Students, Sanitary Facilities and Regulations: An Overview of Public Schools in Malaysia

Sanitary facilities in public schools should provide a safe and secure environment for students to enter and utilise any sanitary fixtures. The reason for this is that public coeducational schools encompass a diverse range of students in terms of gender, age, behaviour, culture, religion, ethnicity, and belief. The government has implemented enhancements to design and arrangement of sanitary facilities and fixtures in order to minimise the impact on school buildings. However, inadequate information from students has resulted in less provision of sanitary fixtures in sanitary facilities. This research focuses on an overview of sanitary facilities or also known as toilets based on perceptions from students in selected public coeducational schools. Design and arrangement of existing gender-specific toilets are inappropriate for females due to the fact that females spend twice as much time in sanitary facilities as males. The overview includes relevant information of students’ perceptions, and sanitary facilities and fixtures in public coeducational schools.