Toilets in mixed secondary schools

[MrsMurphyIWish]

At DD’s secondary school the toilets are segregated by sex however they are in a communal area ie 2 rows of 4 cubicles opposite each other with a row of shared sinks in the middle (if that makes sense)? This style is across the three floors of the building. Does anyone know whether this will have to change in future?

DD has never complained about the toilets (apart from them smelling of vape!). The issue doesn’t affect my school as I teach single sex. Also wondering how common this style of toilets are. My last school still has - as far as I’m aware - traditional toilets.

I left my old school in 2018 and we had that style. Although my current school is mainly an old building the toilets were redesigned after Covid to accommodate the increased numbers of students (expanded from 5 form entry to 7 over 6 years). I feel so ignorant to have never questioned this.

You always only focus on the safety aspect of a child passing out in an enclosed cubicle, you never focus on the behaviour that can and does take place when there are large, enclosed spaces where children can gather totally unsupervised.

The reason schools have this set up is to reduce the bullying and vandalism. It doesn't eliminate it but it definitely reduces it. The only other option is to pay for staff to monitor toilets (expensive), add CCTV (not acceptable) or young people learn to behave themselves. Or we can charge parents for the cost of repairing the damage.

Surely the solution should be to supervise them then?

Or the half wall design they have in nursery schools?

Here is my FOI and the correspondence from the DfE:

Assessments for the standard door gaps being 5mm in secondary school toilet cubicles.

For secondary schools, the DfE now states a floor to ceiling toilet cubicle system shall be used for increased pupil privacy with a maximum gap of 5mm between the finished floor level and the bottom of the door and between the top of the door and the ceiling. This is the DfE standard to be adhered to unless stated otherwise as a specific requirement within the School Specific Brief.

I would like to make a freedom of information request for the equality impact assessments of 5mm door gaps in secondary school toilet cubicles 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 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 5mm door gaps in secondary school toilet cubicles for:

C) Pupils who are having medical emergencies such as strokes, mental health crises or seizures due to drug 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) Crimes, such as drug dealing and drug taking.

DfE response:
I have dealt with your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Following a search of the Department’s paper and electronic records, I have established that the information you requested is not held by this Department.
———

Thank you for your email of 26 March with the following, ‘Re: tel:2025-007119 2025-007119 - We have safeguarding concerns regarding the DfE standard design for secondary school toilets. Your response to the above FOI was that the information I requested is not held by this Department. My question is: who do I contact in order to get this information please? I am unhappy that I have had to request this as I need my FOI answered by the decision makers and would have thought you would have directed me to the relevant department’.

I’m sorry to read you are unhappy with the result of your FOI, however, I can only refer to the departments response to you dated 2 December 2024. For ease I have attached a copy of said reply.

In terms of health and safety in schools, all schools must adhere to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The employer in a school must take reasonable steps to ensure that staff and pupils are not exposed to risks to their health and safety.

The employer is required to ensure that a risk assessment is conducted and measures put in place to minimise any known risk. Employers, school staff and others also have a duty under common law to take care of pupils in the same way that a prudent parent would.

The employer in a school will vary depending on the type of school. For community, voluntary controlled, community special, and maintained nursery schools this is the local authority. For foundation schools, foundation special schools and voluntary aided schools the employer is the governing board. For academies and free schools, the employer is the governing board or academy trust and the proprietor is the employer in independent schools.

Schools must have a health and safety policy in place which the headteacher is responsible for implementing.

Furthermore, the department’s statutory guidance ‘Supporting Pupils with Medical Conditions at School’ (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-pupils-at-school-with-medical-conditions--3) makes it clear to schools what is expected of them in taking reasonable steps to fulfil their legal obligations in relation to toilet facilities.

Any concerns about a school’s procedures should be raised directly with the school in question in the first instance as schools are autonomous institutions run by a governing body, with day-to-day operational decisions such as access to toilets during lessons, managed by the headteacher.

I hope this reply is helpful.

————

December 2nd email:
Thank you for your email of 1 November about the use of toilets in secondary schools. May I apologise for the delay in responding to you.

I understand we replied to you on this matter previously on the 19 of August this year. The previous reply has been reviewed, and I have highlighted the key points below which currently stand/ apply.

• · The output specification is a non-statutory document used by the department to set the specification for new school building projects – it would not apply to independent schools. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/employers-requirements-part-b-generic-design-brief.
• · The specification required toilet cubicles to have a gap of no more than 5mm to protect the privacy of occupants.
• · The specification requirements are safeguards for accessing the cubical in an emergency.
• · Schools are responsible for the health, safety and welfare of pupils (School Premises Regulations/Independent School Standards) and this would include supporting pupils with additional needs.
• · Where a pupil has a special requirement, suitable toilets must be provided to meet that need under the School Premises Regulations/Independent School Standards: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/410294/Adviceonstandardsforschoolpremises.pdf (Page 8).

Further to your email. Schools and colleges have a critical role to play in protecting children and keeping them safe. Keeping children safe in education’ (KCSIE) is statutory guidance that all schools and colleges must have regard to when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote welfare of children. The KCSIE guidance is very clear that best interests of children must always come first where there are any concerns action should be taken immediately. Amongst other things, KCSIE sets out that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility and that; 2 / 2

• - All staff have a responsibility to provide a safe environment in which children can learn.
• - All staff should receive safeguarding training.
• - All staff should know what to do if they have a concern about a child.
• - All schools and colleges should have an effective child protection policy that also reflects the approach to child-on-child abuse, including: procedures to minimise the risk of it occurring; how allegations will be recorded, investigated and dealt with; clear process on victim and perpetrator support, clear statement that child on child abuse should never be tolerated or passed off as just part of growing up; and the different forms on child on child abuse can take.

The guidance has been further strengthened for 2022 – ensuring schools have even clearer guidance on how to deal with reports of sexual abuse. This revised guidance now includes the ‘sexual violence and sexual harassment advice ‘which puts it on a statutory footing to give the issue the prominence it deserves. I hope this information and reply is helpful. Once again, thank you again for reaching out to the department.

Difficult. I know from my school a lot of vandalism occurs in lesson times. Students arrange a time to meet up, they ask to go to the toilet and meet their friends there.

With what? I can't imagine people would be happy with CCTV in toilets where there are large gaps under the doors and they don't meet the ceiling?

@Keeptoiletssafe Thank you for compiling that.

Sadly, it seems we have to consider the least worst option in today’s school life.

Is the school theatre really hear these toilets in the middle of England, by any chance. If so I think I know the school. I raised it years ago - was basically told to be quiet and I didn’t know what I was talking about

It is.

West Mids?

People are allowed to focus on single issues that are important to them. If you have an issue with something different, you are allowed to campaign around that area too - there’s nothing stopping multiple safety-based, toilet-related campaigns taking place.

My point there is that you cannot flat out state that toilets are safer when they are separate rooms with gaps in the door when you actually mean that they are safer for kids having medical incidents only.

To be fair I never questioned toilet design either. I even saved someone years before who had choked on vomit and we saw her blue hand through the door gap. We got her out and breathing again. I still didn’t think of toilet design.

It was trying to resuscitate a child that made me question it. I didn’t know they were critical, even though they were a few feet away because of a door. I want to prevent it happening as much as possible in the future.

I have some medical information to with some links I will post.

Medical
There are known medical reasons for a disproportionally high frequency of cardiac arrests and strokes while an individual is in the toilet room. There are no UK statistics that list 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 children with epilepsy in an average secondary school. There will be on average another 2-3 with Type 1 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.

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, 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 private cupboard. This was in 2015, before many schools decided to change their toilet designs to fully enclosed and mixed sex. The toilet door gaps are vital for safeguarding to help prevent activities that stop pupils, especially girls, going to the toilet.

There is no available data on these new toilet designs but, teachers and pupils are reporting many problems with ‘drug dealing, drinking and dirt’. 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.”

Last year my break duty was to supervise KS3 toilets. I noticed a girl hadn’t left for a while so approached the cubicle. The handle had locked from the inside - the mechanism inside had dropped. The site staff had to drill the lock off. The doors were so sturdy they couldn’t kick them down.

Bloody hell, started this thread about DD’s school and now worrying about my own!

Your choice is

Toilets with gaps - this will necessitate a separate room for the cubicles which will likely contain groups of children on their phones and vaping. Where there are gaps over and under the cubicle, children will (and do) use these to take photos of people on their toilet. If there is a medical emergency, a child in a cubicle will be more easily spotted and rescued.

Toilets which are supervised - open to the corridor. They will need no gaps and floor to ceiling doors. Children will not be photographed on the toilet and will not need to walk past the group of vaping children on their phones to get to them. If a child has a medical emergency in the toilet, it is likely they will not be spotted and it will be difficult to get the door open.

That's your options. There's nothing that solves both problems.

Why do we have door gaps in public toilets? For health and safety

Why don’t mixed sex toilets have door gaps?
For privacy

What are we losing when we don’t have single sex toilets? Health and Safety

BUT the DfE designs go one further and put privacy in to all single sex toilets too. 5mm . And so, with my evidence and experience I wanted to know why. And it’s unjustifiable. They were telling me schools had to remember to look at 1974 legislation. I have worked in many schools. It’s not fair on schools to have to know all this - they are using designers and manufacturers that are referring to school output specifications in 2023.

Yes! I know. It’s nice to debate. If pupils didn’t have phones it would be a lot easier.

But turn it around:

By having full height private doors, who does it damage the most: the most vulnerable medically (both physically and mentally) and girls (because of assaults).

How many deaths and assaults that might have been prevented because boys want to take pictures of girls on their phones?

Also: re vapes. Children vape in the private cubicles. The problem with that is that if they are spiked and lead to seizures they can’t be seen.

With people not CCTV.

Just to add, I understand the challenges this creates, and will likely to need additional staff to facilitate it, but that is a small price to pay for the dignity of girls.

The type of person who would apply for the job of standing all day in a toilet watching children go to use them is not the sort of person we would want doing that job.

I agree! Which is why the unisex toilet is always placed at the entrance near to the desk.

(because that’s the one designers used to understand carried most risk and could be used universally)

I think you know that isn’t what I mean.

If you could read some of the links @noblegiraffe and come up with some answers I would love your input.

As far as vaping is concerned it’s a new nightmare for schools with due to seizures from them being spiked:

We know children can have cardiac arrests when they smoke spice, and I believe some have come quite close to death. Headteachers are telling me pupils are collapsing in the halls and ending up with long stays in intensive care.”

“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.

https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/english-school-children-unwittingly-smoking-spice-spiked-vapes-finds-university-of-bath//