By Tilly Walder
This new school term, Cowes Enterprise College has found itself at the centre of a row over toilets; yes, toilets. The school has decided that shuttering them during lesson time will somehow improve behaviour. The logic, apparently, is that if you slam a shutter down, discipline is magically restored.
Except, of course, that’s not how real life works. Reports are already swirling of children deliberately avoiding drinking all day just to avoid needing to go during lessons, and of behaviour points handed out for daring to need the loo in that time. If that is the standard of modern day ‘safeguarding’, it’s hard to see who is being kept safe here.
Defenders of the new policy point out that, back in the day, pupils weren’t allowed to nip out of class either, as if that somehow makes it fine now. By that logic, we’d still be sending kids up chimneys or keeping canes in the cupboard for a rainy day. Tradition is not a defence when children’s health and dignity are at stake.
There’s no denying that toilets can be places where mischief happens; but punishing the entire school because a handful of students can’t behave is an incredibly lazy solution. It’s a bit like banning shoes because someone scuffed the floor. The return to school is hard enough on our children, let alone without implementing what has been described as ‘prison-like’ policies. Schools are supposed to model fairness and common sense, not collective punishment and unnecessary humiliation.
Many seem to share this ideal, as signings of the petition against the new measures have skyrocketed, with a total of 807 signatures.
Carole Dennett