British Toilet Association: Archived News from the British Toilet Association

Junior school head defends CCTV in toilet blocks

By STEVE DOWNES, Education correspondent

A Norfolk headteacher mounted a strong defence of surveillance of pupils last night as it emerged that his junior school had CCTV in the toilet blocks.

The news about Angel Road Junior in Norwich comes a week after Notre Dame High in the city was accused of “Big Brother” behaviour for installing cameras in one of its toilet areas to combat vandalism.

Len Holman, headteacher of the 287-pupil junior school on Angel Road, said he would “recommend” CCTV to other schools.

He said: “The school has CCTV covering the wash basins in all the pupil toilets because of the amount of vandalism being caused to taps. Also, people were taking toilet rolls out of the toilets and putting them in the sinks.

“From the moment CCTV went in we've had no problem whatsoever.”

A parent, who did not want to be named, said: “It's quite a concern. Children that young are getting used to being watched all the time. Seven- to 11-year-olds being exposed to that is not acceptable.

“The children are quite blasé about it. They've also got fingerprinting for the children in the library. In a lot of respects it's a fantastic school, though.”

Mr Holman said the installation had been carefully considered.

He said: “We had to go into the legislation with the installation company that does our CCTV. They told us they had put them in at several schools. They said as long as privacy was taken into account and only public areas like the sinks and the entrance were covered, there wouldn't be a problem.

“It's been an amazing success. We would recommend it. Unfortunately in this day and age adults can't go into toilets and monitor behaviour. A small minority latch onto that fact. Ever since we've had them we've had no problems.”

Mr Holman said the cameras had been in place for “four to five years”, and added that cameras in another part of the school had helped police to catch people suspected of stealing a laptop last week.

He said: “We had a theft of a laptop from a classroom and the characters were picked up on CCTV in various locations. We provided the police with an accurate visual and they picked them up this afternoon.”

Notre Dame High said last week that CCTV was a “last line of defence” because of thousands of pounds of vandalism to sinks in recent months.

One unhappy parent hit out at the school for its “Orwellian” surveillance of the pupils, but the EDP has since had a number of emails from pupils and parents in support of the decision.

Reproduced from Norwich Evening News 20 July 2009 11:00