Protesting students have been in the news recently; grievances include skirt lengths and toilet policies. Schools Week wrote up some Teacher Tapp findings about these protests, sharing that 10% of teachers said they had either recently had, or were going to have a protest about toilet policies. Being the investigators we are, we wanted to understand more about the situation regarding toilets in schools.
So, let’s start with an unlikely essay title: The History of Toilets in Schools. Fortunately, it’s been a fairly simple history until recently, with schools that were built pre-2010 having predominantly single-gender toilets with a door between the corridor and toilets. In recently built schools, particularly secondaries, the door between the corridor and the cubicles has been removed. Almost three-quarters of secondary schools built since 2010 do not have a door between the corridor and cubicles.
