£20k-a-year public school set to let boy pupils wear skirts

A PRESTIGIouS private school is planning to bring in a ‘gender neutral’ uniform policy that would allow boys to wear skirts.

Highgate School, which charges fees of £20,000 a year, is considering scrapping the phrases ‘uniform for boys’ and ‘uniform for girls’.

Instead, it may call them ‘uniform number one’ and ‘uniform number two’, giving all pupils the option of wearing either.

At present, girls at the school in north London can choose to wear the boys’ uniform of grey trousers with a dark blue jacket and tie.

But boys are not allowed to wear the girls’ option of a grey pleated skirt. They also have to wait until they are 16 to wear earrings, which girls do not.

Pupils and parents are being asked for their views before the gender neutral policy is introduced. Headmaster Adam Pettitt said: ‘This generation is really questioning being binary in the way we look at things.’

He said that if some boys wore skirts, then ‘if [as a result] they feel happier and more secure in who they are, it must be a good thing’. Mr Pettitt admitted some former pupils were opposed to the changes, adding: ‘They write in and say if you left children to Transitioning: Llyr Jones, 16 their own devices they would grow up differently and you are promoting the wrong ideas.’

He also said some parents did not know that their offspring were querying their gender with counsellors at school.

The move by Highgate comes as other heads report growing numbers of children are struggling with their identity.

Transgender girl Llyr Jones, who is having hormone treatment, said her school was supportive and allowed her to wear a skirt or trousers as she pleased. The 16-year-old sixth form pupil at Penglais comprehensive in Aberystwyth was also given access to gender-neutral toilets.

Equality groups set up by pupils in some schools are pushing for teachers to use non-gendered pronouns such as ‘they’, for all sports to be open to everyone, and for a ban on words and phrases such as ‘ladylike’ and ‘man up’. But critics warn that a rush to introduce gender neutral policies could encourage copycat behaviour among children, fuelled by social media.

Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham university, said: ‘Schools need to help young people become comfortable with their identities, not reinforce their anxieties with measures such as genderneutral uniforms.’

Highgate, which started admitting girls a decade ago, already allows female pupils to be known by a boys’ name and vice versa. About half a dozen pupils have requested this. one boy has also been allowed to wear a dress.

Figures show a surge in the number of youngsters – mainly girls – seeking help to change gender. More than 2,000 under18s were referred to the Gender Identity Clinic at the Tavistock and Portman nHS Foundation Trust in north London last year.

There were under 100 when the service began eight years ago.

Earlier this year St Paul’s Girls’ School in west London revealed it had drawn up a gender identity protocol to allow pupils to be known by boys’ names.