‘The behaviour of male teachers is not on us’: The debate over the short school skirt

The back-to-school outcry over the acceptable length of a skirt is as divisive as ever. Two parents go head to head…

When my 14-year-old daughter went back to school earlier this week, she prepped for the big day with an acuity that I can only hope she applies to her studies. Highlighters? Check. Dry shampoo? Check. Mini bottle of Arabesque Wood? Check. Skirt hitched up to her eyeballs? Absolutely. 
Photographing her in front of our door (not for Instagram, just for me) I didn’t bother asking her to roll her skirt down. What was the point? She’d only pull it up again at the bus stop. When you have a teenager, you learn to pick your battles. Besides, I’d be a hypocrite: at her age, I was doing exactly the same thing. I may have left school decades ago, but some things never change. The world may be in flux; jean styles may oscillate from bootcut to boyfriend to skinny, but a knee-length school skirt will always mark you out as a loser. 
If my own private school in Edinburgh was strict, my daughter’s state Church of England school in London is even stricter. The uniform list is as lengthy as it is pedantic: coats must be black, earrings must be tiny and shoes must be (and I quote) “flat, black, not above the ankle, heels not higher than 2.5cm, no logos, no canvas, no boots, no trainers including no leather-look Converse, Vans, Nike or other trainer-style shoes”. 
As part of its mandatory uniform, the school appears to have decreed a skirt style chosen specifically for its obstinacy. The Charleston skirt, a drop-waisted affair with a side zip, a deep yoke and all-round knife pleats, does its very best to defy being hitched up – its waistband bunching in an unedifying manner that adds girth even to the most slender pupil. 
None of which acts as a deterrent. “It makes my uniform look a lot nicer,” my daughter claims. “Also, if you don’t have your skirt rolled up, everyone just assumes you’re a neek [the 2024 word for nerd], because it shows you’re abiding by the school’s rules.” Perish the thought. 
When it comes to enforcing sartorial unity, God knows the school tries. Before they file into church in the morning, its redoubtable headmistress even commands her pupils to roll their skirts down via an announcement over the tannoy. How this must sound blaring out in the corridors, I cannot guess. 
As for whether it’s efficacious, the answer would appear to be “no”. Policing the skirt lengths of 1,000 wilful and hormonal teenaged girls is a task more thankless than trying to engage them in the joys of trigonometry. “They don’t measure it, but our form teacher checks the waistband. If it’s rolled up, she’ll make you roll it down.”
“They also have their favourite lines,” says her friend. “They’ll say ‘You’ll still have friends if you roll down your skirt’ and ‘Who are you trying to look good for?’”
“Which is dumb,” says my daughter. “Obviously, the answer is ‘ourselves’.”
I ask why she thinks the school is so strict about skirt length. “They say it’s for our own safety and to protect us from unwanted attention. I’m sorry, but are you saying the school is not a safe space? The behaviour of the male teachers it hires is not on us.”
This seems a coruscatingly critical view, but perhaps it’s a consequence of growing up in the same universe as Andrew Tate. Girls today seem to almost militantly adhere to that ideology of “it’s not my problem what men think”. They’re literally horrified that their legs should be sexualised, and refute it by wearing short skirts so as not to be cowed. But, even so, it seems there are limits.
“I can understand them making you roll it down when you leave the school to go home,” she adds. “There are a few girls who roll their skirts up so high that you can literally see their bum cheeks. That’s too extreme. But when a skirt is rolled up a bit above the knee, and it gives you more confidence, where’s the harm?”
And who can argue with that?
The annual back-to-school outcry over skirt lengths is as divisive as ever. Mumsnet forums are full of progressive parents steadfastly defending their darling daughters’ rights to bare their bum cheeks, while schools counter that pupils are representing the badge, and that it’s important to maintain reputation, decorum and image.
My days as the parent negotiating this minefield are well behind me, thankfully. My daughter is 22. Even so, skirt length was still an issue back then. Her school took a sensible approach. The regulation issue skirts were made of heavy, rough wool and were so long that to roll them above the knee created a waistband as thick as a tyre, so although most girls did roll, my daughter included, they did not roll very far. Today, when I see girls with skirts barely covering underwear, I shudder.
It’s your job as a parent to look out for your children. That sometimes means protecting them from themselves and some of the unsavoury aspects of modern life. Unfortunately, we live in a world where society, media and fashion sexualise teenage girls and even fetishise school uniforms. It is all very wrong and twisted, but it is a fact. Surely anything that mitigates unwanted sexual attention on young girls is a good thing, no?
There are those who argue that this train of thought, and any uniform policy that restricts the right to wear short skirts because boys or men can’t control their thoughts, is a form of victim blaming. Indeed, the campaign group, End Sexism in Schools, calls skirt lengths a “red herring”, arguing that the problem is the “objectification and sexualisation of women and girls” which then leads to “modesty-policing”. It states there is no such thing as the right length and that any skirt length rule is arbitrary.
“Any argument that girls’ short skirts are distracting to boys and male teachers suggests that men and boys can’t control themselves and is victim-blaming girls for male behaviour,” the group states on its website.
In essence that’s correct. In an ideal world, everyone could wear what they want. But girls are frequently subjected to unwanted male attention. Fact. There were occasions when, as a 13- or 14-year-old walking home from the train station, my daughter was catcalled and wolf whistled. The incidents disturbed her and me. These were grown men. This was leafy Surrey.
In those circumstances, had she have been wearing a skirt pulled way up over her thighs, it would have been the responsible parental thing for me to gently point out that while those men’s behaviour is reprehensible and wrong, sadly, one way to mitigate it would perhaps be to lower the skirt so as not to give the perverts something to focus on.  
There are also practical reasons for skirt-length diktats. I’m an advocate for schools allowing girls to wear skirts or trousers, and boys for that matter, it’s 2024 after all. However, whatever the uniform, it should be practical and suitable for school activities, which might involve sitting on the floor, running, or even simple activities like walking up the stairs.
School uniform also provides a practice run for the world of work, where certain dress codes still exist and where in lots of roles there are expectations, uniforms, and the general assumption that a micro-skirt or a onesie for that matter is not appropriate for the office.
No one would have an issue with schools enforcing a policy whereby boys are forbidden to wear trousers pulled low, exposing pants, as some do. So why all the fuss about girls adhering to regulation-length skirts?