Constant detentions for skirt length

[Falcon1]

My DD is 13. Since starting year 8 she’s had weekly detentions for rolling up her skirt and has been on report. She was also on report twice last year for the same thing. I keep getting emails from the school about it, but really - what can I do? This last detention we’ve said enough is enough and have grounded her but she is entirely unbothered. Her take is that she wants to wear her skirt the way she likes it and will keep doing so, and that the teachers should stop being so obsessed with her legs being on display. I kind of agree to be honest, particularly as she is doing fine academically. But I worry she’s going to be in detention her whole school career and it’s making her hate the school.

any advice most gratefully received!

It's interesting that you think female fashion isn't sexualised, even more so nowadays.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

Yeah, a PP said to just let her sit as many detentions as she wants, but the school is going to get tired of that. What a waste of a teacher's time. She sounds as if she might be on the road to a suspension.

Why can't she just obey the rules? She can always wear short skirts in her own time.

That’s not correct as schools which have strict uniform rules have much better behaviour overall.

The problem with parents not enforcing low level rule breaking is why so many school have (quietly) changed policies so if there’s enough low level rule violations, they can firstly temporarily exclude then move on to permanently exclude.

The OP (and any other parent ignoring repeated detentions /negative behaviour marks) should check carefully the school’s policy.

This is gross. Enjoying the attention? 'fully aware of the implications '?

12 yr old girls are getting used to their bodies no longer belonging to themselves, fuelled by this sort of frankly disgusting discourse. They are just existing. Wearing clothes and having legs.

The solution should be a comfortable PE type uniform that is gender neutral, and much cheaper. Nice logo polo shirt, logo hoodie and then plain joggers (blue/black/grey)

summer gets tricker I can see with heat but a sensible length skirt with built in shorts underneath that can’t be rolled up

why do we insist on such a strict uniform

My daughter got suspended over it - hers is linked ND and self esteem though. On one hand the school told me that she would roll it up again in the corridor after they had spoken to her but at the same time expected me to send her in with it longer when she had 45 minutes journey to school by walking / bus. If they cannot keep it rolled down when she’s in school I don’t know how I do it when I’m not with her

Her humiliation of being forced to wear trousers (which literally no one wears)...

This is the heart of it. Breaking the school rules is much, much easier than breaking the social conformity rules. And currently these reflect the disrespect boys have for girls (NABALT etc etc).

@CrystalShoe
" Thirdly, repeated detentions will leave a black mark on her record even if she does well in exams. Remember this: The school will give references to universities. Her making such a big issue of disobeying school rules makes her look extremely bad. Tell her that it makes her look as if she thinks she's too special to obey the rules that everyone else does, even if she doesn't think that at all"

Exactly this. Her school record will last much longer than Year 8. If she's so bright then you can explain the consequences of this. Then let her choose. The skirt is a sideshow really.

That's a different conversation! But I was speaking about the intent of the kids at my DDs all girls school. They're not choosing to sexualise themselves by rolling their skirts up. They're following fashion as teenage girls do (and rebelling too) This links up neatly with my disgust over the wafts of victim blaming.

Just let her get on with it.

it’s really not that deep and to be honest I find the constant policing of what children wear to be so strange. It’s time to do away with a uniform in general I think.

there’s some strange deep rooted ideas that you must be dressed up to do a good job. I’ve recently started a new job and it’s a really casual office, and my mum actually said she thinks it’s wrong because people do a better job in a dress/shirt and tie!!

I get that you think this is a GOTCHA……in the 90s I attended a very large all-girls school where the school rule was that skirts had to be below the knee. This was the subject of routine inspections.

We all rolled our skirts.

Sometimes young women do things even without a male audience.

I can’t even begin to engage with the misogynist who thinks this girl is ‘creating’ a
situation in which disgusting perverts will sexualise a child……….pretty sure she hasn’t created either the patriarchy or revolting men criminally attracted to children.

It is a different conversation. True.
My DD is now an adult, she has always been very confident. She wore shorts to primary school and trousers to secondary school. At secondary school she was on the School Council, and has always been engaged in campaigning. She was always very voluble about school rules, which we often discussed, but we were pleased that she was confident enough not to blindly follow fashion.

You might be perfectly happy for your daughter to sit in repeated detentions, but what about the teacher's time? What about your daughter's school record and potential references?

I don't think moralising about the clothing is disgusting. The fact is, in our society, people wearing revealing clothing are not respected as much as people who aren't, a big part of the reason being that people don't want to see others' bits. It happens to men, too. Last summer people complained about men wearing budgie-smuggler swimming trunks at the local outdoor pool. And I'm quite sure that our office would have things to say if the men turned up wearing tight cycling shorts that outlined everything they've got. And that's before we get to the issue of girls attracting the wrong sort of attention. Yes, it's maddening, yes, we should be able to wear what we want without being judged or experiencing negative consequences, but that is NOT reality.

Unless the school goes up to 18, I don't think they will be giving any kind of reference for university. Secondly, what kind of absolutely shitty educational establishment would you have to be to write a reference for a young person so badly they wouldn't get into university because they rolled their skirt up in year 8. Universities don't care or check skirt length. Education is about lifting up children and opening up their options!

@Falcon1

She generally she responds much better with rationale for why she should do something rather than punishment.

And here is the problem. This is an extremely tedious attitude. Sometimes people just need to follow the fucking rules, whether they agree with them or not. Try and sort out this underlying attitude before it gets her into more serious trouble in the future. But I suspect you won’t, because it seems like you’re enabling it because it’s easier parenting.

In more than 30 years of writing them, I've never written a negative UCAS reference!
That's really not what we do.

This was in Brazil. Not relevant to the UK.

So are you saying that this girl is simultaneously completely unaware of what the implications of pulling her skirt up are but able to label her teachers 'obsessed with her legs' and subtly suggest that her teachers are being inappropriate to even make it an issue? It's a uniform. It isn't up for debate. She has the option to wear the skirt at the designated length or wear trousers. She has the evenings and weekends to express herself however she wishes.

PS by enjoying the attention I don't just mean inappropriate attention I mean any attention. This might well largely be the attention from violating a school rule and looking that little bit cooler than her peers. It's you who jumped to inappropriate conclusions...

I'm quite pleased to see the balance tipping on this thread. Usually MN uniform threads are all don't police girls bodies. I regularly see totally inappropriate skirts on girls walking home, showing underwear sort of length, I don't want to see it and I think they've had a number done on them by the patriarchy that makes them compete to give pervy men and boys the best view.

There's a uniform, wear the uniform, concentrate on learning. She thinks she's being all individual but she's just doing exactly what everyone else is doing, it's boring and looks crap. Trying to make school uniform look like a fashion parade is a mission doomed to failure, it will just look like badly fitting school uniform.

I was sitting outside the school waiting to pick my son up, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw quite a few of the girls coming out their skirts was that short you could actually see the lower part of their arse cheeks. I completely agree with other posters in saying make her wear trousers.

Oh yes i have parented such teens, 6 of them to be exact.

I like the sound of your DD! But seriously, her life is going to be hard. The world doesn't like smart, confident, independent women, and we're taught that from school onwards. So she either conforms when it meets her needs (she needs to get an education, in this instance) or grows a thicker skin, sucks up the detentions with good grace and doesn't let it bother her. But both of you need to understand what the eventual outcome of continued defiance will be. If she keeps getting detentions for breaking the same rule over and over again, will the school eventually suspend her? Or 'encourage' her to leave? If so, what will you both do then?

Your daughter isn’t necessarily wrong in what she’s saying. But the piece she needs to understand is when you are at school, there are rules. Some of which are really sensible, fair, and make a lot of sense. (For example when the fire alarm sounds, you must calmly and immediately leave the building and head to the designated area).

Others, the logic and rationale is less obvious - such as some of the onerous uniform policies schools have in place. That said, the price to pay for her free education is obedience to the rules. If she doesn’t agree with the dress code, she could start a student petition, and take her case directly to the head teacher & governors for review. This has a real chance of bringing about change, and demonstrates to the teachers that she is serious. Simply repeatedly breaking the school rules because she doesn’t agree with them will merely make her time at school less pleasant.
It’s really a metaphors for life. You can’t just break laws because you think they’re silly or unnecessary. You’d have to campaign to have them changed, and it takes time.

It happened to a couple of kids that I know of when I was going through the system many years ago. One girl was called "a depressing person"!!! Just because you don't write negative references, doesn't mean others refrain. The point is that OP's daughter is causing disruption within her institution for no reason, and has multiple detentions, and that's not a great thing to have on her record.

She is risking the school getting thoroughly fed up with her wasting the teacher's time and just suspending her. Which would be a terrible black mark.