Rothesay Joint Campus Eco Committee was invited to Edinburgh last week to discuss the findings of their enquiry into school toilets. The enquiry, ‘Flushed With Success’ was initiated by Tam Baillie, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People and sounded just the sort of thing we would like to get our teeth into (in a manner of speaking!).
Over the last session we have conducted surveys about the Rights of the Child, questionnaires, created power points, had a poster campaign and uncovered the good, the bad and the ugly about school toilets!

Tam Baillie was very impressed with our findings and asked us to speak to representatives from many influential bodies including the Scottish Government, Education Scotland, school architects and Respect Me.

Although we have a lovely new school, we did find that design features such as magnetic locks, doors with gaps above and below and lights on sensors were not what pupils wanted. Pupils felt that accessible toilets should be within the main toilets and hand driers could be very slow or the noise frightened some pupils. We felt our opinions were listened to and agreed that it was everyone’s responsibility to keep our toilets looking good and to campaign for changes.

We were awarded with a plaque in recognition of our input and the importance of listening to the views of young people to help make informed change.