Ebbw Vale secondary school criticised for toilets chaperone policy

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.”