Girls told to wear longer skirts at school because the boys are distracted and male teachers feel uncomfortable.

Girls need to learn to dress appropriately for their environment. Very short skirts are not appropriate for school any more than they are in a workplace. There is no reason for them to be wearing such short skirts and I think it is entirely appropriate that they have been told to revert to the proper uniform.

Absolutely this. The school have expressed it badly though. They should have talked about how NO ONE wants to see their underwear and about what is appropriate for a school or work environment. It isn't just men who don't want to see a flash of a teenage girls arse when climbing the stairs.

As a grown woman I would feel uncomfortable going upstairs behind a young girl whose skirt was so short I could see her knickers. There are some things that you just don't want to see. It is harder for men though simply because they can often get called a perv whatever they do.

Imagine for a minute you are a male teacher (or even a male student), you walk upstairs and in front of you is a young girl with her knickers on display. What do you do? You can't look forward because you really don't want to see that, if you look sideways it looks really shifty, you look at the floor and it looks like you are trying to hard not to look. If you blush from embarrassment you've absolutely had it and If you raise the issue you are accused of looking and being a pervert etc

These days people are quick to shout pervert or pedo but girls do need to take some responsibility for their own actions. In an environment such as school or work a short skirt is simply not appropriate. It just creates an uncomfortable situation that is totally unavoidable. What these girls want to wear in their leisure time is entirely up to them but at school/work you keep it decent. It's a case of common courtesy tbh.

OP are you sure she actually told you word for word what was said or could there be a bit of teenage drama going on? I'm sure they don't want to be told what length skirt they should wear but there are rules, I hate petty pointless rules but covering your backside in public seems pretty basic to me.

I think the people on this thread who are assuming the male teachers are sexually interested in the female students need to consider why they made that assumption when the OP merely said it made the male teachers uncomfortable. Strange

Strange indeed

Also in indication of exactly why the male staff are right to feel uncomfortable, given that some are so ready to throw around accusations over nothing at all

I just remember being young, and not very worldly, genuinely not realising that short skirt I thought looked good (fashionable) from the front actually would show any underwear if I went ups stairs etc. I got a shock when I decided to check my rear view in a mirror. It was not something I usually considered doing. Until then I would have merrily rolled skirts up thinking they looked fantastic like that.

This is why the sexualisation of these 15 year olds can be a bit upsetting. I just wanted to look fashionable but was at an awkward embarrassing age where I did not really think how practical the clothes I liked were or were not to be more exact. (Similarly being burnt in the low backed dress)

this is not a new thing, I left high school in the 70's and girls where always told not to wear short skirts, we used to turn them over at the waist band to make them shorter after leaving the house then get dragged in to the heads office and told to make them longer... so this is nothing new, but saying about distracting male staff well maybe they are in the wrong profession

Just in response to those who think schoolgirls wear short skirts to impress boys and adult men....we all rolled our skirts up at school (there was a uniform length) and I can absolutely assure you it was nothing at all to do with the men. They didn't cross our minds. We rolled our skirts up for the same reason we wore our ties askew and tried to get away with non-uniform jumpers...because we were pushing boundaries and trying to circumvent the rules. Boys didn't feature at all.

I agree with this, for the vast majority of the girls. DD wore a short skirt at school, with thick black tights, because that was what all the other girls wore. Nothing to do with boys, or being provocative, she just didn't want to stand out from the others.

Now that she is at college and wearing her own choice of clothing, it's nearly always jeans. She never had any intention of being provocative or "sexy".

So yes, if the school came out with the message as in the OP, I would have a problem as it does seem to be aimed at girls, to modify their behaviour, which I agree totally is the wrong message.

Anything said to pupils about uniform should be to all, to reiterate the uniform rules, nothing else.

The trousers girls were wearing a few years ago were grim. Skin tight and had "Miss Sexy" across the back. I couldn't understand parents allowing them to wear them. You can't police your dd rolling up her skirt, but you can certainly say no to the purchase of a Miss Sexy pair of trousers for school wear.

basically people are saying we should let our dds walk upstairs showing their vital statistics to anyone who happens to look up

Has anyone ever noticed that whenever a post begins 'so you are basically saying', it's always a spectacular misreading?

...And some schools let boys wear skirts

www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2016/jun/13/uk-state-schools-get-gender-neutral-uniforms

What schools really ought to do is have trousers only - no skirts. Totally removes the problem. I'm not even that keen on having uniform tbh, but skirts seem to cause nothing but trouble from all angles. At least if it's trousers only, all kids have the same rules.

Some state schools do still insist on skirts only for girls. blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/posts/2016/03/the-battle-over-skirt-only-uniform-codes-does-it-matter-who-wears-the-trousers/

Mousmary we had a male teacher who once told a girl he could see her pants as her skirt was too short. He is still referred to as a pervert and various other names by the kids. This is years later.

Pastoral leads etc. Phone home but girls will roll their skirts up. Some do wear shorts underneath them but others thongs ...

So basically people are saying we should let our dds walk upstairs showing their vital statistics to anyone who happens to look up.
Because they should be allowed to wear what they want. and it's everybody else who complains that has the problem.

I'm glad my dd likes her trousers. The thought of intentionally sending her to school to show her underwear, makes me sick tbh.

About 75% of the girls at the school I work in wear skirts. They can wear trousers if they wish but choose not to.
In winter it means they can wear them with leggings and knee socks (?) so it looks like tights.

That's a silly post, Vestal. No state school to my knowledge insists girls wear skirts. Trousers are always an option. And don't trumpet European non-uniform. In my dn's school there was horrendous one upmanship about clothes, which having to wear a uniform does to a large extent do away with.

Anyway, this very issue has come up at dd's school. The girls are allowed to wear trousers, of course, but they are out of fashion at the moment and every girl has the shortest possible skirt. Even if you send in your dd in a skirt of reasonable length, you can be sure that by the time they reach the top of the road the waist band has been rolled over half a dozen times to make the skirt super short.

It doesn't bother me as long as the girls are wearing thick tights, but I have seen a few girls who do not wear tights, just trainer socks with their shoes. Now, no one wants to see someone's pants. It's not even sexual, it's just... bleeugh. I was discussing this with dd yesterday, and she said, "Why can't the Head of Year just call the parents of the girls who are showing their knickers?" I said it was probably because they couldn't tell people they must wear tights. But I don't know; I'm not a teacher. Can individual pupils be targeted? Or would this take up too much time, and what constitutes "decency"?

And we all resort to sexist victim blaming when we're a bit exasperated, right?

It should have nothing to do with how the men and boys feel. If a length is deemed appropriate, practical, and smart, then enforce it. And when you can't, don't wheel out the idea that the men and boys with their uncontrollable hormones will get distracted by the girls, to make them toe the line.

If a teacher genuinely feels they have a school full of male staff and pupils who cannot focus when they see a leg, they need to think about how they address that. Not tell the girls it's their responsibility.

But in all likelihood, that's not what they feel. They are wheeling out an extra reason why the girls should wear longer skirts by trying to scare and intimidate them into excessive awareness of their disastrous effect on poor old men and boys. Always be aware of how what you do and what you wear will affect the men.

Seek

I think they already did that. It will be in the uniform policy. The school didn't act with a great deal of tact but if the girls keep on flaunting the policy, the teachers are likely becoming exasperated.

Really, noeffingidea? You should see some of the expansesof orange leg on display in schools round here on non-uniform day!

SeekEveryEveryKnownHidingPlace:

We'll have to agree to disagree on that. I can't think why the skirt length would need to be prescribed unless it was related to how people feel about the shortness of the skirts. But we shouldn't have this out again!

Florence I'm not surprised about the teenagers choosing to wear jeans, t-shirts and hoodies. That's what they seem to wear out of school, as well. You don't seem to see many teenage girls wearing very short skirts. There seems to be something about school uniform that inspires them.
If I was a headteacher skirts would be banned, full stop. They're impractical. It might also help to put an end to that awful St Trinians image.
My daughter used to wear summer dresses until she was 8 or so, apart from that it's been trousers at school. She goes to special needs school and that is their policy which I support 100%.

But the vast majority of schools do let girls wear trousers. My dd almost always wears trousers to school. Lots of girls choose to wear skirts and deliberately wear them as short as they can get away with.

The message in the OP was bad. Girls should not be told that they should wear longer skirts because the poor boys and men can't cope (even though a lot of the girls are undoubtedly wearing their skirts short in order to attract the boys' attention - nobody who has spent time in a school full of teenagers could possibly doubt that). They should be told to wear longer skirts because it is in the school rules and is in keeping with a work environment.

It is reasonable in its rationale that professional length skirts are appropriate and very short ones are not.

It is not reasonable if that rationale has anything to do with how men and boys might feel about it.

Tell them 'that skirt is too short for school'. Not 'that skirt is too short for men and boys to have to cope with'. Easy.

Most schools don't make girls wear skirts. They have skirts and trousers as part of a uniform policy. In the same way that some schools allow shorts as part of a uniform policy.

Excellent post Vestal

Well said Vestal.