This is why we must ban skirts in schools

IWAS going through my wardrobe recently, wondering whether it was too soon to wear outfits more suited to spring, when I realised I own hardly any skirts. I don’t remember the last time I wore one, instead opting for the comfort and ease of trousers, jeans or leggings. No more hunting for a pair of tights without ladders that actually fit.

How did this fashion-conscious girl of the 1960s, the era of the miniskirt, no less, turn so vehemently against this accepted female form of dress? The answer is growing up, learning about feminism and understanding the appalling extent of sexual harassment.

And nowhere are these issues more important than in schools, where the skirt remains regulation uniform.

I remember how we were continually subjected to boys’ leering and lewd comments. You couldn’t even escape in a singlesex school, as my secondary was.

Boys from the local grammar would peer over hedges to get a good view of us playing hockey, netball or tennis and the comments would come over loud and clear. ‘Cor, I fancy that — shame about the big grey knickers, but what’s inside them looks alright.’

It was the same as we all waited for the bus together. None of us dared to sit on the top deck; we knew they’d be looking up our skirts as we climbed the stairs.

Looking back, the skirt restricted us in so many ways. Who’d have done a cartwheel in the playground or even ridden a bike to school in case the boys might see our knickers?

Sadly, it seems that all these years later, a new generation of girls suffers the same fate — worse, even, with upskirt photos and forwarding them on to pals.

That’s why I believe we should ban the skirt in schools once and for all. I want every girl and boy to attend lessons wearing trousers and, for any sport, shorts. We need absolute equality in uniforms.

New research by the University of Cambridge confirms my suspicions that school uniforms hold girls back. Forced by school rules to wear skirts, they find their freedom to take part in physical activity severely restricted.

Looking at more than a million young people aged five to 17 in 135 countries and regions, including Ireland, researchers found pupils with mandatory school uniform — particularly primary school-aged girls — were less likely to do the 60 minutes a day of physical activity recommended by the World Health Organisation.

SENIOR author of the research, Dr Esther van Sluijs, said: ‘Social norms and expectations tend to influence what they feel they can do in these clothes. Unfortunately, when it comes to promoting physical health, that’s a problem.’

This backs up previous studies that found wearing gender-specific uniforms reminded children they are a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’ rather than a ‘pupil’. This could reinforce beliefs such as ‘girls don’t play football’ or ‘boys don’t read books’. We’ve known all this for a very long time.

At school in the 1950s and 1960s, the impact on girls’ confidence to be assertive and take whatever they wanted or needed from education, both intellectual and physical, was severely hindered by our attire.

A book out this week, Schools Of Thought, underlines how important assertiveness is for girls.

Written by the teacher David James and Jane Lunnon, the former headmistress of all-girls day school and now the head at coeducational school, it draws on the experience of a number of head teachers in empowering girls.

Clare Wagner, the head of a topperforming all-girls state school in North London, said: ‘There is still a battle to be fought and won. It’s about how girls and women see themselves and carry themselves confidently in mixed environments. Girls are apt to be very polite and to express themselves too gently, and we need to ensure that as women they can be forthright and own the spaces they will be going into.’

Girls need to own the spaces they are in now, too, considering news of an alarming rise in sexual assaults on children by children, particularly at secondary school, including sharing indecent pictures of girls. There’s been an 81 per cent rise in reported incidents on school property.

No wonder girls are even more anxious and nervous than we were about boys looking up their skirts.

Of course, as everyone suggests, there’s an urgent need for a clampdown on the offensive material to which under-18s have access these days.

But, in the meantime, we must put an end to schoolboy leering by banning the school skirt. There have been numerous attempts before.

In 2015 there was a campaign to get schools to allow girls to wear trousers. Some schools decided to bend their rules and allow it, but Katia Chornik, who led the fight, described it as a long and bitter process and the Trousers For All campaign ended in 2022.

So, here goes. I want to reinstate it. No ‘sexy’ skirts to peer up, no legs to ogle, no ankles flashed. Take the sex out of school.

Then we’ll see girls from five to 18 get fit, confident, assertive and clever — as unhindered as the boys. It’s called equal opportunity.