Category: News and Views
Unisex toilets to tackle bullies
toilets
Urinals should go, it is recommended
Unisex lavatories - with blurred glass walls - could help in the battle against school bullies, government guidelines for England suggest.
The recommendations for new secondary schools also include putting toilet blocks close to staffrooms or offices for subtle supervision.
If the ideas are taken up, urinals would be a thing of the past and privacy would be protected.
Campaigners say crumbling facilities damage pupils' health and well-being.
They say school toilets are recognised as being a trouble-spot for bullying, with some children avoiding going, possibly leading to continence problems.
I don't want my head dunked down the toilet
Pupil's complaint to campaign group
The recommendations cover schools being rebuilt or refurbished under the government's £45bn Building Schools for the Future programme.
Tim Byles, chief executive of the Partnerships for Schools, the agency responsible for the programme, said behaviour could be improved by good design.
"Toilets are recognised as a hotspot for bullies to threaten and intimidate others," he said.
"This is clearly unacceptable. The new standard specifications for toilets in schools means that cramped, dirty and vandalised toilets can become a thing
of the past.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Unisex
Central sink troughs
Locking toilets
No urinals
Glass walls
Must be kept clean
"Toilets in BSF schools will no longer provide bullies with places that lend themselves all too readily to anti-social behaviour."
It is suggested that making toilets unisex would discourage pupils from congregating in the area.
The guidelines received a warm welcome from the charity Education and Resources for Improving Childhood Continence (Eric).
The charity's Bog Standard website - which campaigns for better facilities - includes complaints from many children about dirty, threatening environments.
school toilets
Central wash basins cut flooding risk, experts say
JJ, aged 13, from Swansea, wrote: "I dont like using my toilets. There are always people in there smoking, and they are bullies. I don't want my head dunked
down the toilet. When there aren't bullies or smoking in there, they smell, they are dirty, and have no locks".
Jessca, aged 13, from Warwickshire, wrote: "The toilets at my school are terrible they smell there are no seats and no loo roll and no locks on the doors
and even no chains because the school cannot be bothered to fix them they have been fixed before but not in the last 6 months and the loo's have not been
open for over 4 months ther is over 1300 students at our school and 1 toilet open".
Simon, 13, from South Yorkshire said: "My school toilets stink and are never properly cleaned. People block up the sinks with toilet paper and because the
taps are broken they stay on and flood the toilets.
"They also wet toilet paper and throw it everywhere. The locks on the doors don't work and people can open them from the outside so there is no privacy".
Legal requirement
Beverley Leeson from Eric said: "We are very glad that the guidelines have been produced.
"It's a huge issue for pupils and if they are holding on because they don't want to use the toilets or because they aren't allowed to go, it can cause health
and well-being problems.
"Some adults think it's not a big issue and say 'we always had terrible loos at school too' but that's no reason for things to stay the same".
There is no legal requirement about the standard of toilets at school beyond a certain ratio of lavatories and wash basins to pupils.
Employers, however, have a legal obligation to provide clean toilets with privacy plus sinks with hot and cold running water.
Man those eejits had fun with me until I got the hang of them.
They never really got over it, one developed a terror of pissing in public toilets, I had the laugh on him then.
lol. okay. haha. strange habbit
He'd shake like a jelly at the thought of going in a urinal, and we'd wind him up by making him drink until he couldn't hold it.
The poor bastard went into counselling in the end who'd have thought a school toilet could do that to a man.
Stevie
awww. poor him. no sympathy
Certainly not he deserved the ridicule heaped upon him.
A friend of mine, an eveil fiecker, went to the counselling sessions and quietly dismantled him, by admitting to the ridicule.
Which made it worse as your man had to go through the whole thing, putting on a brave face so as not to give my friend the pleasure of laughing at him later..in the pub after 3 pints
This could lead to even more bullying. Imagine that a girl needs the toilet, and she goes only to find that everybody else around there is male, and all the males are a bit more sexual-minded than her. She'd be intimidated. Also, most schools are constructed in such a way, as to have the two sets of tooilets separate from each other. Are they to be reconstructed? or are the toilets going to become a symbol of the past? At the immediate introduction of any new measure aimed at getting rid of genda barriers, the boys who go in what were once girls toilets may be bullied by girls, and girls who go into what were boys toilets wmay be bullied by boys too.
I thought the school toilets had to be separate for boys and girls, unless they are disabled accessible ones. Even so, I never understand why the disabled toilets are for both boys and girls. Why don't they just keep the normal school toilets and the disabled accessible ones separate for boys and girls. I never heard of bullying in the girls toilets when I was at my old school.