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.

You can know your own mind, and still be wrong. Plenty do

God this is like the Family Sex Show all over again, when posters had to explain why underage kids and adults exposing themselves to each other is a boundary that shouldn’t be crossed regardless of context. And all the ‘enlightened’ posters arguing back about kids having ‘bodily autonomy’ and ‘nudity being healthy’ 🤮

Can’t believe kids still have to wear uniforms - just get rid of them. Let them wear what they want

I dunno on the trousers.
we fought and striked to be allowed trousers.

we got it, ours were practically sprayed on, low slung so our things showed when we bent down.

We all know trousers for girls don't solve the problem, because every September there's sad face in the newspaper stories about girls being sent home for too tight trousers.

I would not be happy about my daughter being segregated every morning to be checked on her way into school. Not least because she does wear trousers so it would be entirely pointless.

They could do uniform checks in classroom, or one of the local secondaries by me has the kids line up in the playground before school and form tutors could have a quick check then. You can then deal appropriately with anyone whose barely covering their bum. There's a big difference between above the knee and actually flashing your pants.

Interestingly my DD is at a single sex school and the girls still roll their skirts and wear them incredibly short. She's said it's embarrassing when you get a face full of bum as you walk up the stairs.

If schools just went non uniform, after a week or two of getting used to it they'd probably all be in jeans and t-shirts.

The school my kids went to introduced almost ankle length, logo’ed skirts to combat this. Around a year or so later, the two nearest secondary schools followed suit. Boys, and girls if they wish, have to wear logo’ed trousers to stop them wearing ones that are too skinny.

Anyone else at school in the last half of the 1980s, when short skirts just were not fashionable? Tight pencil-skirts were what the fashionable crew wore, always below the knee and with an ever-fraying upwards split.

Get rid of uniform & most girls would probably wear jeans or leggings, solves the problem & saves time of teachers inspecting uniform.

Look there's a limit. If you are the kind of person who wants to show their arse in either a skirt or trousers then expect to be sent home from a school.

Most schools handle this stuff fine.

Early to mid 90s and none of us would have been seen dead in a skirt at school. Always trousers, loose fit or wide leg. Cardigan always worn down round your elbows.

I agree. Why aren't all the kids having their uniforms inspected to ensure they comply?

But how sure can the school be that every item of the boys' uniform will be correct?

I do hope the boys start coming in wearing skirts.

My DD's old schools had a trousers only uniform for girls and boys.

I thought this was a great idea at first but then my DD came home telling me that the girls would be lined up and their trousers "pinched" to ensure they were not too tight. They also checked to make sure there wasn't too much ankle on display.

DD would be stressing that she would be bullied if her trousers weren't tight enough and at the same time was stressing about being pulled up in class to have her trousers "pinched"

There were no stories of the boys trousers being tested as it seemed the no skinny trousers rule only applied to girls.

As idea of school uniform is to prepare them for idea of world of work

It's to ensure that pupils feel they belong to the school

It's to ensure they all fit in to a particular school

So how come all over the world children go to schools with no uniforms yet manage absolutely fine in the world of work, and feel that they belong and fit in?

Apart from jobs with uniforms, it's not as if particularly formal wear is normally required at work these days anyway.

completely agree - i'm gobsmaked by some of these posts

my daughter rolls her skirt along with majority of the other girls and yes it looks silly cos the pleats look weird. But if her school spent as much time teaching at they did policing uniform, hair colour & nail colour it'd be happy days

school is no place for 'business wear' - stupid outdated policy which i dont agree as well as arguing about clothes with a teenager.You can't sit down comfortably in a tie and blazer so their justification is ludicrous

hardly any workplaces have business wear now either and the workplace is so
much more than an office so again i just do t get it. Ditch uniforms and policing of them - there's no research at all which shows better outcomes for having a uniform

They do something similar round here, except that skirts are knee length. Inevitably all the girls roll them up at the waist, logo or not. In fact, insisting on logos that make uniforms unnecessarily expensive is contrary to official government guidance. If schools where you are all have silly logos in breach of that guidance, they're not setting a very good example to their pupils, are they?

XOL - the boys can wear skirts if they like, I really don't care. What I don't want to see is kids' underwear on show. Three girls in my Year 10 today had their skirts so short that I could see their pants. The boys in that class would rather not see it too, they find it embrassing.

Also if your skirt is so short that your knickers are on show when you sit down, wear black pants do it isn't so obvious.

If a student could see my pants in class there would be an uproar.

If the skirt lengths are really a problem, then the solution is to do uniform inspections for everyone and cite every single infraction. A skirt being too short should not be any more meaningful than any other violation.

if the school uses a uniform supplier, there may not also be that much choice about skirt length. In order to get something that fits in the waist, the skirt is going to be shorter or longer on some bodies.

You're making things up now. The only post on this thread that mentions bodily autonomy and nudity is yours.

Have they tried buying a school skirt for a 15yo? They come in one length most of the time. The options are: long enough for the rule but far too baggy or short but fits at the waist, unless you are particularly short.

When my daughter's school contacted us about her skirt being 3 inches above the knee I raised this, citing the lengths of skirts at their uniform shop, and they dropped the whole pile of nonsense.

You can't demand girls wear knee-length skirts if you aren't selling knee length skirts to them.

Girls school trousers are awful. I find it extremely difficult to find a pair that fits .as it is as we speak my dd(16) is constantly pulled up fir her belt. But the size 8 is too tight around the thighs so she has to get the size 10 but thats so big round the waist it would fall down without the belt.

Dd2 equal nightmare as she has to have grey trousers. Can't tell u how many I've tried only to come away empty handed. Shes 12 and 5 ft 2 . Proportions of trousers are all wrong.

Your son's school needs to come into the 21st century. Business wear nowadays is pretty casual. Besides, why business wear? Plenty of its pupils will go into occupations which don't fit the normal definition of "business".

But that’s the tone isn’t it? ‘If the underage girls want to show their male teachers their bum cheeks then it’s MiSOGNy to stop them’.

Playing into the hands of perverts to be honest 🤷🏼‍♀️ call me a bland old traditionalist but I think interactions between adults and children in educational settings should be fully clothed, on both parts.

I have nothing further to add on the issue. Regardless of what you say, I simply don't agree with your argument that women and girls should dress a certain way specifically to ensure that they don't make men feel uncomfortable. I don't like where that argument leads.

If you want to enforce a rigid uniform policy for girls, can you not at the very least find a better justification of it than not making it about the comfort of men around them?

I simply don't agree with your argument that women and girls should dress a certain way specifically to ensure that they don't make men feel uncomfortable.

When did I say anything about grown women?

It isn’t exclusively about the ‘comfort’ of men although I feel sorry for decent male teachers trying not to stare at the arse on the stairs in front of him because he knows he will look like a pervert.

It’s about safeguarding underage children. My 3 year old has on occasion tried to take off clothes in public and I’ve stopped her. Should I have just let her continue? If not, why not?