Lack of toilets at school hinders children's education, report warns

When 10-year-old Offia Isaac needs the toilet at school, he has to brave snakes in the bush outside as there are no lavatories at his school in Enugu State, Nigeria.

“I went out to the bush [and] when I pulled off my knickers, I saw a snake in the bush, and I shouted ‘Jesus!’, and ran out. I did not go back again...I don’t go anywhere,” he said.

“I don’t feel comfortable using the bush. That thing is disturbing me. I am frightened,” he said.

The lack of toilets in school affects his studies, and sometimes there is even human waste in the classrooms, because there is nowhere for the children to go.

According to a new report from charity, WaterAid, he’s one of 620 million children worldwide whose education and health is currently being compromised by a lack of decent school toilets.

The Crisis in the Classroom, WaterAid’s fourth annual report on toilets around the world published ahead of World Toilet Day on 19 November, has found that one in five primary schools and one in eight secondary schools do not have any toilets at all.

Even where there are toilets, they are not adequate: one in three schools lacks the proper, safe facilities, the report found.

In Nigeria, where Offia lives, about half of the schools don’t have toilets – although the government did announce an action plan to tackle sanitation last week. In Guinea-Bissau, the worst affected country, 80 per cent of schools lack adequate facilities.

But in some ways, Offia is one of the lucky ones, because at least he made it to school: 60,000 children in Nigeria die every year from sanitation-linked illnesses, from diarrhoea to typhoid, before they reach school age. Diarrhoea linked to poor sanitation alone kills 289,000 children globally before the age of five.

That’s because, as the report outlines, the sanitation situation at home is often even worse than it is at school. Around the world one in three people still do not have access to decent toilets at home. That represents 2.3 billion people, down from 2.5 billion in 2013, but progress is slow – only slightly outpacing population growth.

Where there are no toilets, people have to use pits, or go in the open, putting them at risk of the deadly illnesses above, and others – including hepatitis A and cholera – which are often particularly dangerous for children. Repeated bouts of diarrhea increase children’s chances of being malnourished and stunted, which drastically affects their long-term potential.

When Mirriam’s daughter Jennifer died of cholera earlier this year, she wasn’t told the source of the epidemic. They share a pit latrine with four other families in the Chipata area of Zambia’s capital city, Lusaka, though, and hygiene is difficult.

Two days after Jennifer died, Mirriam’s son Mohammed got sick, too. He survived and the family has had help since – for example, they now have access to piped water – but they have not recovered from the tragedy.

“Our clothes-selling business got messed up while we were coping with Jennifer’s death and Mohammed’s sickness,” said Mirriam. “We haven’t recovered financially and my children haven’t gone back to school because we don’t have money for them. Things are not ok.”

WaterAid’s chief executive Tim Wainwright said this must change.

“Children in every country of the world need access to safe toilets at home and at school. Their health, education and safety depend on it…Bringing safe toilets to the one in three schools worldwide with no adequate toilets, should be a top priority – along with bringing decent household toilets to the 2.3 billion people still waiting," he said. 

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