School toilet help

[SwimmingCait]

Over the summer break, all the toilets at DSs (secondary) school are now mixed sex. They are floor to ceiling cubicles but the wash basins are not inside but are in a shared area outside. He (and several of his friends) dislikes this and wants to raise it with the head teacher.

I know regulations exist about single sex facilities for over 8s and the standards any mixed sex toilets must reach, including enclosed wash basins. But, I've got a bug and feel horrendous today and I just can't find them.

Can anyone link me to the relevant legislation. (Is it building regs we need? Some DfE guidance? Something else entirely?)

Many thanks. He's asked about 6 times this weekend so I just want to find the legislation so he can e-mail the head and stop asking me!

I’ve been having periods for 40 years. I can assure you you are wrong. Period blood is sticky, and dries fast onto skin. It’s very easy, if you bleed heavily, to end up in a situation where you would feel humiliated and upset having to exit the cubicle and use basins shared with males. Just because your imagination and experience doesn’t extend that far, doesn’t mean it’s not true.

1 in 104 people have epilepsy. Ask for the risk assessment for visibility if a child has a seizure.
If the full-height doors open inwards and could not opened if a body was in the way, have they risk assessed how to access a child who was ill?
Public toilets have door gaps for visibility and easy access and prevent greater harm/injury from:
Fever collapse, brain injuries, strokes, diabetic problems, heart attacks, sexual assault, alcohol and drugs problems, self-harm, smoke inhalation (fire).

How to tell me that you are a man without telling me that you are a man.

Thelnebriati
I have read all your links and cannot find a sentence that states each cubicle must have its own sink.

How can the kids effect change? Do secondary schools offer children the chance to shape things at school, like in the form of a council? I do think that change will only come from kids' and parents' pressure. Certainly doesn't appear that it will come from above.

I suggest contacting councillors. They can often be helpful.

Personally one of my biggest gripes is that they class a cubicle as a room. A cubicle is actually part of a larger room, not a room in itself. It’s like saying a big cupboard at the back of a classroom is a room when we all know it’s just a cupboard. The unisex toilets are the room and the cubicles are part of it so in my opinion they are misusing the legislation. Personally I would ask for a copy of the equality impact statement and risk assessment carried out before this decision was made including how the various stakeholders (pupils, parents etc) were involved.

Well, they can't. If they actually try to say a cubicle is a room that would bring a whole other set of rules into play.

I have been put off a secondary school near me because of this - mixed sex toilets but in each block of toilets they manage to have just urinals in 3 of the block. So the boys have 100% access to the toilet but girls only 70%. 😡😡😡

I also don't want my year 7 dd queuing for the toilet with year 11 boys. Period anxiety, blood on seat, hands, clothing need to be dealt with dignity not surrounded by everyone!!

Also rumours of other schools in city with similar toilets and shagging in the toilets is rift!!!

I wonder if the Schools guidance is going to include this issue....

And where is it?!

our school has just opened a toilet block with fully enclosed cubicles. I can see schools moving away from this design - they are a nightmare for vaping.

Mine have almost finished school but if I had younger daughters I would seriously be considering the local state funded girls school. There are still a few of these around.

It's not a made up thing.

If you've been lucky enough to have light enough periods that this had never happened to you then yay for you. But pleass don't dismiss the many many girls and women who don't get the pleasure of nice tidy periods.

As someone who has stood in toilets without my skirt/trousers on whilst i wash out the worst of the blood and try to get them under the dryer I personally can contest that for some women they can bleed so heavily that it looks like a crime scene.

imagine the blood on your clothes, you're hands, down your legs.

Them imagine trying to deal with that as an 11 year old with teenage boys stood at the hand basin next to you.

I wouldn’t fancy being a cleaner of these fully enclosed toilets too. Especially if norovirus is going round. I remember a particularly bad bout (thanks kiddies) where, to put it nicely, had to chose quickly which end to face the toilet. Imagine mopping the floor/door of a cubicle with a door gap - easy, you can do it from outside before you have to venture in.
Then imagine these enclosed cubicles. The cleaner has to shut the door and get in to clean and the bodily fluids/solids will be on the bottom of the door as it’s dragged through it. Plus the airflow won’t be great. Grim.

I think if I was a year 10/11 confident and passionate (or just arsey!) girl, I might be tempted to lead a rebellion of girls involving lots of fake blood and exiting cubicles in order to hand wash!

This reminds me of rolling my eyes when I was working in a school and all male SLT had decided it would be really nice for people to have comfy seats to sit on in the new hall. Use by the community and parents. Also used by pupils for assemblies. SLT then got very upset that they had brown stains on them that were unslightly and unhygienic and the cleaners spent so long trying to clean the blood off that they weren’t attending to other areas. And they didn’t have the budget for more chairs.

I have 2 identical pairs of (dark) trousers for when I have my period ever since I was in the situation where sanpro was completely ineffective and the clothes I was in became unwearable.
I drove home sitting on a carrier bag, (thank goodness I did not need to walk or use public transport.) I would hope a schoolgirl in that situation would have sympathetic friends and office staff to help but this would not lessen the embarrassment.
This does pre-suppose that I have a private place to clean-up and change clothes where the floor is hopefully not 'wet'.

And their chair choice will have added to the anxiety of the women and girls who flood.

dark coloured plastic chairs are easier to clean and less noticeable to other people that an accident has happened at the time.

Girls must have hated those chairs. It was embarrassing enough having it happen when I was at work, but at least that was my chair in my office.

And the girls who bled on those chairs would be washing their trousers/skirts in the sinks in the girls toilets. Except there is no girls toilets in the OPs school. There was always someone with the hot hand dryer drying ‘a drink’ that they had spilled on their skirts.

Just got a flashback of the anxiety of being a teenager when white jeans were in fashion.

Our school summer uniforms were light coloured dresses, of course you could put a long, dark-coloured school cardigan over them if needed......in a sweltering classroom on the hottest day of the year.

I was lucky as a teenager that my periods were quite light, I was also very small so any gymnastics required to clean up my nethers wasn't a challenge in the toilet cubicles.

DD11 refuses to use the toilet if males are around. DS bedroom is next to the bathroom, and if he has friends around, she has to use our ensuite upstairs.

Perhaps a good time for a reminder about period fetishes, fetishising girls feeling humiliated by womanhood?

This thread will be fodder for some people.

I hope OP feels better and her DS has got some info to move ahead with.