Image: Screen shot from video by Devon Live
Schoolboys from Isca Academy within Devon city in Exeter, England borrowed skirts from female friends and sisters to wear them to school as a form of protest.
Devon Live reported that an estimated thirty boys arrived Thursday morning for school wearing tartan-patterned skirts in place of their usual school pants. It was to protest against the school’s policy of not permitting shorts to be worn during the heatwave.
The idea came about when the boys complained that the girls were allowed to expose bare legs. Possibly in jest, the school said that the boys were free to wear skirts if they chose.
One of the boys who braved to wear skirts described the experience as “quite refreshing.” Another said he rather enjoyed the “nice breeze” that the skirt allowed.
Some of the boys also shaved their legs before going to school.
School headteacher Aimee Mitchell said, “Shorts are not currently part of our uniform for boys, and I would not want to make any changes without consulting both students and their families. However, with hotter weather becoming more normal, I would be happy to consider a change for the future.”
However, after the boys’ protest garnered international attention, the school decided that the boys will soon be able to wear shorts. Additionally, the school confirmed that the boys who wore skirts to school had not been punished.
A news update was posted on the school’s website stating: “As summers are becoming hotter, shorts will be introduced as part of our school uniform next year having first consulted with students and parents. We feel that introducing a change in uniform partway through this year would put undue pressure on some of our families.”
Some of the boys felt that the new uniform policy should be enacted immediately and have opted to continue to wear skirts for the remaining two to three weeks of their school term.
When Devon Live asked some girls from the same school what they thought of the boys in skirts, they said the boys looked “sexy.” Alfred Bayle/JB