Schools in Wales are allowing boys to wear skirts and girls to wear trousers
11 July 2019, 14:03 | Updated: 11 July 2019, 14:10
The gender-neutral uniform will be enforced across Wales from September.
Schools all over Wales will be made to allow boys to wear skirts and girls to wear trousers as part of their school uniform, thanks to a new statutory guidance issued by the department of education.
Cheaper uniforms with gender-neutral options will be enforced all over the country later this year, in a bid to tackle rising costs of school uniforms.
The new guidance means that schools will have to completely revise their uniform codes to avoid exclusive deals that force parents to buy from a single supplier, also will make sure the uniforms are wide available and they'd need to avoid expensive logos and designs.
The rules will also banish separate dress codes for boys and girls, meaning that trousers, shorts and skirts can be worn by everyone.
Kirsty Williams, the Welsh minister for education, said of the new guidance: “It gave us an opportunity to look at the rather outdated way we look at uniforms, with lists of items for girls and lists for boys, which was a very old fashioned way of looking at how children should dress for school".
The brand new rules will also be applied to PE kits, which can often be very expensive.
On average a school uniform will cost a family about £300 per child at some schools for every item needed, so the new rules will hopefully tackle how expensive this can be for families who simply cannot afford it.
Read more: Parents' shock as school ditches uniform and replaces with tracksuit
Parents in Wales will be able to lodge complaints from September onwards is schools don't comply with the guidance, as the new rules will kick in when the new school term begins.
Wales’s decision to use statutory guidance to enforce the new rules is in contrast with England, where the Department for Education has only voluntary guidelines.
