

I cannot express how sorry I feel for some of the children referred to here. And the fact that some teachers don’t think it is urgent to try to help young boys not to soil/wee themselves or to save very young girls on their first periods from the embarrassment to bleeding through.... It really breaks my heart.

@vesuvia

ChloeDecker wrote - "I would genuinely like those who don’t work in schools, to suggest solutions that don’t involve disrupting lessons and putting young people at risk"

I want to hear more proposed solutions from the people who do work in schools and in e.g. government departments, who are paid to solve these problems. Then perhaps we can move on to tapping the energy of the unpaid.

As I said, those people have proposed solutions but not everyone likes them. What’s your ideal solution?

I like @CorvusPurpureus solution, it sounds like that would work. I am not a professional though

It’s a good one for some schools with the staffing and infrastructure and pupils to carry it through. Still takes time away from lesson time (emailing etc).

I would just like to say that I do as far as possible let all my pupils go to the toilet when they ask, even the ones a couple of minutes into a lesson just off an hour lunch break, but I also know not all teens tell the truth in these circumstances as have experienced that in my own classrooms and that there are some serious issues that need addressing, such as the examples given by SirSamuelVines, in this debate, other than, ‘it’s their human right’, end of discussion.

I want to hear more proposed solutions from the people who do work in schools and in e.g. government departments, who are paid to solve these problems. Then perhaps we can move on to tapping the energy of the unpaid

vesuvia I have a solution. The school I work at just doesn’t have the money needed for the extra staff it would require.

@WhenSheWasBad Same. Even staffing the 3 staff required above is a huge cost and arguably not the best use of SLT time.

Yes, to be fair we are an international indy with generous staffing allocations.

We are also small vertically (15 year groups but only a 100 or so kids in each), so everyone knows everyone else - which means if you're walking a student to the loo you can say 'is everything ok Sarah/Mahmoud?' & they'll generally tell you if they're having a heavy period, have tummy trouble or just forgot to go at break after downing a litre of water.

So if need be, you can email the teacher again to say that Sarah/Mahmoud is going to be out of class for a bit because they're sorting themselves out.

But yes, it's not necessarily going to work seamlessly in a massive busy U.K. comp where the three on call staff are running around like headless chickens trying to cover 2000 kids in a school the size of a shopping mall & where everyone has far fewer free periods anyway!

@Congressdingo good female friend was a bus driver, I know another woman who was a train driver. I worked in a nursery, we could not just dash off to the loo whenever we wanted.

ChloeDecker, would your school consider a solution where pupils are given a pass based on sign-off from parents and pastoral care? And where the use is monitored?

Let’s say it takes one person ten minutes to escort one student to the toilet. Six in an hour. We have 1600 kids at my school. Someone asks to go to the toilet every lesson, but let’s say to be generous one out of every fifty kids needs the toilet each lesson. That’s 32 kids per hour, requiring 6 members of staff on permanent toilet duty. Remember, due to COVID most year groups have separate toilets in a big school.
This is not going to happen and nor should it, it would be an incredible waste of money.

@WoolOfBat

ChloeDecker, would your school consider a solution where pupils are given a pass based on sign-off from parents and pastoral care? And where the use is monitored?

We already have that. They just get up and show the card as they walk out. Doesn’t help the other 1500+ kids though in a school of 1800+, or are you saying all pupils should have one, including those with parents/carers who refuse such a solution?

We have a pass system. Most of them are for students who "my mum phoned up so I can leave lesson when I like".

There's no easy solution, if there was, schools would be doing it already.

@GravityFalls

Unless you’ve recently been in a secondary classroom you can’t really picture the absolute level of disruption to a lesson that one student like this can cause. It’s probably ended up wasting up to 30 minutes of learning time for the whole rest of the class, because they kicked off instead of asking quietly.

I have some sympathy for this. I started secondary at a rough school and disruption was constant in lessons, at least half the girls were apparently unable to do games every week due to period-related issues, we'd have students 'urgently' need the toilet then disappear for the rest of the lesson to smoke.

Then I got a scholarship to a private school and it was a different world. If many MNers went to nicer schools, I can imagine why they think this is a major violation and can't imagine why some places don't allow free toilet trips.

So anyway... While I agree in principle that girls should have the right to go to the toilet when needed, I also have sympathy for the teachers in these situations.

And yes also suspect that many MNers work in professional occupations where you can go to the loo when needed, that is not the experience of millions of mostly lower paid women in retail, service or manual jobs.

@OverTheRubicon

And yes also suspect that many MNers work in professional occupations where you can go to the loo when needed, that is not the experience of millions of mostly lower paid women in retail, service or manual jobs.

What are these shops that don’t allow you to go to the loo? As a student I worked in two supermarkets and a smaller clothing shop. I worked on the checkouts at the supermarkets and if there was a queue at my till I could always ring my buzzer thingy and ask to go, and they’d grab someone quickly off the shop floor to sit at the till. If there was no queue I could get up and just say to the manager that I was nipping to the loo. I hardly ever needed to, but when I did, I was allowed.