New Holland Park school

If it does cut bullying then fine. So long as there are cubicles I don't see a problem.

How are unisex toilets supposed to prevent bullying? Does bullying take place nowhere else on the school site?

When I was in the sixth form we had unisex toilets and it was purgatory. Even now I hate using the toilet if other people can hear.

Perhaps I was exceptionally sensitive as a teenager but I would have hated to use the lavatory with boys standing outside. I still don't like it when a cafe has only one toilet. Sometimes at school (all girls) somebody would suddenly find they needed a sanitary towel and they could call out to a friend to get one for them. I am sure boys would find that very amusing.

It was horrible. I was a very insecure teenager and having boys around was awful. The sanitary towel situation was also an issue as the boys tended to know who was menstruating. Whilst that wouldn't bother me now I was brought up in a time when sanitary towels were put into brown paper bags when you bought them in the shop so no one would see them.

I go sometimes to a restaurant in Manchester that has unisex toilets and I hate them!
I feel very uncomfortable and slightly vulnerable in there!

I don't understand about the bullying.

There is a long article about the new school in The Guardian. It is 'architect designed' - which means it is huge, white and clinical. Google Holland Park School.
The toilet blocks have no doors, just the cubicles. No, I don't understand why making them unisex will stop bullying.

Toilets are one of the areas identified as places where much bullying takes place, behind closed doors. Places where teachers don't often venture. The idea is that if they are a) open and b) unisex this will cut down on a) those who chose to bully in these particular areas and b) bullying is usually girl on girl or boy on boy. It doesn't often crosses the genders.
That is not put very well but you get the drift, the thinking behind it. Whether or not it will work in this country I don't know but there is some research from Scandinavian countries I think that says it might.

I never used the toilets at school as they were scary, dismal, outside places where the bullying girls always hung out and talked loudly about sex and having done 'it' the night before!

I suppose my convent grammar school had some benefits - the toilets were clean and I don't remember them being used for bullying - what did take place was verbal rather than physical, so it could be done in the classroom or dining room. The daft thing in an all girl, all women teacher school was that there was no access to sanitary towels - you had to find the PE teacher and ask her for one if you started unexpectedly. There was no school nurse and we were never told anything about menstruation. I went on a school history trip when I was about 14 and one girl started her period. You would think she had contracted some terrible disease - all the whispering and deciding who should approach the woman teacher in charge.

The satellite campus of my last school which was built only a few years ago, had no separate staff loos - staff and students used the same (but separate male and female) and it resulted in no graffiti, vandalism or damage of any sort. It also meant that students never knew if there was a teacher in there, so no (or less) risk of bullying. Friends on the staff said they got used to the idea very quickly and it was much better than "checking" students' loos.

Hated school toilets - smelly and cold, being outside the main school building. This probably accounted for my legendary ability to 'hold it'.

I think some kids of that age might find a uni sex toilet intimidating, and possibly put off going to the toilet altogether which wouldn't be good for them. If it's a senior school then there would be an age range from 11 to 16, possibly to 18 if it has a sixth form, an 11 year old girl might not be too happy to find some strapping great boy outside the loo, or visa versa, small boy and a gaggle or older girls. Personally, I wouldn't welcome uni sex toilets at my age, and think the only occasion where we are all forced to use the same toilet is on a plane.

Unfortunately, single toilets are not uncommon in some French cafes/bars, and the men seem to have the same difficulty in hitting the target as men all over the world! I don't wear make-up now, but when I did I found it uncomfortable to 'touch up' in front of men.
I wonder if these wonderful architects consulted any potential pupils before they drew up their grandiose plans.

This sounds to me exactly like the prize-winning and much applauded school built in Earlsfield in south-west London in the 1960s, I think. In spite of all the awards, the building had to be altered because the vast glass panels concentrated the sun in the summer and the pupils just kept fainting.

gosh we did have clean loos in my all girls high but we also had machine for s towels, what a nuiscance great nan

however when I went to Catholic college for secretarial course my dear late mum insisted on, you had to ask the school secretary if you were caught short and needed a s towel.

I too remember the secrecey and s towels wrapped in paper, in some ways I still felt embarassed when buying them in supermarkets, especially if lad on checkout.

How I was brought up I guess.

I didn't mind getting them for my daughters and gds once it was obvious they could not be for me! When I was a teenager and easily embarrassed, I used to end up in the chemists buying packets of pins if it was a man serving.

Well - once when we were in France with DD2 and family, she needed some Tampax and felt embarrassed to go and try and describe them to the pharmacy in the village - so my SIL went. He duly returned with the necessaries - I asked him how he managed this and he said he mimed - I asked for no further elucidation!

Same SIL once presented me with a bag of condoms after I had given him (and several other teenagers) a lift to the FP clinic. "What are these?" I asked. "Well I knew you and OH were going on holiday and I thought they might come in handy!" I quite like that sort of openness and lack of embarrassment, but I guess others might not like it!

I have bought condoms for my grandson- I am sure the chemist did not care a hoot. Perhaps he thought I was a red-hot Mamma! I am way past being embarrassed by anything now.

When my daughter was au pairing in France, the mother of her charges was very fussy about the food served them. DD in small village shop ( probably catholic owner) picks up a four-pack of yoghurt and asks 'il y a les preservatives dedans?'
!!!!!

Do you think unisex toilets in a school might give rise to other problems? And did anyone see the news story a few weeks ago about the number of schools with CCTV in the toilets?

Jodi She would not be the fist Brit to be caught out with that one!

Jodi...could you translate 'il y a les preservatives dedans?' as google translation says she asked if the yoghurts had preservatives in and I'm sure it doesn't mean that by Greatnan's reaction lol.