The great school toilet debate is kicking off at Mickley Grange once again.
The general rule is that students should be encourage to make use of the facilities at break time, lunchtime and as they're passing between lessons. They should not, as a general rule, be allowed out of lessons to go to the toilet.
The rules might seem a bit archaic, but they are there for two good reasons.
Firstly, a lot of learning time is lost when students turn up to lessons and immediately ask to go to the toilet. Post-covid we have a lot of very immature students, who will make maximum fuss in order to have their toilet request granted - that's irrespective of the fact they could have gone at break time 5 minutes earlier, but chose not to. Those are the same immature students who take 10 minutes to walk to the toilet, 10 minutes to do whatever they need to, and 10 minutes to walk back to the classroom.
Secondly, the toilets are hotbed of trouble during lesson times. It is no exaggeration to say that thousands of pounds worth of damage are caused to the toilets in Mickley Grange every single year. I would have no trouble at all reporting students who deliberately vandalise the toilets to the police and billing their parents for the damage. Sadly, the current management of Mickley Grange lack the moral fibre to take such a course of action.
To give a flavour of the sorts of goings on, every single day we have people's belongings shoved down the toilets and rubbish deliberately strewn across the floor. At least once a week we have students block plugholes and overflows in a concerted effort to flood the place. At least once a month we have toilet cubicle doors ripped off their hinges, toilet seats destroyed and even sinks smashed from walls. If allowed to visit the toilets during lesson time, some students will also use it as an opportunity for truancy or vaping.
We also do not have the staff to mind the toilets during lesson time. At break and lunchtimes those colleagues on duty, quite understandably, do not want to be supervising students using the toilet facilities - not least because some of our "less regulated students" (the current buzz phrase for abysmally behaved students) will have no trouble at all branding them a paedophile or whatever.
So that's why students are not allowed to use the facilities during lesson time. Of course if a trustworthy student or one with medical needs is genuinely desperate, then I am never going to refuse them.
I am going to refuse little Jonny, the school troublemaker, who asks every single day and is told every single day that he should have gone at break time 5 minutes earlier.