Girls' skirts policed.

[ArabellaScott]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-64743377

'Girls have been made to enter Rainford High School in St Helens separately to boys and have had their skirt length inspected by male teachers, they claim.

Hundreds of pupils staged a protest against how rules, which have left some pupils in tears, have been imposed.'

I always had a problem at school with the trousers we were made to wear. I'm just about above average height now but I was always tall for my age as a kid. The trousers we were made to wear were farrrrr too short for me and I'd get picked on for having "ankle swingers", a big social no-no at the time. I'd go to m and s with my mum and buy "long" trousers, which didn't show nearly an inch of my ankle and I'd get punished at school. My mum supported me but I always had the choose of either get picked on by students or picked on by staff.

Like with the skirts issue, the boys could wear whatever trousers they wanted... somehow it wasn't a problem for them... which does make it feel creepy and sexist.

I agree with most of what you said Mafelicent but we also have to recognise that teenagers will want to be sexually attractive - that's just nature.

As teachers, we need to hold the line on what is appropriate dress for the circumstances.

I always have very mixed feelings about this stuff.

On the one hand uniforms aren't always well chosen, especially if they cheap out. Although expensive is also not good so there is a conflict there.

And I wish they wouldn't present it as being a distraction for the boys.

But in a way that is actually the issue - women and girls clothing is sexualized, to the point where many girls and young women don't see it and and just think of it as "fashion". And that's not appropriate really, for them to have that unconciously thrust upon them, but it's also not great for the boys to receive the lesson that it's natural for girls to be sexualized in that way. And it's not just about them controlling their thoughts, the whole culture does it and they aren't incorrect to notice it.

As far as policing dress codes, it's fraught, and they are always going to have to generalize. I don't know about this element of separating them from boys in this case, I think some might feel it's better and more private, thought I'd want to have female teachers involved. The idea that being separated from the boys is traumatizing seems rather over the top to me.

Absolutely agree. I tend to get them to agree that fully naked is not socially acceptable, then they have to accept that there does exist a line between acceptable and unacceptable. Then I say that when they're on my watch, it's up to me to draw that line in the sand (same as with hairstyles, jewellery, phone usage, language etc etc)

And/or I ask how they'd feel if I turned up to teach wearing their exact outfit, and their shudder of horror/disgust pretty much makes my point for me....

Yes, exactly. Just have a couple of choices. Our school, which I thought was strict, seems relaxed compared to these rules! So long as it's black or grey, with a white shirt, it seems to be acceptable. Trousers/leggings/skirts. Which seems reasonable, although I think they look like little undertakers.

although I think they look like little undertakers.

🤣

yes, I’ve never understood why my lively and boisterous 8 year old has to go to school dressed as someone going to an office

he basically lives his whole life as if it were a PE lesson. He should be in joggers the entire time he’s awake, not stupid, uncomfortable, easily ripped pretendy office trousers

rant over

While I am not a fan of giving girls red cards if they have their period, I notice that the article (and parents) seem to think a school's main job is 'care and nurturing' but their job is to educate their students. Having several students leave a lesson to go to the lavatory is disruptive, especially to explicit teaching i.e. the teacher is explaining what is being taught, going through examples and then getting the students to engage with this, work through examples or do the relevant tasks themselves etc. Breaks are for going to the toilet. What will these young people do when they have a job (like their women teachers!) where they cannot take a toilet break at will? ( NB A woman teaching in a class cannot usually pop out to change a tampon unless there is another teacher in the room.)

I’m confused. I’ve been on their website and there is nothing about girls not being able to wear trousers. Additionally there are 3 stockists of the uniform.

When I looked at the uniform policy it seemed that only ks4 girls can wear trousers.

rainford.org.uk/parents/uniform/

The Uniform List on that page was what I was looking at:

rainford.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Uniform-List-1.pdf

Maybe that's not the right website/page?

From what I've read the school handling of it is awful and more same shit different day.

On the subject of the uniform itself, the students need to get on with life and wear the uniform.

he basically lives his whole life as if it were a PE lesson. He should be in joggers the entire time he’s awake, not stupid, uncomfortable, easily ripped pretendy office trousers
I agree with this and would happily see a school uniform that's more like a PE uniform, or something very simple, or get rid of it in favour of a dress code.
Sadly my concern is that even a dress code would prove problematic for the parents/students who think the expectations don't apply to them

This is what the school deem an inappropriate skirt

They are having a laugh. There is nothing wrong with that. Even from that angle you can tell its not too short.

It's not even, anymore, though! The kids are walking about in blazers, shirt and ties, and all the office workers are dressed down. How many people still wear ties to work?

They may as well have the kids in plus fours and tweed caps.

If parents don't like the rules, find a different school. The comments about this being because male teachers can't control themselves in ridiculous, it's because no-one wants to see anyone else's underwear. At the school I teach at, we have a major issue with boys letting their trousers sag down so you can see the top of their underwear - when I tell them to pull their trousers up it's certainly not because I can't control myself looking at it.

I don't think it's unreasonable to have a rule around length of skirts. What is unreasonable is enforcing it by saying it distracts the boys or the male teachers. I don't know if that is the case here.

I hear you.

Did you read OPs posts tho. This isn't short skirts. And other schools aren't always an option

Not sure what's going on here, but it seems to be a TikTok-inspired thing. DD (14) said that girls were protesting at school yesterday and chanting about shorter skirts, but without anything having happened to provoke them. (The boys then started their own protest demanding "We want edible food", but that's a specific issue about the catering provider, which has been criticised in the local news. Loads of kids were spectacularly sick after the "special" Christmas lunch!)

DD goes to the same girls'school that I went to. When I told her that her skirt was too short at the beginning of year 8, she kindly showed me a photo of me at the same age with a skirt even shorter than her's. Ouch!

This has happened at my kids' school too. Memorably, girls were told that they needed to address their skirt length "so as not to be a distraction to male students and staff". Because it's of course the fault of the females that the males can't control themselves.

I find that phrase irksome for another reason. It makes the male staff out to be primitive beasts, when actually they feel just as uncomfortable as the female staff are when they can barely look at their seated class without seeing more than they bargained for.

For that matter, many of the girls look pretty uncomfortable too when travelling to school (I work on public transport), it's pretty clear that many of them are only dressing as they are out of social pressure.

I think its right to follow the school uniform dress code. But there should be no male teachers present

Yeah, I think this is something to consider.

Sometimes the catalyst isn't really the situation in the school, it's because the students have a bee in their bonnet. I remember kids doing this even when I was a student, because they'd been reading something and wanted to "take action." No they can be very influenced by social media to protest things that doesn't even have any real relation to their school. Students at my kids school had a protest about anti-Asian violence, after the incident in the US last year (two years ago?) In another country and at that point I think it had been determined it wasn't really even about ethnicity.

I'd love a school policy that said any jeans & a school sweatshirt ..

I have to agree. I'm struggling to see what the problem is. Of course, girls should be allowed to wear trousers, if they wear a skirt they should not roll it up so far that you can see the gusset of their undetwrar / tights ( which is commonplace in the schools here in the south east, at least. If boys wear their trousers hanging down, showing their pants then they should be taken aside en masse and told to behave too. What is the problem?