FAIR OR FELONY: Is it illegal to deny students the right to go to the restroom?
Written by Miranda Honey
In high schools across Australia, it’s not uncommon for students to ask for permission to go to the bathroom during class time. Whether that’s because they were too busy or forgot to go during break, or they would simply like to take a breather from the bustling environment of class, there are lots of reasonable explanations for a student to request to go to the restroom. However, it’s also not uncommon for teachers to deny their students permission. In order to discover just how many of our own students have been prevented from going to the restroom during class, a survey was completed by a group of senior students at University High School. The results show that the majority of students (62.5%) have been denied permission, and half of those students stated that the teacher who refused their request did not give them a clear explanation for the refusal.
Sometimes teachers do have justifiable reasons for preventing their students from leaving class. “Sometimes I won’t let a student leave class frequently because I know that they just want to go use their phones,” said Ms McFarlane, an English and Literature teacher. Other times, though, a teacher’s logic might seem less than fair, such as when they simply use a variation of “Because I said so!” as their explanation. Nevertheless, the question that is being addressed here is not whether it is subjectively right or wrong to deny students access to the restroom during class. Instead, it is addressing a far more important question; Is it even legal?
The general consensus of most people - including both students and teachers - is that it is not illegal to deny students permission to go to the bathroom during class. Two of the most important duties that teachers have are to supervise their students, and to teach them content from their specific school subjects. But by letting a student spend valuable class time going to the restroom, it can put both these duties in jeopardy of not entirely being fulfilled.
The Duty of Care also supports the argument that students should always be supervised during class time. The DoC is an education policy created by the Victorian government to assist school staff in understanding how to meet their legal duty of care to students. The DoC states that staff must “provide an adequate system of student supervision”, which backs up many teachers’ claims that it is perfectly justifiable to refuse a student’s request to go to the bathroom. However, the Duty of Care isn’t just a policy about literally overseeing students. The DoC also states that “[a]ll staff must take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of reasonably foreseeable harm to students. This includes supporting and responding to the health care needs of all students.” This suggests that teachers should always do their best to attend to a student’s health needs and to try and prevent potential future health problems.
By preventing a student from using the bathroom, it could potentially put both a student’s mental and physical health at risk. Lack of access to a bathroom could lead to bowel or bladder damage or issues of varying degrees of severity, some potentially causing lifelong impacts. If a student's reason for asking to go to the restroom is to take a short break from class, being refused and having to stay in class could lead to them becoming anxious or overwhelmed, which will have negative effects on both their mind and their work. While distressed students could potentially ask their teacher to go to a different place to take a break, often these students do not want to draw extra attention to themselves if they are feeling anxious, or they don’t want to deal with unnecessary interaction when they are already overwhelmed. For these reasons, sometimes simply asking to go to the bathroom is the best way for a student to go and recollect themselves and get back into the correct mindset to complete schoolwork efficiently. Therefore, by denying students access to the bathroom, even during class time, teachers are breaking their legal duty of care.
Additionally, the DoC might not be the only policy that teachers are breaking by preventing a student from using the restroom. The purpose of the policy, ‘Equal Opportunity and Human Rights — Students’ (EOHR-S) is to ensure that schools comply with legal obligations to provide educational environments where students are treated with respect and dignity. In this policy, it states that “[s]chools must not unlawfully discriminate against a student by denying or limiting access to any benefit provided by the school”. Access to student bathrooms is considered a benefit provided by schools, so by denying or limiting a student’s access to the bathroom, teachers are going against EOHR-S.
Furthermore, there is another Victorian policy that is particularly important in relation to denying students access to the bathroom, which is the Continence Care policy. ‘Continence’ refers to the ability to hold back bodily functions from the bladder or the bowel. This policy states that “In general, children should be allowed to go to the toilet when they need to go or when a medical need has been identified.” This is an incredibly clear expression of what the Victorian government's views are on whether a student should be allowed to use the restroom during class time.
One point that must be outlined, though, is that government policies are not technically laws themselves. However, a teacher’s failure to comply with any of the policies stated could lead to legal action, and they could be punished for it by the law. In conclusion, the evidence suggests that it absolutely can be illegal to refuse a student’s request to go to the bathroom, even during class time. Perhaps in the future, teachers should rethink whether preventing students from leaving class for a few minutes is worth committing a crime!