Toilet access in UK schools

[PixiePirate]

Hoping someone can point me in the direction of the law around toilet access in uk secondary schools (11-18).

My son is complaining that his school has locked all toilets except the female toilets during lesson time (there are male toilets open during break times). Both sexes are being directed to use the the female toilets if they need to go during a lesson.

Apparently there is a member of staff signing pupils in and out of the toilets (cubicles in a room with basins for hand washing in the communal part of the room). The staff member is sat in the corridor outside.

Son (14) is uncomfortable with this approach, as is his girlfriend and apparently some of her female friends. In previous years, access was granted to boys loos on the ground floor AND girls on first floor. Since the start of the new term they have flipped them so that boys are now on the first floor with no access during lesson time, and the girls have been moved to the ground floor and have been changed from female only to mixed access.

Am I right I’m thinking that the law requires access to single sex loos in schools at all times over the age of 8? Or did I dream that?

Genuinely interested in all opinions on this before I decide whether to approach the school to question it. I encourage my boys to speak up where they see injustice but would like to sense check our thoughts before taking any further.

Safe Schools Alliance has all the info you need: safeschoolsallianceuk.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/singlesextoiletsfactsheet.pdf

You're right.

Sorry pressed post too soon! I don't blame your son and other pupils for being uncomfortable with this. If there's an issue with the boys toilets then the school needs to deal with that. Not make it girls' problem.

Also it is putting girls at immense risk if they use toilets during lesson time when they are quiet. Sexual assaults of schoolgirls by schoolboys is of epidemic proportions.

There are two issues here:

1. they aren’t providing single sex toilets or single enclosed rooms as required. They are instead providing a single mixed toilet with cubicles
2. They are restricting access to toilets to specific times

The school are likely doing this because controlling access to toilets in lesson times is something that megalomaniac headteachers (sorry, ‘principals’) just love doing (along with making children wear blazers and jumpers in 30+°C and putting them into isolation for dropping a pen). Unfortunately they can’t spare enough camp guards, I mean staff to check children in and out of two separate toilet blocks so have decided to make one unisex and lock up the other.

Thank you both, appreciate your thoughts and particularly the link.

Don’t get me started on whole removal of the blazer ridiculousness!

There must have been some serious stuff going on in boys toilet to close them. Here’s what I have heard from friend in a uk city about what has gone on in toilets in lessons
vaping, drugs, truanting , a party of 20 boys at pre arranged time, vandalism and 1 lad (caught in cctv) did a poo in the middle of floor as he was pissed off at being told off for something.

those poor teachers. Maybe tell your son and friends to speak up to their peers whose behaviour has no doubt caused this situation, not the staff trying to keep people safe and the place hygienic.