Ebbw Vale secondary school criticised for toilets chaperone policy

A school where some secondary-age pupils are escorted to the toilet could be discouraging them from seeking help for periods and other health issues, a campaigner has warned.

Molly Fenton, founder of the Love Your Period campaign, said she would have been unlikely to use school toilets if she had needed to be accompanied as a pupil, and said it put students "at risk".

Ebbw Fawr Learning Community in Blaenau Gwent introduced the chaperones in response to costly vandalism and excessive time spent out of lessons.

Councils set a school's toilet policies, the Welsh government said, adding they must be "accessible to all learners throughout the school day, taking into account pupils' basic needs".

Parents were initially told that all secondary-age pupils asking to use the toilet during a lesson would be escorted by a member of the pastoral team to the entrance of the toilet block.

The school then said, after meeting with 50 "pupil representatives", that the policy would only apply to pupils on stage three of the school's behaviour policy or persistent late attenders.

"I think that this is a very broad, problematic thing... putting many people at risk," said Fenton.

The 24-year-old from Cardiff said she was "quite shocked that was even thought of".

"I started the period of campaigning when I was in school, if I had to have a chaperone come to the toilet with me, I probably would not have gone to the toilet at all as someone that was not comfortable enough to talk about periods," she said.

Fenton warned the policy could bring stigmas about using the toilet in school to "a whole new level".

She said: "We know there's already an issue with young people not going for the toilet in school.

"They're embarrassed. They're holding in their poo when they should be going.

"When I was in school, I had really, really harrowing periods.

"I was often in the school toilets, blood all over me, thinking, 'I don't actually know what to do in this moment and I'm stuck and I don't know who to go to, where to go. Can I go back to class like this?'"

She said she would not have trusted a chaperone enough to confide in them, a problem exacerbated by the pandemic, and that "young people are even less likely to trust authority".

"There's a bigger conversation with that," she said, adding "culture change" was needed to make toilets "shame and stigma free".

Ebbw Fawr Learning Community said: "To address costly vandalism and prolonged periods of absence from the classroom, the school wrote to parents several weeks ago to introduce [the] new toilets arrangement for secondary aged pupils.

"Sadly the vandalism to toilets by a small minority of pupils has resulted in thousands of pounds worth of damages over recent months.

"To address this the new arrangements involved learners being escorted to the toilet during the lessons either side of the lunch break, when incidents were most prevalent."

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