The luxuries in Bingley Grammar School's toilets may not quite extend to freshly laundered towels and regular sprays of perfume - but they are not far off.

Since September, the newly-refurbished conveniences have been supervised by what are thought to be the country's first school toilet attendants.

Gone are the leaky cisterns, suspicious clouds of smoke and graffiti covered tiles. In their place there are gleaming, spotless surfaces, pictures on the wall, and floors you could eat the proverbial dinner off.

Catherine Smith, 50, has even decorated the girls' toilets with plants and Christmas trimmings, complete with a tree.

"I really enjoy it here," she said.

"The job allows me to meet all the girls and find out about them. I don't know all of their names - there are too many - but I do know their faces."

One of her main roles is to make sure there is no smoking and that everyone behaves. But she has had no problems, and instead has found herself acting as the girls' confidant/best friend/surrogate parent.

She said: "We talk about football, the Bradford Bulls, pop stars and their boyfriends. I hear a lot of secrets in here. They also come to me for advice. I have four children of my own and I know what they are going through with things like GCSEs. One of the little ones even told me that I was just like her grandma."

George Hannah enjoys a similarly good relationship with his charges and has already received several Christmas presents from them.

"Everybody sees the job as a cleaner but it is a very small part of it," he said.

The 57-year-old former miner deals with everything from cut fingers and bloody noses to just listening to problems, particularly those of the younger boys.

"The toilet polices itself really - the sixth formers are so happy to have somewhere nice for the first time in their school career that they won't allow any mischief," he said. As Liam Halliday, 12, said: "It helps us because we can talk to Mr Hannah. He makes us feel safer when he is there."

Head teacher John Patterson is flushed by the success of the innovative scheme in its first term. When the T&A first exclusively revealed the story, he said that, although the school did not have a bullying problem, there was a concern that if something bad was going to happen it would happen in the loos. But he says that predictions made in the national press that bad behaviour would simply be moved elsewhere have been proved wrong.

"The positive atmosphere in the toilets has had an effect on the rest of the school," he said. "It is a much softer, more human place. There is no time when the children are left unsupervised to create their own subculture."