Strict uniform policy-skirts but no shorts

[Sleepdeprived42long]

DS moving up to high school next year. Received details of the school’s uniform policy and word from parents with older kids is that it is strictly enforced.

Uniform is trousers or skirts, shirt with collar buttoned to top and tie visible at all times, blazer worn at all times outside class.

My DS lives in shorts to school. He hates wearing trousers-finds them too hot all year round!

AIBU to think that it seems unfair that girls can wear skirts and trousers but realistically most boys will be restricted to trousers? Or am I missing an obvious reason why skirts are acceptable and shorts aren’t?

My DS has sensory issues with clothing and noises (but no ASD diagnosis as no other symptoms) and is already hating the no shorts, the button to neck requirement of the shirt and the tie!

School say this is policy and children not in uniform will be sent home to change or given change from clothes school have as spare.

To be clear-this is a state school.

I’m in Scotland, live along the road from a high school, and the vast majority of the boys wear shorts from S1-S6….Ive seen uniform rules locally relax massively post-covid….its almost as if they want to spend their time teaching rather than enforcing uniform rules!

No shorts here (north Surrey) in any of the state schools and most have to keep the blazer on all the time too. My children's school have in the past sent out emails prior to really hot days (I think above 26°C) that the children can leave blazers at home and ties too when we had that 38°C heatwave!

For the most part, schools are a lot more formal than most workplaces these days.

I don't even wear shoes most of the day, and I've had interviews at coffee shops in jeans before.

I think school rules about specific types of shoes and hair styles and such are all a bit ridiculous. Unless your kid has a mohawk and the kid behind them can't see in class, what's really the problem.

But traditionally shorts are informal/young, and to be honest even if shorts were allowed he'd be the only one and likely bullied because of it.

As a primary teacher I do find secondary uniforms mad. Wouldn’t it be easier to just have a branded polo/jumper and plain grey/black lower half uniform and save your battles for other issues? Or does a relaxed uniform have such a massive impact on behaviour and learning that strict formality is essential?

There aren’t many workplaces that enforce a short/tie/no removal of blazer in 25C heat rule nowadays.

Just to repeat: in Scottish state schools, they can't force pupils to wear uniform.

The school can however make things very awkward!

My current state secondary school allows shorts, and even some male members of staff wear them. I think as the weather gets hotter, expecting kids to wear trousers and ties during hot weather is unrealistic.

I've never seen a uniform with shorts TBH. Mind you, my eldest's school, if you wear a skirt, tights are compulsory, so the girls don't get off any better than the boys.

I understand uniform (although I practically prefer non-uniform, they do look so smart in uniform), but I think that schools need to be sensible - eg. my son's allows the kids to arrive in an appropriately coloured hoodie/jacket and change into their blazer once in school, and when the weather gets hot (rarely), then they'll issue a shirtsleeves edict and no-one has to wear the blazer at all.

Plus my DS has dyspraxia, so they've worked with us on the tie/shirt and he doesn't do up his top button, just pulls the tie (pre-tied) up over it so he doesn't feel constricted/isn't literally trapped and unable to undo it to change for PE

That's a sensible school - having the confidence to set the uniform, but know when to vary. I think the schools that can't be reasonable are trying to prove something (not sure what)

@Timeturnerplease thats what seems to have happened with the school I mentioned..in fact the school introduced hoodies rather than jumpers, and every pupil I’ve seen wears it! Although it’s very casual, the kids look good because they all wear it!

DS’s school allows shorts in summer term (goes up to Year 8 so two “secondary years”). Literally no one wears them past year 5 or 6. It just seems to become a rite of passage to switch to long trousers year round.

His new school has a skirt uniform and a trouser uniform and anyone can wear either. Never seen a boy in a skirt but it’s an option so I guess they can’t be accused of sexism.

@Sleepdeprived42long there is a school in our area that allows shorts but none of the boys wear them - probably because they don't want to look like they're at primary school. Being in short trousers has traditionally been a primary school thing in the UK. When parents complain about long trousers at secondary school I notice they often seem to be from hotter countries like Australia or South Africa where its more common to wear shorts at secondary school.

Check your uniform policy - it may be gender neutral like ours - in which case boys can legitimately wear skirts if they really want to.

Many schools allow students to wear PE kit when the weather gets very hot.

As your in Scotland, couldn't he wear a kilt?

Agreed. At my all boys school, none of us would have been seen dead in shorts.

Today I saw shorts worn by the till server in a Shoe Zone shop who was an older man, and yesterday I saw in a youtube video a train conductor wearing them. Both in Scotland.

The video, posted 2 days ago, was on the well known rail enthusiast Geoff Marshall's channel: "Does anyone use Barry Links station ?" As I posted there, he joins Stagecoach bus drivers, who have been waiting them for a couple of years including a couple of sightings in cooler seasons.

I'm disgusted that after all the impact of the annual boy skirt protesters ever since 2011, and the major culture shift that their willingness to say they want shorts represents, that anyone still refers to teasing as a wall-like fact of life to advise or assume bowing to. There was an inspiring post on here only 3 months ago about a boy who chose to always stay in shorts year round in a big comprehensive, no mention in that post of getting stopped by bad social reactions.

No amount of boys who would not be seen dead in shorts ever speak for all boys, or evidence anything about any one boy who has not declared for that attitude. Conformism never speaks for everyone, and always believes it does. Autism often makes you less conformist too.

Folks without sensory issues may not grasp how physically intense they are. Hence that they can easily mean more to you than social belonging or conformism. Autism researcher Luke Beardon met a guy with a strong sensitivity to trousers whose whole school outcome was ruined because he could not do exams because "try concentrating when your knees are on fire."

I have the autistic sensory issue for shorts, and it recognised as a need at work (gardener) ever since 2009 starting in the employment support system as it was then. Got it announced in an autism book edited by Luke 2017 along with my view that it's a medical needs precedent against school uniforms.

Posted this week in Quora, under question " How strictly were school uniform rules enforced during your time in school? ":

" I have noticed that within the last couple of years many high school boys have started wearing shorts for school during the summer. I am not sure if this is just a local thing or if it is fairly widespread "

My ds also wore shorts all through primary school (also in Scotland) and found it a bit of an adjustment to switch to trousers once he went to secondary school. He wore shorts and tshirt on any dress down days they had though and wears shorts when he is at home.

My dd wore a skater skirt and long socks all through secondary school and tbh still does at nearly age 21.

They have their restrictive uniforms at school and then if they go to college/uni can go back to wearing what they want for comfort so it all seems a bit pointless.

Shorts would be a very smart addition to secondary uniforms.

There's nothing smart about having to buy trousers for length then yoink the elastic in 8 inches (on a supposed "slim fit") so that the rear end is just ripples of bunched up fabric.

Shorts, you can buy for the waist and the job's a good 'un.

Poor DS has to endure hot, itchy legs (autistic, sensory processing disorder) and bulky tabs of elastic digging in at his waist. This consumes a fair percentage of his emotional capacity to get through the day in a hyper-stimulating social environment.

He shuts down for two hours after school each day before he's fit for anything else. That pushes everything else in life later including things like homework.

Hi my child is also moving up to high school next year and he wears shorts every single day he hates king pants. High school is very strict when it comes to uniform and no shorts are aloud. Tried to tell him it is only 3 days per week and the rest will be shorts for Pe kit. He then responded with a suggestion that he goes sick for three days when it’s full uniform time and why does he have to go to high school 😭 He has selective mutism so already struggled anxiety wise so it’s such a worry. I already have his eldest brother in high school but he’s so laid back he’s almost horizontal it’s so hard.

School uniforms are getting stricter at the same time as work wear is getting more casual. It’s crazy.

My secondary school in Melbourne had shorts as an option all year round and for both girls and boys. And yes, it gets cold in Melbourne.

What utter tosh about preparing them for the shorts-less world of work.
If the Aussies can manage it, I’m sure it’s not beyond those in the UK.

In the shorts-less world of work in the UK, I have the needed precedent of minority needs, existing ever since 2009 in the employment support system as it was then and 2010 actual employment, shorts recognised as being my need from a "sensory issue" as part of being autistic.
This written up in Bittersweet on the Autism Spectrum, 2017, a compilation whose editor Luke Beardon is an autism researcher who met a guy with a strong sensory sensitivity to trousers whose whole school outcome was ruined by it, because he could not do exams because "try concentrating when your knees are on fire".
Neither of which sources has been picked up to be known enough to make a wide impact on other lives.
This good work outcome for me also after a particularly unlucky, identity oppressing, school experience with this, where in a childhood before the web, in South Wales's catarrhal climate from damp air that causes symptoms of a persistent cold, year round shorts were neither knowable to be a safe personal choice, nor a school thing, and I actually went my whole schooldays without knowing that primary schools requiring them existed in much of the rest of Britain. That is like growing up in a matrix of false reality. Though I was a scholarship boy in a backward counterproductively severe rulebound downmarket private school, (whose failure on me I'm delighted was key in causing it's decline to closure) it required always longs from as early as the age 8 primary year onwards. Very miserably overdoing of this world of work thing that my working life turned out to avoid and to score a precedent against.
East-central Scotland where I am now (and is my background), I'm now seeing on the bus a brand new increase in older shorts to state school, since this recent new increase in allowing of it. The wearers are a minority but not solitary. Everyone left out of the new allowing is abused, sensorily

Our school uniform policy has a line about special requirements, which can be discussed with member of the senior leadership team.

Just because one child needs to wear shorts doesn't mean the whole policy has to change.

There are so many boys like this, I don't understand why high schools don't allow them!

Lots of office jobs are no shorts. Everyone gets excited in the summer when they issue the "ok you can wear shorts in the heat wave but keep them smart" email

The boys at our school challenged the uniform code for all the reasons you have outlined and shirts are now part of uniform. Several kids wear them - boys and the occasional girl (state secondary) with no issues and no bullying for wearing them. So far only KS3 children have chosen this option but we will see as they get older.

My office is also no shorts, except on Friday as we do casual clothes on Fridays.