Girls school uniform - skirt length, make up etc

[Emmaheather]

Interested to hear people's views on this. I don't have any direct experience as a mother of boys who are at a school with a very relaxed attitude to school uniform. I don't understand why it's viewed as so important by some and why schools would send children home rather than let them attend school in a short skirt/make up. I worry about the messages being given by these attitudes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3gg178850xo

I'm pleasantly surprised to see that there are peple who agree about cancelling skirts at school. I've floated this idea before in real life and on MN and been roundly shut down. Perhaps things are changing?

@LittleLegsKeepGoing Plato complained about the youth of today not being as respectful as they used to be. Nothing has changed in 1000s of years. Of COURSE we all wore ridiculously short skirts. I have hilarious photos of myself in high school circa 1993 in a skirt that barely covered my ass.

Yes they'd get an education (as they already do) and no, they wouldn't get bored with dressing like that.

I'm not even in favour of school uniform, but I do think it's a bit pathetic making such a fuss about being asked to follow school rules that are easy to follow and that you were well aware of when you started at the school. It's not difficult to not roll your skirt up fgs. If your skirt is too small, you need a new one.

@VenusClapTrap the problem with trousers for all is the formal "school" trousers designed for females are often the most uncomfortable style and badly fitting.

@AllProperTeaIsTheft if they don't get bored with it why do I rarely see any women over 18 wearing that style (unless they are going clubbing)?

I really don’t like seeing schoolgirls with tiny skirts that barely cover their bums, big false lashes etc. They look like cheap little hookers, sorry!

I would want uniform rules to be rules. Teenagers can wear what they like on the weekend.

@Bananabreadandstrawberries the irony is that on the weekends 90% of teenage girls wear jeans, sports leggings or trackies.
Why not let them wear that at school?

sorry, I think this is bollocks as a reason not to do it. . Black trousers in cotton or some kind of synthetic fabric, no leggings/jeggings/denim, full length would not be that difficult.

Particularly if it was a widely accepted standard for school uniform. The challenge today is, admittedly, that black or grey trousers outside of formal school uniform are not standard so there would need to be support from suppliers to sort it but Id' be shocked if, for example, the big supermarkets couldn't add a black/grey/navy blue trouser version in 2 or 3 styles for girls as they do currently with skirts/dresses.

As girls wear trousers ALL the time outside of school, it's clear that finding well fitted, comfortable trousers is not that difficult.

eidted as I realised it's true that a lot of trousers for girls in uniform mode aren't great currently. but it is not a difficult fix which is the point I wanted to make.

I don't really know.

My gut feeling is that it's a class thing. Because the only girls I see in my city who dress like that, with the lashes and knickers on show, are the poor girls. So to me, and this could be massively different in other parts of the country, detentions/exclusions for skirt length feels like putting the poor in their place, and/or making it even bloody harder for poor families to keep their children in school. If these girls are in school and working hard, I don't see how their clothing matters.

It's like the term time holiday fines and the way that any kind of fine means that the rule only applies to poor people.

Middle class people (who are most likely to be the ones running the schools, running the councils that make the rules, and well, running everything) wring their hands about makeup and skirt length holding working class kids back, when it's LACK OF MONEY GOING TO THE SCHOOLS holding working class kids back. This kind of stuff seems designed to distract us from the real problem.

make up is a serious issue - girls as young as 12 or 13 feel they can't face the world without covering their faces in gunk. It is really important for schools to ban it -and for girls to be accustomed to letting their real faces show. it is horrendously damaging to allow them to get into the habits of feeling they have to cover their faces to be socially acceptable

They absolutely don't look great and I definitely judge the parents for allowing it/funding it (because that's who is buying them that gear), but the more schools fight against it the more the girls feel like they're expressing themselves by doing it. If it was absolultey ignored, would they carry on?

In my dd's school no Year 8 would be seen dead in the school skirt or PE skort - they ONLY wear the PE tracksuit bottoms with the normal school sweatshirt, whereas no Year 10 would be seen dead in the tracksuit bottoms and all prefer the skirt. The year 11's will generally only wear the skort. (teachers never know whether it's a PE day for you, so you can effectively select what outfit you wear). The ability to choose and distinguish their little groups is terribly important to them.

Outside the army and food service, there are few jobs that require precise uniform, so I have no idea what this is supposed to teach them.

@NotLactoseFree well yes if the clothing designers actually designed decent ones it would be ok.

@whynosummer wtf is a 'poor girl' and how do you know?

To the dad in the article - taking false eyelashes off at 13 will not cause mental health issues - no 13 year old needs false lashes.

The skirts are the issue - FairPlay to those wearing shorts under but not everyone does. I wish I had a pound for every arse cheek/thing I have had to try and avoid seeing over 24 years in the classroom. I am just glad the fashion for boys wearing trousers belted under their backsides is no longer with us - the amount of sweaty (and skidmarked) white pants that were on show was sickening (kids like to lean over desks to talk).

The answer is a uniform that involved tracksuit bottoms, black trainers and a polo shirt in a different colour for each year. With a fleece/sweatshirt.

Do they ALL do it though? It seems that there are always some girls who look like cheap drag queens but loads don't wear any at all, or just a little. My DD goes through phases of wearing none and wearing a little, but she says some in her class wear loads. My 13yo asked for make up for her birthday and I cautiously obliged but after the second day she never touched it again as it was too much faff.

Last school I worked at had some girls with skirts so short you could see their bum cheeks. It's inappropriate. No teacher would be allowed to come to school dressed like that.

You can see their knickers when they walk up the stairs and you can see their knickers if they are sitting at a high desk (like in a science lab) and you are sitting across the room in a normal height teachers chair. Again, it's completely inappropriate and something I don't want to have to deal with or see during my working day.

I don't care about their shoes, makeup or hair but it would be nice if they stopped doing their makeup and hair during lessons.

@AllProperTeaIsTheft if they don't get bored with it why do I rarely see any women over 18 wearing that style (unless they are going clubbing)?

I thought we were talking about the idea that schoolgirls would get bored with wearing short skirts at school (if teachers stopped telling them off about it). Not adult women moving on from dressing how they did when they were 15. Besides, I see plenty of young women wearing very short skirts while not in a nightclub. But that's obviously fine - there aren't any school rules once you leave school!

If school uniform can't be made practical and comfortable then it should be abolished.

I used to be very pro school uniform, but the uncomfortable materials it is made of, plus so many schools enforcing it to ridiculous levels without applying common sense (blazers worn on hot summer days) has changed my mind completely.

From tiny acorns grow giant oaks. Teach your children rules, respect for others, and good manners. That way they might just make it in this ever more violent world

@TM1979 do you live in kent , this sounds similar to my children's school 🙄
they recently decided to change the school skirt ,when supposedly school uniform wasn't going to have school logo on skirts so could buy cheaper🤔

ours have to have knee length skirts, blazer and tie, minimal make up and 1 set of small earrings. They are ridiculous about it as well, they phoned me in the middle of the day to tell me her tie had broken i had to pay for it via paypal right then or they would spend the rest of day in internal exclusion!

@Pieceofpurplesky I mean the girls living in the poorest parts of the city, going to the underfunded school that is perpetually getting bad ofsteds. It's not a criticism - it's a fact borne out by the percentage of students on free school meals there. I'm sorry if that was not clear.

My point was that this seems like another rule designed to single out a particular group of young people, instead of encouraging and supporting them in every way possible, and ignoring factors that just don't matter. As a teacher, you are probably more keenly aware of the need to pick your battles than anyone else commenting on this thread, that's all.

no, they don't all, of course not. many girls never wear make up, and lots of women decide never to use it too. I have never worn it in my life! But some girls are vulnerable to this coercion, and develop very harmful habits - just look at some of the women on TV! so many women feel they have to smear muck all over their faces to be acceptable - I think it is really important that schools do what they can to hold this obsessive behaviour at bay for as long as possible, and hopefully fewer girls will grow up with this disability. The only way for that is an outright ban on make up

The uniform issues are only the tip of the iceberg with the problems at this school. In the past few months the teachers have been on strike as they didn't feel safe in the school and unsupported by the management, hence a new head being brought in to try to improve things. Within the past couple of years a child also attempted suicide in the school by jumping off a balcony within the main building. Personally I don't think elaborate uniforms and rules surrounding them are necessary for good learning. I'd rather see schools go back to polo shirt, trousers/skirt type clothing.

I think it’s like: aim for the stars, get to the top of the tree. Aim for the top of the tree and you won’t even get off the ground.

policy at my school is knee length. And I’ve still had a student sit opposite me and I’ve been flashed, and walked behind students going up stairs and seen too much. So, I think we all expect that students will roll their skirts up to mid thigh, and we’ll always say in passing - please adjust your skirt. But if mid thigh was the rule, we’d have more instances of unintentional flashing.

A local secondary allows black jeans. Most students including girls seem to wear them. Also allow trousers, skirts or shorts in summer.

I dont think one suicide attempt a couple of years ago indicates an issue with the school, I think this sort of behaviour is quite common in schools