Can I just say I didn’t want to research this because it’s so awful, but it is a problem I realised when looking at incidents in school toilets for medical emergencies.
I can list cases where it’s happened between pupil-pupil and pupil-teacher and the crime has been verified in the local papers. I can give you a FOIs about rape in school statistics from police and a lot of information where sex is reported to be happening in private mixed sex toilet designs (just ask what goes on to your school-age children). There is lots of information on Everyone’s Invited’ about disabled toilets (used to be the only mixed sex, private design) and other private toilets but unfortunately I can’t really use that because of verifying stuff.
You can see so clearly what happens it schools and the timeline. The school introduces private ‘gender neutral’ toilets with shared mixed sex sinks to much fanfare from a (male) headteacher. It goes down like a lead balloon with parents. The school says it’s inclusive.
Then the problems begin. The girls complain of the smell, urine, and the free sanitary supplies and bins being tampered with. Boys bang on the doors and try and work out if girls are on their period. The school has to keep the free supplies at reception to keep them safe. Sometimes, the boys and girls self separate the toilets into boys and girls to try and mitigate the problems. Because the toilets are private, it gives the opportunity for drugs to be used more easily, self harm to be undetected, two pupils to be in there at once. Girls are pushed back into the toilets by boys or boys let themselves in. Girls stop using the toilets. They hate washing their hands in front of the boys. Some boys stop using toilets. Teachers have to supervise the toilets or close them at certain times. Monitoring systems go up within individual cubicles but don’t work as they get tampered with or go off so often they get switched off. Sound monitors are tried but pupils say that violates privacy so they self exclude. It’s easier to hide cameras when there’s extra technology in the private cubicles like mechanical ventilation. Hidden cameras are a big problem in toilets and this includes at schools. The first reported instances were of teachers filming children in disabled toilets years ago.
Typical example of modern school toilets:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/drug-dealing-drinking-dirt-problems-28517175
Panorama, MPs, Ofsted, and now the Sarah Everard inquiry have all stated there’s a lack of data and no one collates where exactly assaults are taking place and how many. The location of rapes and the lack of information has been criticised so many times and ignored. There also need to look at designing out the locations that provide the conditions for an assault to happen in a school.
But start with schools if you want to know what happens when people have no option but to use unisex toilets.
Here is a study from India about unisex toilets and rapes in schools:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014292125000030
Department of Education used to be against unisex toilets on religious grounds:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/dec/05/education.schools The head teacher ‘dismissed fears of sex sessions, suggesting that pupils would seek somewhere more comfortable.’
Just to warn you, these articles are fine to click above but if you start googling you may get warnings coming up telling you searching for something illegal. That alone should give you a warning about how some people view toilets.
I also took a look at ‘gender neutral’ toilets because of the DfE design brief change.
This is what I sent a few months back to the DfE and HSE as part of a report I did (note these designs have only a maximum 5mm door gap):
A New Concern - Gender Neutral Toilets
At some point between 2020 and 2023, the DfE added a new specification point to its Generic Design Brief:
2.3.20.1g) on each floor, at least one of the toilets allocated for mainstream pupil use (i.e., not including accessible toilets) shall be designed and located so that it can be identified as gender-neutral for use by all pupils whilst ensuring pupil privacy.
As noted previously, the Brief is non statutory. However, this is very much a current topic of conversation due to the possible introduction of a ‘third space’ and ‘alternative provision’ discussed after the Supreme Court judgement in April 2025.
The author is not aware of any risk assessments or equality impact assessments that have taken place on these ‘gender neutral’ toilet designs.
To find a comparable situation where a gender neutral toilet design has been discussed, it has been necessary to look over to America, where the Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) ‘took on the push’ to try to establish one gender-inclusive bathroom on each floor. It should be noted that American single sex school designs typically have much bigger gaps than traditional designs used in the UK (sometimes along the sides) and are often called restrooms or bathrooms, although do not contain a bath.
The experience of a private, gender neutral toilet room on each floor of a school (directly comparable to the DfE spec) is summed up here:
‘The gender-neutral bathrooms are both horrible and amazing. I am so glad we have them, but they are disgusting, mostly because of the way students treat them. The issue mainly comes from how small and how few they are, and it’s not uncommon that the four small bathrooms are filled with sex, drugs or vaping. We need to address these problems, or the gender-neutral bathrooms will continue to be the most disgusting in the school….I consider everything in the third floor bathroom a biohazard. Almost every time I make the mistake of going in, I leave trying to purge my mind of the horrors I just witnessed. Whether it is people having sex, poop smeared on the walls, or the toilet being clogged with an entire roll of toilet paper, horrible things have happened in that bathroom.’
According to a teacher at the school above, since the number of students who need gender-neutral bathrooms is increasing, one bathroom per floor is no longer sufficient. They have more than one-quarter of our student body identifying as LGBTQ. The bathrooms are in less prominent locations than the men’s and women’s bathrooms, making it easy for students to get away with misbehaving. These bathrooms frequently end up closed and vandalized.
Again the privacy of these bathrooms is an issue. A staff member said the job can be difficult, as bathrooms are private spaces for students, ‘It’s not great because you’ve got a private space that’s publicly accessible and difficult for school staff to monitor. It’s true of any bathroom really.’
Other problems staff and students identified with the gender neutral bathrooms were:
· a continuing issue of faculty monitoring is allotting time to stand in front of a doorway for long periods of time during the school day: ‘I just don’t have enough staff to have people sitting outside of the bathroom.’
· the possible discomfort students may face regarding their identity: ‘Especially for students who aren’t out, if they feel like they are being monitored walking into the bathrooms and getting questioned about their motives in the bathrooms, it can make people feel uncomfortable. That can have a big impact on people’s mental state.’
· Students are not comfortable using them due to state they are left in so will not go to the bathroom at all during the day. They are ‘full’, ‘too gross to use’, ‘filled with vaping at least twice a week’.
· To have enough gender neutral bathrooms for each floor would take a classroom’s worth of space.
· Creative ways of trying to reducing substance use in the bathrooms, such as posters and literature, have been met with resistance and defaced and torn off.
· The suggestion of more cameras around the corridors and common spaces was tempered by the fact they can’t be put inside the bathrooms.
· Students being late to class due to not being able to access the bathroom.
Whether gender neutral facilities are added to a school should be carefully risk assessed and an equality and impact assessment done. As has been shown, it is particularly important and difficult to risk assess any private, mixed sex space. A radical solution would be to not have total privacy in the gender neutral toilets by introducing gaps above and below the door. This would ensure the cubicle or room was occupied by one person and that vaping could easily evidenced and stopped. This would also ensure that visits were shortened so more children could use them within a break period.
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Obviously, I am not that hopeful my radical solution is going to work for the exact same reasons the WRN made clear in their report on school toilets. The DfE told me they hold no risk assessments or equality impact assessments, about making their toilets private, in their department. I do not know why they changed their stance on unisex toilets in schools being ok now, despite banning them for religious reasons previously.