Susan Dalgety: No unisex toilets or mobile phones – it’s back to old fashioned teaching

The case had been brought by the parents of a girl who attended a primary school in East Calder, where girls and boys had to share toilet facilities.

Unisex toilets in schools have been ruled unlawful and discriminatory against girls

The court had previously heard that the girl had forced herself to wait to use the toilet until she got home.

And her parents’ lawyer argued that the school had subjected her and other girls to an “intimidating, humiliating and hostile environment.”

Why West Lothian Council thought that it was a good idea to build a school with unisex toilets remains a mystery, but they were not alone. In recent years, it has become ‘fashionable’ for schools to insist that boys and girls share this most intimate of spaces.

Anyone involved in education who thought this was a good idea clearly knows nothing about children and young people.

I have worked in sub-Saharan Africa for 20 years and no-one there – not local councils, headteachers, parents, donors or charities – thinks girls should have to go to the bathroom with boys.

Single-sex toilets are seen as a key part of development policy in countries like Malawi, the gold standard for any school.

Yet in recent years in Scotland, our children have been forced to take part in a dangerous social experiment, in large part because of pressure from trans rights activists.

But not for much longer. As author and women’s rights campaigner JK Rowling wrote on social media in response to last’s week’s ruling: “Polite notice to schools still breaking the law by failing to provide single sex bathrooms: you will be sued and you will lose.”

The second sign that common sense is on its way back is the news that from August, Edinburgh’s high school pupils will be banned from taking their mobile phone into the classroom.

They will have to put their iPhones and Samsungs into a lockable pouch at the start of each school day, where they will stay until the end of the school day.

No more sneaking a look at TikTok during trigonometry or snapchatting while in science. Youngsters will have to revert to passing notes round class when they are bored by history just as we did in the olden days.

The city’s councillors and in particular education chief, Cllr James Dalgleish, should be congratulated for taking this step.

During a recent consult-ation, only three per cent of students supported an all-day ban, but they will have to learn to live with it. And teachers are bound to be delighted now that they will have their students’ full attention.

The Scottish Government looks set to follow suit with a nationwide ban sometime soon.

So now that unisex school toilets have been deemed illegal and mobile phones are to be banned from the classroom, perhaps we can return to the good old days . . .

And start teaching our children to write as well as type with their thumbs; to research using books as well as ChatGPT; and to learn their times tables instead of adding up on their phones.