Dear Elisabeth,

Thanks very much for your response and the reference about the useful publication by Fit In School!

Looking through some reports and guidelines on WASH in schools, I was unable to locate guidance on the number of handwashing taps to students for toilet facilities. I agree with your logic about one individual tap per toilet cubicle in absence of a group handwashing installation.

Very best,
John

Dear John,

I have moved your question to here to give it more attention.
It's a good question (and I am no expert on this).
I guess it depends on what you want to achieve with the handwashing at school.
When I think of handwashing at schools, I immediately think of the work done with the government in the Philippines sparked by the NGO Fit for School. It is an amazing program that works at scale and at a very low cost.

What they are doing there is group handwashing at set times, most notably before meals. If you want to do group handwashing, then I guess you need enough tap stands for the entire class of children.

I have grouped the documents we have in the SuSanA library about Fit for School here (unfortunately their website is not totally up to date so for now you are better off with the items in the SuSanA library):

www.susana.org/en/resources/library?search=fitfor

(this filters the library for "fitfor" which is a tag that I have given to their six publications that are in the library so far)

Please tell me if you are finding this useful?

If you don't do group handwashing, but individual handwashing, then my guess would be that you provide one handwashing tap for each toilet cubicle? Or would that be overkill? I assume that during break times the toilets get used by a lot of pupils, perhaps there is even a queue. Therefore, each person who leaves a cubicle needs immediate access to a sink otherwise they will leave without washing their hands.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Thanks for the posts on school toilets.
Slightly outside the subject, but linked: Is there a standard for handwashing taps/stations to learners?
Very best,
John