I have yet to work with a school where the introduction of unisex loos has been welcome by the pupils. All have had complaints from parents and pupils and all have responded by making changes in response to this feedback.
What skews my sample is that the type of school that buys in my services are they type of school that is open to, and interested in, understanding pupils and meeting their needs. I encounter activist mentalities that are not evidence-based, but the leadership teams have not been ideologically entrenched. None have insisted on keeping the all gender-neutral set up.
Recently, and beyond the loo issue, there has been a notable shift in student appetite to advocate for trans pupils. Between 2018 and 2023, there was a steady rise in key stage 4 and 5 pupils considering themselves far more enlightened than ‘out of touch’ staff and using trans rights to exemplify this. Since the start of 2024, social media has been pumping out content ridiculing identitarianism and pupils now tend to eye roll if a pupil ‘bangs on about’ any kind of identity. We are back to staff being the flag bearers for tran rights.
Throughout the rise and fall, provision of all unisex loos were never popular amongst pupils, even in the schools where pupils used trans-rights as a mechanism for feeling enlightened and better informed than staff.