As the weather gets warmer and term draws to a close, students are throwing off their blazers and rolling down their socks – but are rigid school uniform policies affecting students’ wellbeing?
Dr Elizabeth Nassem from the University of Bradford researches school bullying and says uniform rules, many rooted in “Victorian era” thinking, are increasingly out of step with the realities facing young people today.
She is the founder of consultancy Bullied Voices and has worked with schools across the UK.
“When teachers are required to enforce inflexible rules without the autonomy to apply professional judgement, routine interactions can slip into something far more damaging,” she said.
“Girls have described feeling sexualised or humiliated when told to ‘cover up’, even when that is not the intention. That experience has serious consequences for self-esteem, trust and mental health.”
Jessica, a 17-year-old student at Notre Dame Sixth Form College in Leeds, went to a school in Bradford with a “strict” uniform policy which she said was uncomfortable.
“On hot days we were sometimes allowed to wear socks – rather than tights – but they kind of laid off of that in the later years when I was there and I remember we all came in and my form teacher literally shouted saying ‘you all look like porn stars’ – I was in year nine at the time.
“How can you say that to essentially little girls, sexualising them?”
Nassem says Jessica’s experience is not unusual.
“They feel humiliated, they feel sexualised and they do say a lot of it is the men.
“It’s almost like this body that becomes a female, which starts to become a woman, becomes punished. And I think that’s how they see it.”