The advent of super-comfortable nappies are causing problems with increased incontinence the Daily Mail reports, though thats not the only problem. “It’s the attitude of parents which is also to blame” says paediatric nurse June Rogers, who works as a specialist adviser on child incontinence in Manchester.

She adds: ‘I don’t know if you could say parents are lazy, but toilet training certainly isn’t a priority for a lot of them.’

As a result, increasingly older children are now effectively incontinent-This means primary school teachers are being expected to deal with growing numbers of nappy-wearing children starting full-time school. Today, every new reception class of 30 will have more of these youngsters, and in some areas it is almost the norm. Ann Nash, a teacher in Bradford and a spokeswoman for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said she had recently heard of three children from the same family who arrived at school still in nappies. ‘The oldest of them was seven – and by then the incontinence problem is fairly well set in.

The use of smaller sized pull-up underwear being promoted as training products has made it a lot worse, but the biggest problem is that some parents are increasingly aware that the disability discrimination law, introduced in 2005, means schools can’t legally reject pupils because they are incontinent, so they don’t bother to train them.