Abstract
Even though there is a large body of research on sanitation problems in South African public schools, these studies frame the issue as stemming from a lack of resources. Little attention is paid to the lived experiences of the learners who deal with poor sanitation at school. The aim of this research was therefore to understand girl’s perceptions of poor sanitation at their school and their day to day learning experiences at Mpethi Mahlatsi Secondary School in Orange Farm. A narrative qualitative research design was used and eight interviews were conducted with female learners and one with the deputy principal. The results were analysed using thematic analysis. The key findings that emerged were; first, learners were unhappy with the conditions of their school toilets. Second, the bathrooms were dirty and lacked essential resources such as soap and toilet paper and sanitary bins tended to be insufficient and over flowing. Third, water supply to the bathrooms could also be erratic and unreliable. Fourth, privacy also emerged as a major problem given that male learners entered the girl’s bathrooms to loiter and smoke. Fifth, the toilets tended to be overcrowded, which often resulted in female learners foregoing the use of toilets during break time. Lastly, participants also reported incidents of bullying within the confines of the school bathrooms. This and the sale of drugs from the bathrooms, were two unexpected findings that emanated from this study. As a result of these occurrences, participants devised coping strategies to deal with their school’s poor sanitation conditions. Coping strategies could involve, refraining from using the bathrooms all together, withholding urine for long periods of time to avoid using the school’s bathrooms or only using the bathrooms in groups for safety. Coping methods such as this, had negative effects on the psycho-social, educational and physical well-being of the participants. This research hopes to better understand the problem of poor sanitation through the voice of female learners, and thus assist policy makers and educators to improve sanitation provision to under resourced, public schools. Recommendations are that; each grade should be assigned their own bathroom and that better reporting mechanisms should be devised where learners can report any bathroom related issues to relevant school management. Future research should also include interviews with bathroom maintenance staff to.
M.Phil. (Social Policy and Development)