Cleaning Frequencies for Schools and Nurseries: Toys, Surfaces, Toilets and Soft Play, by Term and by Season

Written by Iva, founder of Iva Cleaning Services London.

Ask a head teacher how often the toilets are cleaned and the answer is usually “every day”. Ask the children and the answer is “they’re disgusting by lunchtime”. Both are true. A toilet block used by 200 children between 8.45am and 3.15pm is not a once-a-day job, and the gap between the cleaning contract and the experience of using the room is where most complaints, and most winter sickness bugs, come from.

There is no statutory cleaning frequency for schools or nurseries in England. UKHSA’s health protection guidance for education settings says routine cleaning with detergent and water is normally all that is needed, and that a comprehensive cleaning contract has daily, weekly and periodic schedules that describe the activity, the frequency and who does it. The frequencies are yours to set. This post sets them out by area, by pupil numbers and by season, from the schedules we run on nursery cleaning in London and school contracts.

Toilets: by pupil count

A toilet block’s cleaning need is driven by how many children use it and how old they are. Younger children miss more, wash less thoroughly and touch more surfaces.

“Full clean” means pans inside and out, seats and hinges, flushes, urinals, basins, taps, mirrors, dispensers, door handles and locks, bins emptied, floor mopped with attention to the base of the pans, and soap, paper and towels restocked. In London’s hard water a weekly descale of taps, pans and urinals keeps the limescale from becoming a termly scrubbing job. The daytime check is the part most contracts leave out and most children would ask for: ten minutes per block after lunch to wipe seats and flushes, mop the inevitable, and restock soap. Soap that has run out at 1pm defeats every hand-washing poster in the building.

Who does the daytime check

The close clean is the contractor’s. The daytime check needs an owner too, and in most primary schools it falls to nobody, which is why the toilets are fine at 8am and unpleasant by 1pm. The options are a daytime cleaner on site for a few hours around lunch, a site manager or caretaker with the check written into their job and a tick sheet on the back of the door, or an extended contract where the evening team sends one person back at midday. In a nursery the room staff do the between-session wipe of seats and basins and the contractor does the close. Whoever it is, the task should be on the written schedule with a time against it and initials when done.

Classroom surfaces and touch points

• Daily: desks and tables wiped, bins emptied, floor vacuumed or swept and spot-mopped, sink areas in classrooms cleaned. Door handles, push plates, light switches, stair rails and the tops of chair backs wiped; these are the touch points that move a bug round a school in a day.
• Weekly: chairs wiped including legs and under the seat, shelves and window sills dusted, computer keyboards and screens wiped with the right product, carpets vacuumed properly with the furniture moved.
• Termly: walls washed at child height, radiators cleaned behind, light fittings and high dusting, chairs and tables washed properly, carpets hot-water extracted.

Toys, resources and soft play

The EYFS does not set a frequency for cleaning toys; it asks providers to prevent the spread of infection and to be able to show how. The frequencies that satisfy inspectors in practice:

• Mouthing toys in baby and toddler rooms: washed daily, and immediately after a child who is unwell has had them.
• Hard plastic toys, blocks, small-world sets: weekly on a rota by room, washed in warm soapy water or through a dishwasher where the material allows, air-dried.
• Dressing-up clothes, puppets, cushion covers, dolls’ clothes: weekly in the washing machine at the hottest temperature on the label, which is what UKHSA advises for linen and soft items.
• Sand: sieved weekly, replaced termly, tray covered when not in use. Water trays: emptied and disinfected daily.
• Soft play and foam shapes: wiped daily on the surfaces children touch; fully dismantled and cleaned termly, with the covers checked for splits, because a split cover cannot be cleaned.
• Books: wiped covers termly; a damaged or soiled board book is thrown away.
• Soft furnishings: UKHSA’s preference is wipeable surfaces; where fabric sofas and rugs are used, vacuum weekly and extraction-clean termly.

The statutory requirements this schedule answers to are set out in nursery cleaning requirements: what Ofsted and the EYFS ask for.

By season: the winter uplift

Norovirus and the other winter vomiting bugs arrive in schools from November and peak between January and March. UKHSA’s exclusion rule for diarrhoea and vomiting is 48 hours after the last episode, and the cleaning response in an outbreak is more frequent cleaning of touch points and toilets and immediate, correct treatment of any vomit or diarrhoea spill: a combined detergent and disinfectant product, disposable cloths and gloves, the area ventilated, and anything that cannot be cleaned (soft toys, a cushion) bagged and washed hot or disposed of. Alcohol hand gel does not kill norovirus; hand washing does, which is why the soap in the toilets matters more in February than in June.

Our winter schedule for schools and nurseries, from November to the Easter break, moves touch points from daily to twice daily, toilets to a full daytime check plus the close clean, and adds a weekly disinfection of tables and chairs on top of the daily detergent wipe. From Easter to October the routine schedule is enough.

Holiday deep cleans

The holidays are when the building is empty and the periodic schedule happens. The list for a half-term is a day or two; for the summer it is a week:

• Carpets and any upholstered furniture hot-water extracted throughout.
• Hard floors machine-scrubbed and, where applicable, resealed or polished.
• Toilet blocks descaled, machine-scrubbed, walls and cubicle partitions washed to full height, extractors cleaned.
• Kitchen and food areas deep cleaned: oven, extraction, behind and under appliances, cupboards inside, the dishwasher.
• All furniture washed; shelving and storage emptied and cleaned inside.
• Walls washed, high-level dusting, light fittings and vents, internal glass.
• Soft play, PE mats and outdoor equipment dismantled where possible and cleaned.

Writing it down

Whatever frequencies you settle on, UKHSA’s advice is the useful one: write the schedule with the task, the frequency and the person responsible, display it, and have the cleaner sign it. For a nursery that is also the document Ofsted reads. For a school it is the document that turns “the toilets are cleaned every day” into something a parent can check. If the answer to “who cleans the toilets after lunch?” is nobody, the schedule has found its gap.

Want the daytime checks and the holiday deep cleans covered? Get a free quote for your school or setting and we come back within one working hour.