Should skirt length matter in secondary schools?

[Holdonforsummer]

My daughter is 15 and in Year 10, she attends an all-girls comprehensive secondary school and they are obsessed with the girls’ skirt length. The skirt is like a tartan kilt and is supposed to be ‘on the knee’ but most of the girls roll their skirts to make them a bit shorter (think mid-thigh). I’m a bit on the fence about this but her school go on and on and on about it. They stop girls all the time, give detentions for short skirts, have assemblies about it, and have even been known to measure skirts and give girls long ones from the list property cupboard to wear instead. Yesterday, my daughter had just finished 5 hours of mock exams in 28 degrees and was walking home - outside school property - and was stopped by a teacher threatening detention even though she had left school. She came home furious and fed up of the whole thing. I can’t decide whether the girls just need to toe the line or whether behaviour from the school is bordering on a sexist, misogynistic obsession. YABU: the pupils need to obey the skirt rules, YANBU: The school should calm down and stop obsessing about skirt length.

I was throwing that to the cool parents upthread that think the girls are absolutely entitled to roll cause they’re wearing NP’s.

I work in an SS and know for a fact they’re not wearing NP’s, because I get arse cheeks flashed in my face on every staircase. I do not enjoy it.

Given how outraged and indignant they get when told to unroll they don’t seem to have twigged they’ve all been sitting in each others arse and thigh sweat all week.

It's a bit like school dinners. Primary school teachers police lunch boxes obsessively, secondary school teachers have no involvement with what students eat and of course would be laughed out of the cafeteria if they tried to confiscate The Wrong Food They should channel this ethos into uniform micromanaging.

Teachers are also concerned about your child’s well-being. Which I think you’d agree is important. Think about how many sweaty arses have sat in the same plastic chair as your DD this week. Six lessons a day x 5.

Yummy!

'Given how outraged and indignant they get when told to unroll they don’t seem to have twigged they’ve all been sitting in each others arse and thigh sweat all week.'

Honestly. Such a sneery and derogatory way to talk about schoolchildren. You work in a secondary school, are you a teacher??

God, mine left ages ago. Thankfully college and uni tutors seem to be a different breed compared to militant secondary school teachers who can tell you the length of a dcs skirt but not much else.

Again, let’s go back to well-being.

Primary school children regularly bring Nutella sandwiches because parents can’t equate the chocolate spread with nuts. This week, two siblings had a cold cheeseburger each in their box. We won’t even go to the grab bag size crisps and bottles of Oasis, because they’re endemic.

And then they wear short shorts or short gym skirts in PE as that is the uniform the school set.

Allergies and healthy eating.

So that's a concern in primary where they are very excitable about lunch boxes, but then all bets are off in secondary and dc can do as they wish regarding allergies and healthy eating? They need this same approach to fretting about skirts.

This post could have been written 45 years ago when I was at school

Teachers going on about skirt length and given detentions out, the lads got detentions for not wearing their ties correctly.
I remember rolling my skirt up as soon as I was out of sight of my house so my mum didn't see me!

At secondary you get some more level of independence but there are still rules and dress codes to follow.

Skirts should be worn approximately as should boy's trousers.

No she can't do what she wants with it, That is the reply of a teenager. Here in this country we have laws, you can't run down the street naked or lie in the road having sex because you will be arrested for public indecency.

Which is generally normal kit for sports. Arses and knickers on display are not normal attire walking down the street or in the work place/school.

I had to smile at this post.

I went to boarding school and on a morning we had to kneel on the floor, and our hems had to touch the floor, otherwise detention

ironically the same applied when maxi’s became fashionable, we were told to get our skirts shortened.

My view now, l would have a school age child in a skirt that was knee length or even trousers.

So it is fine for sports? So a thigh is a thigh when it comes to sports but it isn't when it comes to everyday wear.

I've never seen a teenagers arse or knickers but then again I don't look.

@Fetaface its been standard attire for a lot of years, for both safety and performance and the outfit varies depending on the sport and time of year. Not only are the garments different to business/school wear, but the fabric is different. In a lot of cases the rolling up of skirts is exposing more than a bit of thigh. I certainly have never gone to work exposing my knickers or wearing a pelmet, but I was never running around and stretching quickly in multiple directions at work, or sweating profusely.

When driving past hoards of teenagers coming out of school who don’t necessarily walk sensibly on the footpaths, you do tend to keep your eyes well and truly open to avoid accidents when they cycle unexpectedly into the road, or push each other into it. You obviously have never been in the situation where kids or teens randomly dash across the road in front of you when you in a queue due to traffic lights ahead, so yes, its fairly easy to notice attire out of the norm when you don’t drive with your eyes shut.

She isn't breaking the law though, or having sex or being naked. I don't understand these extreme reactions

We had to do that at my school too. It was an ordinary girls grammar school but it was rare for a day to go by when we weren’t stopped at least once and made to kneel on the floor 😆😆

She's breaking the school rules/dress code which has had to abide by as part of her being a student at that school. Hope that helps.

Oh ok. The same school rules that say she has to wear a teeny tiny skort which absolutely doesn't cover her bottom and run around public places doing cross country. So she must have her bottom out in public when running, but must not show top of legs whilst wearing tights and knickers. Yep, makes total sense, thank you.

Many sports people wear knee length cycling shorts covering the all offensive thigh. If the school is that precious over a normal limb then they should be ensuring that the children do not show skin at any time.

Rolling skirts exposes the thigh. I drive past kids daily and never once have I seen knickers or more. I have seen kids thighs but the thigh is no different to any other part of the leg. It is a leg.

All the rules are rules people need to think about how far we would have come as women, had we not challenged them sometimes. No vote, no bank account, no property, marital rape.

Amazing amount of responses! Agree about the length of sports clothes - when my daughter plays on the netball team, the school give the girls netball dresses to wear and they are insanely short. All a bit of a moot point because no matter what I say, my daughter does her thing and she’ll have to deal with the consequences the teachers hand out.

Pe clothes and work/professional clothes are different. One is for exercise and the other is for working/studying. I don't know about this specifics schools PE kids but my DDs had sensible normal PE kit.

Someone might go a school swimming lesson in a swimming costume, doesn't mean that outfit would be acceptable in a geography lesson.