Sanity restored on schools sanitary provision after ruling

School toilets are never the most pleasant of environments. How can they be? They are there to cater for the sanitary needs of children and adolescents, a place where a girl can deal with menstruation in private and where boys can compare their physique away from prying eyes.

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Despite everyone's best efforts, school toilets smell of that potent mix of teenage perfume and body odour, and there is always at least one cubicle where the lock is broken or the toilet will not flush properly.

Until recently, the one thing that you could guarantee was that boys and girls did not have to share such an intimate space-but that was before the emergence of gender identity ideology and councils were persuaded by campaigners that schools should have mixed-sex facilities.

A 2023 report by the campaign group For Women Scotland showed that here in Edinburgh, six secondary schools offered mixed-sex WCs, with the Wester Hailes Education Centre providing just four girls-only WCs compared to 28 mixed-sex ones. The report also revealed that every one of the city's high schools allowed pupils to use opposite sex toilets. But not for much longer.