LONDON – A leading privately-run boarding school in the UK will allow boyswho wish to wear a skirt to make it a uniform choice.
Uppingham School at Rutland in the East Midlands region of England alreadyuses gender-neutral terms like “pupils” rather than girls and boys and nowwants to take a sympathetic approach to its pupils who identify with agender they were not born with.
“I would hope that any pupil could come to me and say, ‘This is who we are,this is how we wish to express ourselves. We want to wear these clothes,and we would probably allow that,” Richard Maloney, the headmaster of theschool, told The Sunday Times.
Maloney was reacting to British television doctor Christian Jessen, whostudied at Uppingham boarding school from the age of seven, saying that hemight have opted to wear a skirt at school if he had been given the choice.
“I probably would have worn a skirt to shock. I never toed the line, I wasalways different,” said Jessen, the star of a TV show Embarrassing Bodies.
He said that schools should consider introducing “gender-neutral” uniforms.
Although many leading private schools in the UK, including Highgate innorth London, have introduced gender-neutral uniforms, Uppingham, foundedin 1584, still has separate uniforms for boys and girls.
Jessen, who is a gay, spent three years at Uppingham when it was aboys-only boarding school.
The school now fully co-educational, with girls required to wear greyskirts and white shirts, while boys wear charcoal trousers and white shirts.
While girls wear a red sweater, boys have black and both wear black blazers.
The television doctor believes that being able to identify as”gender-neutral” could help young people who might be exploring theirsexuality or gender at that age.