New guidelines will require all schools in Northern Ireland to offer girls the option to wear trousers as part of their uniform.
Education Minister Paul Givan said the revised guidance will allow girls to wear trousers as part of their uniform and also for PE and games.
Sinn Féin MLA Cathy Mason has described the decision as a “welcome but embarrassing U-turn by the minister”.
Education Committee chairman Nick Mathison said the minister will have to explain why he “took so long to move on this issue”.
The guidelines are legally binding under the School Uniforms Act which came into operation earlier this year.
You are looking from the wrong point of view, it has a purpose: to level the children to avoid that the “rich” kids look down on the “poor” kid that cannot (or does not care) have the last trendy outfit.
I was in such situation back at the time, I was in a private school that have many rich kids and while I almost never cared about what I was wearing and thankfully I never had any problems, in other classes there were incidents caused by a rich kid bulling a “poor” (relatively, the school has a price that keep out trully poor families, so the poor was only less rich in this context) kid for the outfit.
And seeing what kids wear to school nowday, a uniform is the lesser devil in my opinion.
Also, wearing a school uniform sometimes build also a sense of appartence that is not a bad thing.