School toilets redesign - help please

[Catabogus]

I know that there are some very well-informed people here about safety of toilet designs as well as the importance of single-sex loos, so I’d love some advice on how to respond to this consultation from my DCs’ secondary school please.

The school has proposed the following:

a) Sixth form boys’ toilets and Block A’s girls’ toilets all to be replaced with new gender-neutral toilets with a wash basin in each cubicle;

b) Boys’ and girls’ toilets outside the canteen to stay single-sex but be replaced with open-plan toilet areas, improving security, access and efficiency.

c) All cubicles to be fitted with floor-to-ceiling partitions and doors, with guards fitted to doors to ensure privacy;

d) All cubicles in the female only toilets to have wash basins installed in each cubicle;

e) Enhanced CCTV monitoring of communal areas.

I am concerned about replacing single-sex loos with unisex ones in point (a) but also about the fitting of full length doors in (c) as I gather this can have safety implications too. If anyone could point me in the right direction of some material to quote in my response, I would be very grateful!

Also if there’s anything else I’ve missed that might be an issue - eg I’m not quite sure what are “open plan toilet areas” in point (b) and whether these might be problematic (I also don’t really understand how these fit with floor-to-ceiling cubicles containing wash basins).

Thank you very much indeed!

You need @Keeptoiletssafe - she has all the stats and links.

I’m in Scotland & at a local high school (which has single sex toilets) a couple of girls went to a toilet cubicle to attempt to take an overdose but were found. This won’t be uncommon. How are floor to ceiling doors safe for school kids? Especially when there are a lot of mental health issues with teens? That’s one issue that strikes me as well as the increase in sexual assaults in schools. If you’re in Scotland For Women Scotland wrote a useful report on school toilets recently:
https://forwomen.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Whats-Happening-to-Your-Childs-School-Toilets.pdf

Thank you @NoBinturongsHereMate

Hope I can help OP.

Are you in England?

I'd want to know what "guards fitted to doors to ensure privacy" means and what "Enhanced CCTV monitoring" means. They might both be fine, I'd just want to know exactly what they mean.

I understand the feminism angle and there will be good advice on that here, but safety extends beyond single sex for toilets in schools. It's where a lot of pupils go to self harm and where a lot of bullying and intimidation goes on, it's also where drugs are passed around and weapons can even be stored.

So whilst focus of the single sex do also consider whether those aspects will be improved or worsened by thier proposals too.

Yes, I’m in England! Thanks

d) All cubicles in the female only toilets to have wash basins installed in each cubicle;

Space
A toilet block is designed to fit the maximum number of toilets into the smallest space.

I am assuming that the conections to the waste will not be moved
Toilet plus door + public circulation + sink which is not always the same unit number to the toilet.

I am assuming they have the standard size toilet which can hardly fit the period product disposal unit?

Toilet plus door + sink + public circulation
so how it the school proposing to fit a sink into the space plus a hand dryer plus a period product dispensing machine?

So its likely that they will need to drop a unit or too

b) Boys’ and girls’ toilets outside the canteen to stay single-sex but be replaced with open-plan toilet areas, improving security, access and efficiency.
Again what is the plan for managing girls periods are they going to add dispensing machines in the toilet unit?

What problems are they having at the moment that there is a need to open the semi-private area to the passing population?

On the plus side it will be a test to see how many boys wash their hands before going into the food area.

e) Enhanced CCTV monitoring of communal areas.
That is filed under "fuck all good" as a safeguard unless its live monitoring. If something happens they will have evidence of entry and exit into a lockable private space.

c) All cubicles to be fitted with floor-to-ceiling partitions and doors, with guards fitted to doors to ensure privacy;

For sex acts 🙄 doing drugs, assaults etc and to make sure the cleanser are having problems keeping the space clean.
And a sick student has locked themselves into a closed room

a) Sixth form boys’ toilets and Block A’s girls’ toilets all to be replaced with new gender-neutral toilets with a wash basin in each cubicle;

How nice the girls get to have a disposal unit splashed with boys urine and the school are going to install dispensing units here too.
And as an added bonus may get asked over for a quick shag during the class time.

@Catabogus thanks
As @Greyskybluesky said, firstly I would want to know what door guards were.

There is no such mention of door guards in the Department of Education guidelines.

There are finger guards which are to stop fingers being trapped. That’s usually a primary school thing.

The other thing it possibly may be is a guard to stop the hinges being refigured by pupils?
Basically everyone is aware people have medically emergencies in toilets and now you can’t get to access the body in these new full height systems with inward opening doors. A body on the floor stops the door being open. So there’s a ‘safety’ mechanism to change the hinges to open outwards. The problem then being, everyone can let themselves in. So then you have to counteract that by putting a guard on that to stop pupils mucking about. And the guard/lock needs a special key that all teachers should know about to prevent any delays in the event of needing to rescue anyone in an emergency. Not that you’d know anyone had collapsed inside anyway as they have got rid of the door gaps.

I will collate a few bits later (warning: it may be long)! I was going to write the the Scottish Parliament today as I noticed Murdo Fraser was talking about third gender neutral spaces. However I will point him here instead.

You get it - why don’t the DfE and school building designers and MPs? It’s common sense.

Thanks very much for all of this - much appreciated. I will draft my response to the consultation this evening so am very grateful for all responses by then. If anyone has any resources on the importance of retaining single-sex provision more generally then that would be helpful too (as well as stuff on why floor-to-ceiling doors are dangerous more generally, I mean).

Thank you again - as usual FWR is a huge repository of helpful information and support.

The main objection (as it’s the gut reaction) to mixed sex toilets is that boys will peek which is why the gut ‘solution’ is to enclose toilets so the problem is ‘fixed’. There’s a big link between the two.

If you keep the gaps there is no solution to mixed sex toilets. It also keeps boys and girls safer inside cubicles.

I will collate some stuff later. I have a list of sexual assault and rape data in schools from (other people’s) FOIs which I haven’t collated yet so if you want to tell me which region of the country you are in I can see if I have your area.

Been into the new type loos with washbasins etc (one at Coventry Cathedral and one at new building at Uni). Both exactly the same so imagine same company put them in. Bigger cubicle and most of one side is taken up with some sort of casing which incorporates a small wash basin and a hand dryer and I think a sanitary bin - possibly a hole in the side casing where the bin sits so it’s not actually seen (could be wrong).

@Keeptoiletssafe i admire the hard slog you do to explain common sense to the designers/ funders who appear to hang out in posh well kept washrooms.🌻

Catabogus. Has the consultation stated any aim or objectives for the retrofit?

Because what is the cost benefit analysis of the structure changes involved? They will not be cheap and are redirecting resources from other areas.

Piping water and hanging a sink will require some form of reenforced wall a normal wooden divider would not safely support the sink or protect the piping from damage (accidental or otherwise)
So extra space is needed for building walls.

Assumption that they will need individual blowdryers and electrical work too.

Plus a soap dispenser

Fully enclosed requires mechanical ventilation for air and heat so unless the reno blocks are stacked thats 3 independent units which would need ongoing maintanace contracts.

Soundproofing units in a school is a H&S problem re hearing fire alarms. The more effective it is for the privacy the harder it is to hear. (There is usually one bunny who thinks an evacuation is a unique way to get them out of a test 🙄 )

The smoking or vaping which will happen may trigger alarms too.

There will be more blocked sinks and blocked toilets if loo roll is used to dry hands.

Wet floors from a small sink and no counter as hands drip to the blowdryer or water gets blown out from the sink of its an overmount unit

plus a individual waste bin to discourage blocking the toilet drain.

So higher cleaning costs overall etc

If its anti- bullying etc how effective is the school in managing ongoing issues?

what problems are they seeing that this change will fix?

Hello @Catabogus
I am about to send you a series of long posts. Hope they can help and you can tailor it to what you want to say. I haven’t added the excellent points @AnSolas has discussed so they would be useful to incorporate.
I have got so much more and have left out the info the long responses the DfE sent me (basically it says full height cubicles are for privacy, there is a get out if you want as it’s guidelines and you can state you don’t want full height cubicles for your school, all health and safety is the schools and the governors responsibility, schools should know their cohort so should know if there’s medical or health concerns, you should supervise pupils and if anything happens it’s the schools and governors fault).

Please could I request the equality impact assessments for all cubicles having floor-to-ceiling partitions and doors for:

A) Pupils with diagnosed or undiagnosed disabilities and medical conditions: epilepsy, diabetes, heart conditions, POTS, and acquired brain injuries. In particular, given that a lack of oxygen following collapse can start damaging the brain within four minutes, the effect of rescue times and keeping these vulnerable pupils safe.

B) Female pupils, due to the higher sex-related crime incidences of sexual assaults and rape in schools. Serious assaults typically take place in private.

Similarly, I would like to request the risk assessments for all cubicles having floor to ceiling partitions and doors:

C) Pupils who are having medical emergencies such as strokes, mental health crises or seizures due to drug (vape) spikings or illness.

D) Emergency building evacuation times and rescue times.

E) Sanitation inside cubicles, in terms of disease spread, reduced ventilation and ability to wash floors and walls down thoroughly.

F) Criminal activities, such as those involving drug dealing and drug taking.

My concerns are based on medical evidence, Ofsted reports, information from the government, police statistics and parental concerns.

Many parents and teachers are reporting problems with ‘drug dealing, drinking and dirt’ in unisex, private cubicles. In one newspaper article, school staff reported, ‘Kids would go in there to have sex, to drink alcohol. They’d push other kids in and lock themselves in with them. They’d block the drains and flood the corridor.” Another responded: “The toilets were really smelly and unpleasant. Because they were fully enclosed spaces they weren’t properly ventilated, and harder to clean.”
One teacher was worried someone could collapse unnoticed in a completely enclosed cubicle. They said: “The CCTV in the corridor was only any good retrospectively. The toilets had turn locks, so you could open them from the outside if you needed to, but you couldn’t hear through the door, couldn’t see whether there was one or two people in there, or if someone had collapsed.”

Medical Concerns
Toilet door gaps are vital for safety and safeguarding.

If a pupil feels nauseous or ill they are likely to head to the toilet. If they collapse, they are more likely to survive, or avoid suffering long-term damage, if someone notices and rescues them.

There are known medical reasons for a disproportionally high frequency of cardiac arrests and strokes while an individual is in the toilet room. Whilst there’s no accessible data where people collapse. However, it is known there are around 100,000 hospital admissions due to heart attacks in this country, equating to one every five minutes. It is estimated there are 400,000 people in the U.K. with undiagnosed heart failure. There are also around 100,000 strokes in this country, equating to one every five minutes. Around 1% of people in this country have epilepsy and around 80 people are diagnosed with epilepsy each day. There are many other conditions that lead to collapse where you need to be noticed and accessed quickly eg. diabetes and asthma.

To put figures into perspective for UK schools there are around 9-12 children with epilepsy in an average secondary school. There may be another 2-3 with diabetes. Several hundred children are diagnosed with strokes each year. Every week on average 12 people under the age of 35 are lost to sudden cardiac death.

A new problem highlighted by the University of Bath is medical incidents due to spiked vapes. Testing hundreds of confiscated vapes in 38 schools in England revealed 1 in 6 (16.6%) contained spice. Spice can cause a wide range of dangerous side effects, including cardiac arrest. One headteacher said “Dealing with the aftermath is challenging, especially when you have to explain to the child’s family that something potentially life-threatening happened while they were in our care. It’s equally distressing for their friends who witnessed the collapse and for the staff involved—it’s their worst fear realised. What do we do if it happens again and we’re unaware? One incident occurred on the playground, where many people were present to help. But what if it happens in a bathroom cubicle, and they are alone? It would only be when they didn’t show up for class, were marked absent, and we started searching for them, potentially finding them too late. We’ve been fortunate so far, but I believe it’s only a matter of time before serious injuries or fatalities occur.
The DfE understands the important of quickly getting emergency help - it now expects all state funded schools to have at least one defibrillator on site because defibrillation can increase the survival rate by as much as 75%. But knowing the person has collapsed in the first place, and therefore getting help as quickly as possible, is vital.
Like wearing a car seatbelt, toilet door gaps can make the difference in those critical moments.

Governing bodies must ensure arrangements are in place to support pupils with medical conditions. Some children and staff, such as those with epilepsy, may be considered disabled under the definition set out in the Equality Act 2010, and governing bodies must comply with their duties under that Act. Pupils with medical conditions that may occasionally lead to collapse should have care plans. It has been known for these plans to specifically exclude the use of the enclosed disabled toilets for the very reason that no one would be alerted to a collapse. For example, for people with diabetes or epilepsy there can be a period of confusion pre-collapse, so the person’s awareness to pull an emergency cord is compromised. For these people, and for also for the safety of all those one-off medical emergencies, it is imperative that toilets should have door gaps.

Prevention of Sexual Assaults
In any space that becomes private, particularly if it is open to both sexes, more offences are likely to take place. In Parliament it was discussed that there was at least 1 rape inside a school premises each day (over 600 in a 3 year period). The data, collected by the BBC, mentions an example occurring in a store cupboard.

There is no available data on these new toilet designs and no safety assessments have been done on them. Accounts on ‘Everyone’s Invited’ mention school toilets as the location of sexual assaults, including disabled toilets (the mixed sex private toilet space). Ofsted published the Review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges (2021). Ofsted said ‘It is hard to get an accurate picture of the scale and nature of sexual harassment and violence between children and young people in schools and colleges, as there is no centralised data collection …’
Ofsted said the problem was so widespread, and incidents are so commonplace that ‘It recommends that schools, colleges and multi-agency partners act as though sexual harassment and online sexual abuse are happening, even when there are no specific reports’.
‘Children…especially girls…do not want to talk about sexual abuse for several reasons, even when their school encourages them to. For example the risk of being ostracised by peers or getting peers into trouble is not considered to be worth it…They think they will not be believed, or that they will be blamed. They also think that once they talk to an adult, the process will be out of their control.’
These findings are also in line with ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education (2024)’:
456. Whilst any report of sexual violence or sexual harassment should be taken seriously, staff should be aware it is more likely girls will be the victims of sexual violence and sexual harassment and more likely it will be perpetrated by boys. Children with disabilities are also three times more likely to be abused than their peers’.

457. Ultimately, it is essential that all victims are reassured that they are being taken seriously and they will be supported and kept safe.
87. Provisions within the Equality Act allow schools and colleges to take positive action, where it can be shown that it is proportionate, to deal with particular disadvantages affecting pupils or students with certain protected characteristics in order to meet their specific need. A school or college, could, for example, consider taking positive action to support girls if there was evidence that they were being disproportionately subjected to sexual violence or sexual harassment. There is also a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled children and young people.

Schools do not need more of these private mixed sex toilets. These are a few of the more recent statistics of sexual assaults and rapes in school premises from Freedom of Information requests. Obviously the exact location is not noted but it is reasonable to assume most serious assaults will be in a private, unsupervised area open to mixed sex:
Essex Police
Metropolitan Police
Warwickshire Police

Other Health, Safety and Welfare concerns
Toilet cubicles with insufficient ventilation present a high cross infection risk. If toilets are fully enclosed, premises have to rely more on efficient mechanical ventilation to prevent disease spread then school absences rising. The practicalities of cleaning a vomit-covered floor are difficult when the mop can not go under the doors and partitions and the cleaner can not soak the floor with disinfectant from outside the cubicle. Ensuring each individual cubicle is always lit and not vandalised is a concern. Enclosed cubicles require extra time and costs to maintain.
More staff supervision could be needed outside these fully enclosed designs as it has been shown that pupils are more likely to engage in multiple occupation activities (sex and drug dealing), illegal activities (taking drugs) and self harm due to the privacy. Staff have the responsibility of checking toilets in the event of an emergency evacuation. This becomes a much longer process without the door gaps to aid quick identification of occupation. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires schools to undertake risk assessments to identify the general fire precautions needed to safeguard the safety of occupants in case of fire and will need updating if any significant changes to the premises or their use takes place.
Schools are subject to The School Premises (England) 2012 or The Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014. Clearly toilet door gaps will enable schools satisfy the requirements in the Equality Act 2010, The Health and Safety at Work Act (1974), Children Act 1989 and Keeping Children Safe in Education (2024).

In my opinion, the only safe option is to have single sex toilet blocks with, at minimum, large enough gaps between the floor and the toilet cubicle doors to enable the occupant to be partially visible. This enables them to be rescued in an emergency. Staff should be extra vigilant regarding any enclosed private spaces in schools, including disabled toilets and other mixed sex toilets. Ideally these should be situated at a manned reception where staff can notice how many pupils are entering each cubicle and how long they are in there.
Protecting a child from harm should always take priority.

Note: all the information has been prepared with the best intentions of keeping everyone safe, based on the accessible information that the government has published and interpretation of data.

P.s. my computer has died so this has all been collated on my phone! Apologies is some info is repeated.

@Keeptoiletssafe

You're a legend.

When I was at school I feinted on the toilet having horrendous period shits. I collapsed forward and smacked my head on the floor - someone saw me and the door was open and I was taken to hospital with a head injury. God knows what would happen today. Horrendous lack of care for girls.

I think previous posters have given brilliant information. The gender neutral toilets at my daughter's school are fully enclosed etc. but because the boys use them and always leave them disgusting the girls don't use them at all. So gender neutral toilets tend to mean more toilets for boys and fewer for girls.

In the enclosed toilets that are gender neutral, are they fitting pull cords that can be used in emergencies (like someone falling, becoming ill). I’d be worried if someone fainted or fell and no one knew.

@Keeptoiletssafe the work you are doing is excellent, I have some family members abroad with a (luckily mild) form of epilepsy and I feel very grateful for the information you have put together

Has the school said why they are making this change? Schools budgets are precarious, so if this is unnecessary spending that might be worth challenging too. Are you aware of anything that has been cut back eg TAs, opportunities for the kids, music lessons.