Quote Originally Posted by Liam View Post
Unfortunate skirts are not kilts and they should have been sent home, or more appropriately the rules should have been relaxed to accommodate the weather.
As a matter of the rules, you are quite wrong. The UK Dept of Education lays down that, whatever uniform rules a school sets, they must allow a pupil of one gender to wear any garment permitted in the rules for the other gender.

Of course, that policy was set so that schools could not ban girls from wearing trousers, but it follows as night follows day that a boy wearing a skirt that falls within the rules for a girl, i.e. hemline, fabric colour, etc., is permitted to do so by a national rule that the school itself is powerless to override. So, no, the school had no right to send them home, neither any power to do so.

Some schools that have had battles over girl's hemlines, have however decreed that both genders must wear trousers at all times, which is not against the DOE rules.

OTOH, if, say a boy showed up in a men's kilt that was longer than the range for girl's hemlines, or tartan, when most UK schools specify grey or navy blue, they could send him home. That may not be what you would expect, but I'm told that's how it is.