Schoolgirls face ban on skirts.

[Gruach]

Personally, I appear to have lost all power of speech ...

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f08d6f1a-7ca5-11e8-8ce4-0bcac63244b2

I find the whole notion of blazers and ties really antiquated, hardly anyone wears that kind of thing to work now.

The vast majority of the 'professional' sector wears suit and tie which is pretty much the same.

I think it's a great idea.

A large part of the argument for wearing uniform is about the fact it's a great leveller and instead of pupils being defined by their own clothes, financial means, fashion sense, etc, they are all on a level playing field.

I believe that having different uniform for girls and boys sends the subconscious message that it's necessary for some reason and implies that there are fundamental differences between men and women that require them to wear different clothes. This, in turn, feeds into the notion that some academic subjects/careers are for women and others for men.

Eliminating the difference in uniforms will hopefully start to eliminate some of the institutional sexism that seeks to hold our girls back.

Who is 'slut shaming'? Schools have always decreed skirt length. There's no medical or special need for it to be shortened by the wearer, is there?

I think it's a good idea. Trousers are more practical. For most of the year, nearly every girl wears trousers anyway. The only skirt I owned was my uniform one. And school skirts have a habit of being rolled up to ridiculously short lengths.

Our local high school had introduced tailored shorts for both sexes.

You dont eliminate the difference by getting rid of the female option though. You do it by making both options available to all.

They are apparently getting rid of skirts to be more inclusive to gender non-conformity and 'transgender' students - that makes no sense. Skirts are unisex too, as it happens.

A skirt is more comfortable when girls have to deal with their periods, especially when they’ve only started and are all over the place. A pad is easier to hide under a skirt, otherwise they will be self conscious about it and worrying if it shows.
Leave skirts be.

I think that's an excellent point, LonginesPrime, anything that brings the point back to learning opportunities for everybody. That's the point of being in school.

The vast majority of the 'professional' sector wears suit and tie which is pretty much the same.

Depends. I don't see many psychotherapists in suits and ties where I go.

All the mixed comprehensives I know of have male HTs and male heavy SLTs. They decree something without empathy, then afterwards refuse to back down. (My experience anyway).

A skort would hide a pad just as well as a skirt, and girls also wouldn't have to worry about anyone seeing their underwear when they are on their period if their skirt is short. I don't know why schools don't change the skirt to a skort if a 'feminine' option is needed.

I struggled to find trousers or skirts that fit and stayed up for my very slim dd when she was young so she always wore pinafore dresses in ks1.
At my school the girls have an option of trousers or skirts but majority wear the skirt as they don't like the style of the trousers.

• The schools are actually obviously uncomfortable with males wearing skirts.

So they get to look all woke n shit, and stop it at the same time.*

I think this is a large part of it ... I'd guess some of the heads have seen that photo of a skirted teenage pupil sporting a 'semi'.

The solution is what many schools already adopt - a choice of sensible separates. Make this available to either sex. Have elements of the uniform which can be safely rebelled against (set the required skirt length a bit lower than strictly necessary, top shirt button done up...that sort of rule which is made to be broken).

Eliminating the difference in uniforms will hopefully start to eliminate some of the institutional sexism that seeks to hold our girls back.

It would be more effective to ban trousers and make the traditional female style of dress the default. Banning skirts reinforces the message that female = wrong.

Uyulala The dress code at the Bank of England when I visited a few weeks ago was smart casual rather than business suits. Obviously it depends from institution to institution, but suits shirts/ties are not as widely worn in offices as they used to be say 20 years ago.

My daughter attends one of the schools mentioned. Parents do generally think the ban is to do with girls rolling up their skirts so short you can see their arse cheeks. My daughter and her friends say you can see that some of them are wearing thongs. The school should be dealing with this minority of girls instead of making them all wear trousers.

My previous post for Ferrier

I agree with this. My son's senior school banned skirts when he was there, everyone wore trousers, shirt/blouse, blazer and clip on tie. No one had any problem with it, everyone looked neat and smart and there was little room for 'customising'uniform.
They've gone back to skirts now, a lot of the girls wear extremely short skirts and knee high socks, looking like a parody of St Trinian schoolgirls. Oddly though, this only seems to be a school fashion. Nearly everyone seems perfectly happy to wear jeans outside of school.
Just like many women have to or choose to wear trousers for work with no problem at all.
If I was designing school uniform it would be comfortable trousers, polo shirt and hoody, with longish shirts in the summer (the ones that come down to just above the knee). For everyone.

Isn't the issue that lots of girls like wearing skirts and culturally, wearing a skirt is a completely normal thing for a girl to do but all girls are being asked to change their behaviour to accommodate a tiny number of trans kids in the school. Boys are not being asked to change their behaviour. Schools could say, let's ban trousers and everyone wear skirts, but they won't. Or they could say that everyone (boys and girls) can wear skirts or trousers, which seems the most sensible and most trans inclusive option to me.

This kind of reminds me of 'well meaning' people 'banning Merry Christmas' in the workplace because it might offend other religions - even though the people in those other religions haven't asked for the word to be banned.

A skort is what, shorts with a skirty bit attached?

Why reinvent the wheel?

So if some of the problem is the girls rolling up skirts, why is this worse than it was 20 years ago? We always rolled up our skirts and then rolled them down a bit when teachers had a crackdown. Is the problem now that parents aren’t supporting the school, so that if a child constantly wears a too short skirt and is put into detention, for example, the parents are complaining and are telling the girl it is a stupid rule (and using spurious arguments to muddy the waters)?

I have been teaching for about 15 years but the last few years in a school where the uniform was calf length skirts for the girls so there was no way they could shorten them that much! So I’m interested in why the short skirt issue, which has always been one, is more problematic now.

Chardonnay I disagree about wearing pads with skirts. I always felt more secure in trousers, as long as they're not too tight.

This makes me so angry! Gender neutral should not be taking choices away from girls and women, it should be about creating more choices for everyone.

Allowing trousers AND skirts AND shorts for everyone, both male and female. That’s the real defintion of equality, not dictating what girls cannot wear.