To wonder how a school can allow their girls to dress like this?

[Piggyleroux]

I only have 1 ds of 18 mo so am probably very out of touch but here goes.

I picked up dh from his weekend on call at queens hospital in Romford. On the way I was stuck in traffic outside a school and was frankly shocked by how short the girls skirts were. They were actually bum skimming. They also were all wearing over the knee black socks so a vast quantity of thigh was on show.

Am I just an old prude? I felt sad tbh that they felt they had to dress like this probably to fit in. Why doesn't the school impose a below the knee rule?

Why Elaine - if they are distracting another pupil? However they are distracting, be it chattering, texting or by displaying their attributes, be it male or female displaying what they have, they are stopping someone else learning.

I also used to tell the boys to stick their arses back into their trousers, pull their trousers up and stop showing me their underwear and tuck their shirts in or I would staple their shirts to their trousers. They soon learned.

Whilst in theory and utopia, girls should be able to wear what they want, when they want, most of us live in reality and there are risks that the girls run by wearing over sexualised clothing. I live in a country (a European one) which seems to have more than it's fair share of those who prey on kids. I know that there was an abduction attempt on a sixth former; we had to warn both girls and boys about walking home from school through the park alone as it wasn't safe for a while.

It's also a slippery slope from describing girls in short skirts as "slappers" to saying that a woman asked to be raped for wearing a short skirt / low cut top, of course.

Hunty i would be more upset that my child looked down on 90% of her school and judged them slappers for what they choose to wear.

Short skirt does not equal loose morals

I absolutely agree that girls shouldn't go to school dressed like that - I think it shows a lack of respect for themselves and for the school to dress in what I guess I would categorise as an unprofessional way.

I think it's inevitable that girls will always roll up their skirts between leaving the house and arriving at school, but I don't think it's ok or that school shouldn't challenge it.

That said, there are a lot of boys with low-slung trousers and their boxers hanging out, too! .

Lots of cross-posting, sorry, I was replying to Camper

Scary, chatting near or stealing the ruler of or kicking under the table are volitional distracting behaviours which should be categorised as such and dealt with as such.

Wearing a short skirt, whilst quite possibly reprehensible for many reasons, is not proactively distracting, and shouldn't be reprimanded as such. You do NOT 'stop someone else from learning' by wearing a short skirt.

*Hunty i would be more upset that my child looked down on 90% of her school and judged them slappers for what they choose to wear.

Short skirt does not equal loose morals*

I got mocked to buggery on here recently for using the phrase "loose morals".

Although, I think the daughter is well placed to judged whether her peers are being slappers or not, more so than we are. She'll know more about them.

I do see where you are coming from with your comment though and it's a valid point - a short skirt doesn't necessarily mean you are a ho.

'My DS's will be expected to concentrate on their work even if the teacher is pole dancing in her underwear!' I think you'd find that hard to enforce though.

I think I addressed the boys with low slung trouser bit Elaine - I used to stand outside my classroom and click my staple gun and they all used to walk along furtively pulling up their trousers!

What worries me about the whole 'Britney' look is that the girls don't value themselves for their intelligence, but for how they look. It also worries me that they are sending out messages that some boys will not interpret correctly, because from about 13 onwards some part of the teenage boy brain seems to migrate southwards. Yes, you can bring up your own boys to behave respectfully and appropriately, but not all boys will behave like that, and therein lies the danger.

I completely agree with your point about valuing themselves for their intelligence, scary - but I would not take it that step further with the points about 'sending out messages' and boys' brains. Whether or not all boys from 13 are totally penis-centric (and I'm not disputing that!), it's still not the girls' job to pander to that, and the reasons given to them for dressing appropriately should not be that if they don't then they are causing 'danger' by tempting these penissy boys to be disrespectful and inappropriate.

'You do NOT 'stop someone else from learning' by wearing a short skirt.' Yes, you DO stop learning, and sometimes you stop the whole class learning if you are having to delay the start of a class because someone is not adhering to uniform policy and you have to get senior management out to deal with it. It's all very well to talk about the 'rights' of these girls to wear what they want, but what about the responsibilities that go with those rights?

90% of the girls and boys would rather be in jeans and a hoodie. As long as schools insist on ridiculous old fashioned uniforms the children will rebel.
Given how stupidly hard teenagers now have to work to get decent grades. Parents and teachers are only going to fight the uniform battle so far, in the end it isn't important!

Out of curiosity what would the repurcussions be if say a 12 yo boy told a girl he could see her knickers and she told a teacher that she felt she was being sexually harassed? I don't mean him saying it in a rude way, just an observation.

Do people have a right to dress how they wish (uniform rules aside) and then have the right to feel harassed that people observe them showing their knickers. Is this what the slut walks are all about?

The uniform rules are there for reasons of modesty (among others), which implies that the rule makers are aware that being immodest is innaproppriate.

Zukie - apologies - I shouldn't have phrased it that way as it did sound as though I was having a go. I do believe that your DDs never broke rules - what I was trying to say is that my DS is the same way inclined and I worry about him as a result. There is a very fine line, but I would like him to be a little more rebellious on occasion as I think it would better equip him for "real life" and also make it easier for him to bond with his peers.

If such a rebellion took the form of looking a mess until told by a member of staff to do something about it, I would regard that as fairly healthy and harmless.

I will may change my tune as DD gets older, as she has no such inhibitions - rules are for other people as far as she is concerned (I jest - sort of - she is apparently well-behaved at school - but she is only in YR)

I haven't said anything about their rights to wear short skirts - if it's not uniform policy, then they don't have any! Not sure about your responsiblities point - do you mean there are responsibilities which come with wearing a short skirt?

If we're talking about the distraction caused by constantly stopping a lesson to deal with uniform infractions, then ok, your point about distraction stands.

But you've changed your point there a bit, I think? Do you mean the mental distraction of seeing legs, or the distraction caused by a teacher saying 'Chloe, your skirt is too short, please wear an appropriate one tomorrow'?

And surely you wouldn't have to keep saying that every two minutes, unless they are rolling up their skirts more and more throughout the lesson? Once it's said, it's said - why would you have to get SM out?

I agree, some of the girls go too far. But surely some of the responsibility lies with the parents to back up the school rules.

So where does that leave the boys Elaine? The girls need to realise that what they wear may have consequences. I dress appropriately according to the social situation /work situation I will be in. I have a very good idea of what will or won't pass muster or cause offence and try to adhere to that. I don't see the problem in being smart and business like for school; it should be part of the school ethos after all.

The bit about messages comes from when I used to be involved in youth work and some young teenage girls were dressing like Britney and giving the young teenage males the 'aren't I sexy' treatment. At 13 some of the boys like mine would run a mile; others would blush and fart; but some would (and did) misinterpret what was mild flirting on the part of the girls the wrong way and you end up trying to diffuse and resolve what has the potential to be a very unpleasant situation indeed. It's not about girls pandering to boys, it's about realising that each of the sexes mature at different rates and that girls and boys communicate in different ways, and that this can cause problems in this area.

vine I believe most of the girls roll their skirts up after they've left the house. What can the parents do? They get to an age where they want to rebel.

My DD1 5'11" used to get very cross at school insisting that skirts (this was for 6th form) had to be no more than 10cm above the knee. Her attitude was if the school could find her a skirt like that (and NOT a mature woman's working uniform) then she would wear it but otherwise she was stuck with what was in the shops and as a tall, slim girl the skirts available to her were always going to be shorter on her than on her friends.

DD2, 5'7" is now in 6th form and wears short skirts too. But both girls looked entirely appropriate to me. Smart, age appropriate, pretty.

Now in the 1970s we had to kneel down and if the length of your skirt went on to the floor you were threatened with having it cut off - the fashion then was for long skirts. As I inherited my school skirts from a much shorter sister, I never fell foul of that particular rule.

I like over the knee socks. Before they came back into fashion, people were on these school uniform threads complaining about girls in thin tights, girls in leggings, and girls in bootcut trousers.

It leaves the boys exactly where they were, I should have thought!

To re-iterate: I do not think girls should be wearing very short skirts to school. I think it is inappropriate, unprofessional, and perhaps most importantly in most cases, quite simply against the rules.

If you are telling girls to wear sensible skirts based on all of that, the way in which boys may or may not react is of no consequence. If, however, one was telling girls not to wear short skirts on the basis that their less mature, more genitally-motivated male classmates will get the wrong idea and start thinking that means the girls all want to have sex with them, then that is wrong.

Startail - the issue with girl's clothing is as prevalent at ds's non uniform school as at uniform wearing ones.

Bonkers - that is the problem; why should he get told off for what is a factual observation?

Elaine - the whole thread seems to be veering towards it's the right of the girls to wear what they want. I disagree.

There are two points with stopping learning; the point that uniform policy is infringed, and if someone won't roll their skirt down, or refuses to go to the office to put on appropriate clothing (and many do) then SMT has to be called.

The other point is that short skirts/cleavages are a distraction for other students and staff alike. I know that some of the younger male staff have not known where to look at times, and older female staff have had to deal with the problem.

Also you are now talking more about behaviour than about skirts, it seems. If a girl is being flirty and annoying, that's a separate issue, and that is distraction, as opposed to uniform infraction.

If my daughter ever came home and said that a teacher had said she must wear a longer skirt or the boys would get confused though, I would be doing a proper steam-coming-out-of-ears email though! And I am not by nature a complainer to school at all!

I've never said it's the right of girls to wear what they want. Not in a school uniform situation, for sure.

'If, however, one was telling girls not to wear short skirts on the basis that their less mature, more genitally-motivated male classmates will get the wrong idea and start thinking that means the girls all want to have sex with them, then that is wrong.' Why? That is exactly what some of the boys will think. Teenagers are egocentric and don't always consider the effects their dress/speech/behaviour may have on others. It should not be the sole basis for not wearing a short skirt to school, but it should be one of the reasons given.

Sexual bullying happens at schools, and both the girls and the boys need protecting from it, and in some cases each other.