Short School Skirts.

Some of the complaints are about unisex toilets. Kids don't want unisex loos. I don't like them for me. We had them in our local hospital for a while but they reverted back to men/women due to an avalanche of complaints.

I'm backing the pupils

Lizzie44

We had skirt measuring at my Grammar School for Girls in the 1950s - the ritual kneeling before the headmistress and her tape measure. I'm amazed it still goes on. I think the very short skirts on today's schoolgirls look ridiculous (how cold must it be in winter?) but I think they should be free to wear them like that if they want to. School uniform is always going to get adapted and tweaked to whatever is deemed to be the latest fashion. No big deal. My pet hate at school was the regulation navy blue beret that most girls pinned flat to the back of their head like a flying saucer. Berets worn out in the street were snatched off the head and hurled into the road by Secondary Modern school pupils chanting "Grammar bugs, pull your lugs".

The quote chanted at us was "Grammar School snobs all in a row a pint of piss will drown you all" We had to show the badge at the front and paraded through the local town to churches for Christmas Concerts. We wore them like you, held with two clips until we were at the site of school The boys had to have caps on at 18.

I was at a girls only grammar school in the 1960s and the era of mini skirts . We were never pulled up on the length of our skirts but nearby was a Catholic girls grammar school and the girls there had to have a skirt that touched the floor when kneeling. No measuring needed.

I wet to a strict girls school in the 1930s. The uniform was a grey skirt, hem touching floor when kneeling , square neck blue cotton blouse. Up to age thirteen knee high woollen socks then grey lisle stockings. Nylon hadn’t been invented. Felt hat in winter, Panama in summer. Hair tied back with navy blue ribbon. I got called up to the Headmisstress office for having light blue ribbon! No makeup.
As we left after school a teacher would make sure that hats were on straight and coats buttoned.
Were not allowed to fraternise with boys from the boys school. I wasseen talking to one of the boys. Once again before the Headmisstress. But he was my friends brother and we were going to tea at her house and to play Monopoly. He was killed in the war aged 18.

One school I worked at, it was very popular amongst the yoof to have the knot in their ties as large as possible. Looked ridiculous but meh. As long as the kids bits are covered, I'm not that bothered.

62Granny

Every year there is a story regarding school uniforms and how they should be adhered to, the skirt length , black shoes with laces as opposed to Velcro straps, hairstyles. When are schools going to realise that teenagers do not like conforming and will push against any of these silly rules. Reverse psychology is what is needed, tell them they can NOT wear their skirts below the knee or longer, can not have short back and sides haircuts but have to have tram lines and can wear any shoes except black laces up and see how that goes.😂 schools need to stop trying to push these antiquated rules all the time the solution often gets bigger than the problem.

It would most definitely be a good idea to tell the girls they are not allowed to wear trousers, then they could start a protest movement like my DD and abandon the skirts!

Every year there is a story regarding school uniforms and how they should be adhered to, the skirt length , black shoes with laces as opposed to Velcro straps, hairstyles. When are schools going to realise that teenagers do not like conforming and will push against any of these silly rules. Reverse psychology is what is needed, tell them they can NOT wear their skirts below the knee or longer, can not have short back and sides haircuts but have to have tram lines and can wear any shoes except black laces up and see how that goes.😂 schools need to stop trying to push these antiquated rules all the time the solution often gets bigger than the problem.

All kids should be normalised in trousers… then lecherous lads ,and creepy teachers ( still there) can get on with learning and teaching.

My granddaughter hasn’t worn a skirt to school since she was 6….long may she retain
her good sense!

Girls have worn short skirts since ‘the mini’ became fashionable in the 60s. It was ever thus.

I went to secondary school in the late 70s, and my skirt (bought reduced) was ankle length, and Mum said I'd grow into it. I never did, ending at 5 ft 1". I rolled in up and looked deformed to get it to knee length! We knelt after assembly to make sure our knees were covered, and our cookery teacher had an affair with the Librarian...and wore short skirts.

Out of Interest I checked the girls uniform for Marlborough College and the ankle skirt is listed as 6th form uniform, so not by choice...

Sexualising children is a social problem. It would be far better if schools and their uniforms were like hospitals and their unisex scrubs. Then the children could get on with learning , including learning about the social problem of sexualising children.

I loved short skirts in the 60s by which time I had left school. The shorter the better, although no knicker showing. I was the right shape for 60s fashions.

While trousers are the ideal solution, I guarantee you how tight/low on the hips/ etc is going to become the next issue

Why and what is being signalled by wearing skirts so short...I have always had terrible legs with fat kees even when thin, so never wanted to wear a skirt or dress above my knees!

GagaJo

paddyann54, but staff shouldn't be subjected to teenage bum.

What if teachers dressed that way? The students and parents would be outraged.

My husband went to an all boys’ school in Singapore in the early seventies (he’s a few years older than me) and there was a young female teacher who wore mini skirts. At break times there would be large groups of boys at the stairwell gazing upwards and asking what colour of the rainbow it was that day as, apparently, she wore different coloured pants each day.

Trousers for all is the solution here - and no issues with trans pupils then either. When I was at school we would be sent home if our skirt was more than one inch above the knee. Seeing how short the skirts worn by secondary school girls are now, sorry but its really inappropriate and a magnet for perverts. My mother wouldn't have let me out of the house in a skirt that short, school or otherwise, at that age. Had to get to 16 before she relaxed on that a bit

When I first started at secondary school (all girls and no male teachers) in the early 60s, the uniform was blouse, tie, cardi, skirt and either knee high grey socks (short white in summer) or, for the older girls, thick grey stockings which, of course, had to be worn with a suspender belt. Tights had really not yet arrived and were very expensive - my mother would certainly not have bought me any for school wear. I think showing your suspenders or sitting in a freezing cold classroom with bare legs just to have a shorter skirt was a step too far for us all so our hemlines never did rise much above our knees in school. Evenings and weekends out of school were totally different however!

Single sex convent school for me. We were warned that it was sinful to wear shiny patent shoes as they would reflect our underwear. Why was it sinful for the girls? Because it could cause the poor innocent males sitting on the bus or train to have improper thoughts!

When I Started nursing training in 1962 we were measured for our uniforms and had to stand bare foot on a chair and our dresses had to be 12 inches from the seat. Of course that was to preserve our modesty when bending over beds etc. Happy days!

I’m another who rolled up her school skirt, back in the day. We had to wear gym slips for the first two years then graduated to skirts in Third Year (age 13/14). I remember getting told off for wearing coloured underwear, too - apparently, my bra colour could be seen beneath my cotton blouse.

I’m not sure that today’s school girls are following fashion though. I never see any other women wearing skirts as short as they do. I’d say the vast majority of women here wear some sort of trousers and skirts are mostly the preserve of older women and office workers. That’s in the daytime, I don’t venture into town at night much!

There is a fashion for tight flesh-coloured leggings, though, which can produce startling sights. 😳

Paddyann your grand-daughter sounds perfect. Yes she is learning and doing well but I wonder if the short skirts, make-up and nails are all part of keeping up with other school friends. It is much different in schools these days and the Catholic High School near me have a lovely uniform but the girls skirts are not far off bum level so once again I say what are the schools doing to regulate the way the girls wear their skirts and also it is not as if the uniform is cheap to buy.
The girls I see would only need a quarter of remnant to put a skirt together, maybe it's a saving on money.

I know I am old but I was so proud to go to a girls college in 1945 I would never have dreamt of breaking the uniform rules. And my mother and the family all chipped in to buy my uniform which was expensive. Velour hats with the school band replaced by a Panama in summer. We wore the pleated gym slip always with a white shirt and navy and gold striped tie. Anyone caught breaking dress rules was given a detention. What a great sight we were walking in crocodile to Liverpool Cathedral. The girls were proud of their appearance like me. Standards have dropped. On London buses you hear girls using bad language and many behave badly. In my day that uniform marked you out at being from a particular school and bad behaviour was reported. Many grans belong to the generation when shortening your skirt was everyday. I agree with those who suggest having uniforms with trousers would cut out the problem, but school uniform is part of life for both boys and girls and teachers are there to set a high standard. I have watched TV programmes about schools and these days courtesy and good manners are not the rule. Self discipline and self respect needs to be learned to help in adult life. Life changes and it is not always for the best. I was a teacher in case anyone asks.

The key is to get rid of the skirt as a concept because it enables the alteration of the hem length. In my day (all girls' school) we either wore a gymslip in the winter or a dress in the summer and neither could be manipulated to show more leg. However the gymslip gave way to a skirt in what would now be Year 9 and sure enough the rolling up at the waist coincided with the time when we started to become interested in the boys from the boys' school close by. The short skirt may be considered a fashion statement but first and foremost it's about showing oneself off in a slightly different way.

The answer is trousers for all with the option to wear knee length shorts.

paddyann54, but staff shouldn't be subjected to teenage bum.

What if teachers dressed that way? The students and parents would be outraged.