Schools banning skirts.

Well mem, if that’s what a trans wants, welcome to the world where what women want is seen as less important than what men feel is right.
However, he’ll stand a better chance of achieving the right to wear a skirt than the females who want the right to wear skirts, because he’ll be able to claim discrimination.
I’m all in favour of choice for uniform- many schools now say the uniform is e.g. grey skirt or trousers without mentioning whether for boys or girls. The girls tend to wear shorts or trousers more than the boys choosing to wear skirts, but it’s still a choice. If it’s to stop upskirting, train the boys and punish the transgressors!

So what’s the problem? It’s a uniform

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my GDs are in Beavers and Cubs and their uniform is trousers. So what’s the difference?

I think the whole world is going mad! I know women wear trousers, I do all the time, but that doesn't make them a gender neutral garment! I understand that some schools are making the toilets gender neutral, and to say the least - that must be uncomfortable for many. Bending over backwards for these equalities is ridiculous. The different minoritities are still just that - hugely in the minority, the whole world does not need to be changed to accommodate them. When is common sense going to be used in all these matters?

I'd rather see girls in trousers than with their skirts only just concealing their knickers.

Am I the only one who can see 20-40-60 years down the line where we all wear an identical jumpsuit , men/women/children.

Choices removed ! Once that happens then other choices are removed also perhaps and we're all gender neutral, all called 'they' and so on and so on.....

"It doesn't seem that many years since DD and her friend led a campaign for girls to be allowed to wear trousers in the 6th form ..."

Banned, permitted, then obligatory. A recurring circle from conformity to individualism and back to conformity again.

I like to see girls wearing skirts. I only wear trousers on cold winter days. I love a nice skirt & I like getting air to my body. Why can't we let girls be girls. Yes I turned my horrid black skirt up to indecent lengths when I was a teenager & did the detentions for it. It's a right of passage.
Let boys be boys & girls be girls & anyone else who is not quite sure do their own thing too.

I am aware that at least one independent girls' school has moved to uniform trousers but I wouldn't be surprised if it did not catch on in high status and/or expensive schools to preserve the difference. State schools should watch this.

Sorry, in my haste I said girls banned from wearing trousers, when the proposal is to ban them from wearing skirts!

My point is that it's girls who have to conform, when they, and boys, should be allowed to wear skirts or trousers, whatever suits.

Making girls wear trousers won't make the slightest bit of difference. If they are that way out they will just opt for low riders and show off their lady parts and tramp stamps from a different angle.

Some posters seem to be missing the point - the proposal is to ban trousers for girls, to make the uniform 'gender-neutral'.

Why should girls be banned from wearing trousers at school?

Why shouldn't boys and girls be banned from wearing trousers and everyone forced to wear skirts? That would also be gender-neutral. Skirts for girls/trousers for boys is after all only a convention not an innate human need.

At my all girls school the rule was that when you knelt down your skirt hem had to touch the floor. Could this rule not be applied to anyone who wants to wear a skirt to school to avoid any revelations of underwear or opportunities for inappropriate photos? The skirt will be just on the knee - hardly that dowdy.
I am also deeply worried about the whole 'transgender' children issue. It is a natural stage of development for young people in adolescence to go through a stage of hero worship for an older person of the same sex. Are we reaching a stage where children passing through a perfectly natural phase, and possibly expressing or demonstrating such feelings, will find themselves almost encouraged to overthink their feelings and be channelled into a way of life that will cause confusion?

It doesn't seem that many years since DD and her friend led a campaign for girls to be allowed to wear trousers in the 6th form ...
How things change in a relatively short space of time.

This proposal is disgraceful and all women must stand up and shout - it is another example of unchallenged patriarchy - if all children are to 'look' the same in the interests of not offending transgender children then why is there an automatic assumption that the traditional male dress trumps the traditional female dress? We should make all children wear skirts - the argument is just as powerful. However, perhaps even more important is this desire to satisfy the wants and needs of a very tiny minority - transgender children - how come the rights of this minority are more important than the rights of the very large majority of girls? And why on earth, when a transgender child has identified with its opposite biological sex, can't it wear the clothes associated with that - honestly, I despair of the quality of headteachers' thinking these days. Every one of us here who has a grandchild in school should be lobbying the heads of those schools to be sensible and certainly to ensure that the rights of girls are not trampled on by the so-called rights of transgender children.

When I was Head of District Nursing I had to order new uniform (what a task) and we as a service decided on a choice between uniform dresses and trousers. The 'trousers only' brigade soon ordered a dress for hot weather. The following year I introduced culottes as well which were very popular.

So many things to consider with all this. I agree skirts are a problem and thus it ever was. My daughters used to turn theirs into mini skirts in the 70's. I do think we should educate boys in appropriate behaviour and girls too. As ever the minority mob has the ear of the Government.

Many years ago I wasn't allowed to wear trousers to teach because the head didn't like them. My DS once went into school in a skirt for a dare, he was swiftly told to put his trousers back on. I thought we had moved on and at least allowed some choice now. It seems not.

Lemon grove. Absolutely agree. Skirts are not practical especially for primary school children who wish to play on play frames. We have to move on a relinquish outdated norms in advancement of equality. I think most girls would want to wear trousers. I think they are more empowering for girls at school.

Many years ago when my daughter was at middle school (she is 50 now), her uniform was a skirt. During a bitterly cold winter, she asked the school if the girls could wear trousers to keep warm. This was refused so she wrote to the Equality Commision, or whatever it was then called, but did not get what she thought was a satisfactory reply.

I don't mind this at all. Yes, in the 60's we rolled our skirts up, and they still do it. When I am out in town when school lets out, it's ME that objects to seeing every school girl's a**e walking in front of me. Perhaps trousers for most of the year, and school uniform shorts for the summer.

Tesco and Sainsbury are now selling summer school uniform that are like culottes, and all in one, (bottom half is shorts, top half as in dress) in gingham. The nickname for these are 'handstand' dresses. The only down side is that a child has to take the dress down to use the bathroom.
I am against banning skirts, I wear them all the time, and think parents and schools should teach children that it's wrong to lift up or look up girls skirts. If this is taught at an early age, with a punishment for transgressors, then reinforced through out school there might be less trouble later on.

Lemongrove Agree and what would be an appropriate skirt length.? For whom ? If a female wants her skirt to skim her backside then this 'appropriate' length could be hoisted up to accommodate her requirements. Trousers are the answer.

The thing I don't like about this is that by forbidding girls to wear skirts at school, schools are shrugging off the responsibility of teaching their pupils that looking up a girl or woman's skirt is unacceptable.

I have no trouble with schools' stating what length of skirt they find acceptable. Yes, we turned down the tops of our school skirts on the way home when mini-skirts came in, but we knew they had to touch the floor when we knelt during school hours.

Here in Denmark where we do not have school uniforms there has been a running battle for years between schools and parents regarding teenage girls displaying their bare midriffs, or about half of their bosoms and boys displaying half of their bare bottoms, when it was fashionable to wear trousers at "half-mast".

A male colleague asked me to have a word with the mother of a fourteen year old girl who wore mini-skirts and sat with her knees apart. He was scared silly, he would be accused of inappropriate behaviour, as he could see the crotch of her panties! I obliged, and the girl's mother was offended, even although I pointed out that we were not criticising her daughter's behaviour in any way, but that male teaching staff are very concerned these days, and rightly so, that they might be accused of impropriety.

IMO it's sexist and unfair to make the traditionally male option the only choice. They should all be free to choose.

Not exactly the point, I know, but around here one senior school's black uniform trousers, which I see on both boys and girls, almost invariably look dreadful, ill fitting and so scruffy.

By contrast, a different (state) girls' school uniform skirts look so much better.

I wasn't happy when my GD's school said if they wore skirts they should have "modesty " shorts under them ?? This is primary age children,for heavens sake.Let the mothers of boys make sure they know its not acceptable to look up girls skirts or lift them up.Pants were more than adequate as far as I was concerned and I made sure the school knew that.As did a lot of parents too.They changed their mind .
Isn't it time we stopped worrying about boys being unable to control themselves and started making sure they learned how to