Merseyside pupils 'humiliated' by school skirt-length inspections

[SerendipityJane]

Probably too many questions to write in this space, but (a) would it have been acceptable if if was only female teachers that were doing the inspecting. and (b) what would the definition of female be in this case.

I guess my main question of when the fuck did it become 1923 is quite low in the list

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-64743377

Female pupils say they have been left "humiliated" over enforcement of a uniform policy at a Merseyside school.

Girls have been made to enter Rainford High School in St Helens separately to boys and have had their skirt length inspected by male teachers, they claim.

I work in state secondary schools and girls' skirts are the shortest I have ever seen them (been in schools almost 20 years). They are indecent in many cases. Last week I stopped a girl going upstairs infront of me at lesson changeover. She was wearing a skirt and black opaque but see-through still tights. The skirt was so short you could actually see the curve of her bum cheeks below the hem and as she walked up the stairs the tights were see-through and she was wearing a thong.

I took her along to my office and had a chat with her. She was really huffy to start off with but came round as the discussion went on. I said I would see her at some point every day after half-term to check she is dressed appropriately for school and I spoke to her mum- who was bad-tempered but actually it was because the girl has been ignoring her when she has to,d her the same things. She supported me in the end.

She's not the only one, there are lots of them. Staff deal with this constantly and if you are not skilled at doing so it can lead to very awkward situations for staff. It's not about boys not being able to control themselves. If a teenage girl is walking upstairs infront of a group of teenage boys and they can literally see her bottom and her skimpy underwear of course they will comment. Most people would.

Boys and girls are bombarded by messages that they get from advertising/social media/porn about what women want when they expose their bodies most intimate/private areas. Yes women should be able to wear what they want , at least when not at work, but women also have a responsibility to themselves and to other women about decency, self-respect and appropriateness. I don't want to see any intimate/private areas of another woman, especially at work but also generally.

Teenage boys wear full-length loose school trousers, a white shirt and a blazer and tie. They are completely covered all the time. Girls wear these incredibly short, tight skirts often almost as short as their blazers. In PE boys they wear a loose polo shirt and baggy shorts. The girls wear skin tight lycra shorts or leggings in PE and again they are revealing. On non-uniform days girls often wear low-cut crop-tops and skin-tight leggings - nothing left to imagine.

Male teachers should not ever be touching teenage girls, and this school has got it so wrong. But the school uniform policy should be followed and the girls are taking the piss. Their parents have a responsibility to support the school policy and also to talk to their daughters and sons about respect and self-respect and the messages you give others.

Wearing a uniform is not going to help with competing against those with a private education.
Stop wasting teachers teaching time. As a previous poster noted, most European countries don't have uniform and education doesn't suffer.
And post pandemic, there's not a whole lot of business attire in offices. I think one person in my huge office wears a tie.

Having seen the trend for v short skirts now (ie. inappropriate for a school or workplace setting), the school are not wrong to enforce their uniform policy to ‘anyone wearing a skirt’.

At my school we knelt down and any skirts not touching the floor were considering too short.

Unless you are a teacher seeing daily sexual harassment of mainly girls in school perhaps people don’t understand how much of an issue this is.

OK first, I'm not a fan of only examining girls. I do understand short skirts can be a problem – if this was the case though, as PPs say the Tiktok in question show reasonable length skirts.

However, women for example are more likely to dress appropriately in the workplace, for the same 2 reasons as schoolgirls: (1) females are primed from a young age to dress desirably desirable for males (2) skirts are more adaptable than eg bog standard male suit or trousers. That still doesn't mean you ONLY issue statements for and/or examine women in a workplace with 2 genders. That sends quite a patriarchal message.

Anyway, assuming you do want the inspection though, it's common sense, swap around extracurricular, lunch break duties etc so both genders have equal duties and free time. Convenience isn't an excuse – apart from doctors, I don't think adult men should be able to closely physically examine underage girls' thigh areas even if covered

more likely to dress inappropriately in the workplace*

Schools are just so bloody toxic these days.

The whole stand up, line up in front of others and especially males, is a “shame “ thing. embarrassing and shaming girls and women has been used for centuries to get women to do what men ( and sometimes other women) want to control or accept blame for male harassment and gaze.

if it wasn’t shaming the girls in question would just have been quietly taken aside and told to adjust their skirt, or a note sent home that they needed a new one

shit, it’s 2023 and this same old crap is still being rolled out half a century after it was in my classroom . Why don’t schools insist on girls wearing trousers like boys - a unisex uniform getting rid of all the trans millarky at same time. Yep, I know there are girls who prefer skirts but in grand scheme of things that’s better than teachers trying to control girls sexuality through hem inspections. I know there are girls that find trousers difficult - but there are some girls that struggle with skirts and they have to deal with it. Or get them in legging type things with a longer tunic top. Why haven’t schools caught up with fact that some girls want to hide their bodies and hate puberty whilst others love being able to express their developing sexuality in a stereotypical way. That’s not going to change- you’ll be battling some girls for centuries to come unless someone accepts what a fucking waste of time it is and merely shames the girls, and I uses the brain to design something that actually works. Just think all the free time the teachers will have to not be looking at girls knees and thighs all the time

I remember 22 years ago at my (private, all girl school) the way my form tutor measured your skirt was to put a pencil on the floor, and tell you to turn around and pick it up and if the class could see your arse, it was too short.

Can’t see schools getting away with that now!!

And what lessons are the boys and men being given regarding this harassment? Do they get called out and shamed for saying stuff, ogling - how many inspections are made of where their eyes are looking

are you really saying that only girls whose knees and even a bit of inside thigh are on show are subject to harassment?

Getting male teachers to do it is both gross and unwise. When I was at school we all used to roll our skirts up our arses which was against the rules, but most of the men ignored it and the few that didn't we'd talk about them being pervs.

Hard agree

Nothing new. We had to kneel in the 60s - skirt had to touch the floor.

Nobody made a fuss, least of all the parents. (Of course we’d still ‘roll’ on the way home.).
As for it ‘causing anxiety’, I do honestly despair at such pathetic snowflakery. FGS just get a grip!

There’s a time and a place for the argument “distracting boys” and this isn’t it. I had a complaint from a parent because I told her daughter to adjust how she was sitting in assembly because she was showing her underwear, apparently I embarrassed her. Nobody but me and her heard me say it, but I said it because her male head of year had asked me to because he thought she would feel more comfortable it coming from me and I agreed.

If he could see it then that means the other 200 people in the room could see it. Would you want your child showing her underwear to 200 people? If a boy pulled down his trousers to a room of students would that be ok? How is a girl showing her underwear any different?

We have girls walking around with skirts so short we can see the bottom of their bum cheeks, if I can see it everyone can see it, including other students and everyone they walk past on the way to school. If they drop something they laugh that they can’t pick it up, that’s not ok. They are at school to learn and nothing should be stopping that, not being able to pick up their pen because they will flash is stopping them learn, not being able to come to the front and write on the board because a class of 30 kids will laugh because their arse is out is stopping them learn, I avoid picking these to come up because of this which is negatively impacting them.

This is me and my friends in 1970, so 53 years ago, we wore them as short as we thought we could get away with. This was in school, you should have seen us out of school! They were supposed to touch the floor when you knelt down!

We had to do this to kneel down after assembly to ensure skirt touched the floor.

Dd school have introduced yet another expensive logo skirt so the logo sits on the knee to make it easier to check. That annoys me far more as it just seems like a way of introducing more items to be bought from the only uniform supplier that will do the logo.

Why are you attacking me? Of course males should be pulled up if they are caught harassing any pupils in line with behaviour policy - where did I say they shouldn’t? Nor did I say that only girls with short skirts are being harassed. But if you wear a skirt that shows a thong when going upstairs people are likely to comment. You can get all ‘anyone is free to wear what they like’ about it but have you actually spent a lot of time in secondary schools lately and aware of mental health issues among teenagers due to the amount of peer pressure they’re under from all angles.

I don’t think lining people up for ‘inspection’ is necessarily the right method to enforce uniform policy - but it should be enforced if the school have one.

I don't think it's good for the male teachers too. If they're decent men, they'd probably be uncomfortable with it as some might get turned on inadvertently? And anyway, wouldn't be happy with the optics of closely examining, possibly even touching (measuring tape) an area so close to teen girls' crotch.

And those who are happy and willing to do it... Well. This may sound crude, but underage thigh flesh parade lined up compliantly in front of them is going straight into their wank bank. Such men do exist.

Anyway, even if they were all asexual monks I'd be uncomfortable at the message that's sending to my daughter at a young age: to submit to non medically necessary (or even medical) male physical examination even when it feels uncomfortable for her. The message that "it's OK as long as they're in a position of authority" is risky!

It puts her in future danger potentially, when she doesn't know how to withdraw from situations she finds physically intrusive or uncomfortable, as a physically developing / developed woman.

It wasn't ok then, and 60 years later it very definitely isn't. I'm astonished you don't want better than that for today's young women even if you were happy to be humiliated.

Life is about rules - it's a basic construct of society. That includes decency and being presentable.

Surely these pupils should be more concerned with what grades they're getting than complaining that they have to look decent and smart?

Utter waste of time nonsense imo.

@IsItThough - it wasn’t in the least humiliating! A quick check and over within seconds.

I don't mind the short skirts rule (if the student chooses skirt instead of trousers) but they must police it far, far more sensitively.

Unfortunately, workplace rules often dictate ‘appropriate’ skirt lengths, so pupils (male or female) need to be appropriately prepared for the world of work. No internalised misogyny here.

Despite what they claim, I actually don't buy that many PPs would be happy if their own DD was going into school to be separated from the boys and line up for a male physical examination lol. Wearing a reasonable length skirt won't help, they still have to undergo it

Oh what rot. Rebelling with your school uniform when you are 14 doesn't mean you won't be able comply with the rules of paid work when you are 23.

I was 5' 8" at about 13, v skinny and all the school skirts available sat above my knee. I used to get regularly told off but there wasn't an alternative. I dread to think what they would be saying now and I can't imagine my parents would have been delighted with a male measuring my skirt length. I am surprised that isn't a safe guarding issue to be honest, in any other circumstance I can't imagine a professional male leaving themselves open to such interpretation?

And whilst I agree with standardisation to avoid people wearing trainers etc, I do think there is a very unrealistic work of what people wear to work these days. Most offices are far more relaxed.

People need to be taught to dress for the occasion.