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I love waiting in the parent pickup line

Checking out the latest middle school fashions, hahaha. Some girls have more holes than jeans though, and really high up 馃 I don't know how they don't get dress coded
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We had school uniform in my day... some of the girls would still try to hike their skirts up to their armpits to make them shorter.
ninalanyon61-69, T
@HootyTheNightOwl I was in the UK for three months around Christmas and it seems that girls in the UK still do that. Even though I have seen it many times before the contrast between Norway and England in this respect still surprises me every time i visit.

Norwegian schools don't have a dress code for students, nor for staff that I know of, except that the clothing needs to be physically suitable for the activity being undertaken. So warm clothes for nature studies in the woods in the winter for instance.

If a Norwegian girl wants to wear a short skirt she can, no need to take a regulation length uniform skirt and roll up the waist band. The result is that a few do but they don't look like sluts doing it, they just look like they want to get their legs tanned.
@ninalanyon School uniforms here were supposed to "eradicate bullying by ensuring that all students look alike". It worked well... initially, you could find school uniforms of just about any flavour down at the local supermarket.

Then schools twigged on that they could get a bigger slice of the pie by adding logos to sweaters, shirts, book bags, etc. Of course, they charge a premium for this and it's not just a patch that you can sew on, you have to get the items through the school or an approved stockists - so now, we have the rich kids who were once wearing the brand name clothes all wearing every item available with the school logo on it and the poor kids are running about in their non-branded uniform from the local supermarket.

One thing that I hated was the fact that girls were made to stand by some form tutors and have the length of their skirts visually inspected by their teacher. In my case, this was a man, pushing on for his 60's+ looking at the skirts of 11 year old girls each morning.

Oddly enough, I changed to a different form part way through the first year and I got a female form tutor... she never did any "school uniform inspection" or ring inspection. I do wonder about his motives considering that it seems like he was the only teacher forcing girls to go through that twice a day...
ninalanyon61-69, T
@HootyTheNightOwl We had school uniforms when I was at school too in the south of England in the '60s and 70's. But I don't remember any such inspections. Boys were told to tuck their shirts in and everyone to tie their ties properly.

I think that inspections that you describe would cause an outcry here. Once in a while male teachers complain here about teenage girls wearing low cut tops, the men are told to just get on with teaching.

When I asked my sons if girls dressing in short skirts and low cut tops caused any problems or distraction in school they looked at me as though I'd said something insulting and said of course not.

As for it being justified by a reduction in bullying because everyone looks the same, well that's just laughable. Even without your example of logos being extra cost and only affordable by the rich kids it was always obvious who had money and who didn't. The poor children were wearing hand me down jumpers and blazers from there older siblings with frayed cuffs and shiny elbows.

I've heard of far more bullying in UK schools than in Norwegian ones and all three of my sons did all their schooling in Norway where there is no dress code at all, except as I mentioned that the clothing has to be suitable for the weather.

That doesn't mean that bullying has never been a problem but about twenty years ago a national campaign was initiated to reduce it that has become state policy and very successful.
@ninalanyon They threatened to isolate me because the teacher could see my white bra through my shirt - then again because he could see the logo of my t-shirt through my shirt.

From what I've noticed, the boys didn't really care as much about what we were wearing as much as the (male) teachers did. I don't like to be gender specific - but the ones who made issue with school uniform were entirely male from my memory.

As far as uniform goes now, if you don't mind the lack of school branding, you can kit your children out fully down at the supermarket without a lot of expense... though the high schools are much more picky and insist that you wear their insignia on the jackets.

Bullying is bad enough when you're dealing with other children - but it's worse when you get sent home because your ankle length skirt is "a distraction to other students"... like... Who's going to be distracted by a flash of a black school shoe poking out from under her skirt??? It's not like she's wearing high heels or her underwear around her ankles...

I won't be sending a child of mine to a school here in England. I don't agree with the forced indoctrination, school uniform policies - and pupil safeguarding policies (particularly in relation to secondary school aged children).

No child of mine will be harassed over his/her uniform or laughed at should they ever encounter a sexual abuser on school property.