Mick Hartley

From the Times:

Schools have begun using gender-neutral terms such as “uniform A” and “uniform B” instead of boys and girls.

Primaries, secondaries, sixth form colleges and private schools, including the prestigious Brighton College, have amended uniform descriptions so that children wear clothes that “most reflect their self-identified gender”.

In many cases “boy” and “girl” are erased from uniform policy documents and replaced by “uniform A” and “uniform B”. Some schools have also introduced a third option of “uniform C”.

Stevensons, a major school uniform provider, said in 2019 that it would be gender-neutral by default and no longer market uniforms for boys or girls. Now an analysis of 550 schools it supplies, carried out by The Mail on Sunday, found that most have adopted gender-neutral uniform policies.

We should just abandon those old-fashioned sex categories – "men" and "women", "girls" and "boys" – which are no longer fit for purpose in today's inclusive multi-gender world and carry all that unwelcome baggage of biological essentialism. Type A and type B people would be a start, then onwards and upwards to types C, D, E etc..

Blofield Primary, in Norwich, set out its uniform policy last year which allowed pupils aged 4-11 to pick clothing based on their “self-identified gender”. It said that to prevent discrimination it would “avoid listing uniform items based on sex, to give all pupils the opportunity to wear the uniform they feel most comfortable in or that most reflects their self-identified gender”.

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Schools are adding to the mental health problems of children who, after going into school, no longer know what gender they belong to. It’s time we had a government with the backbone to intervene.”

Brighton College, which charges fees of up to £64,920 a year, has uniform A and uniform B. It says: “We do not have a ‘girls’ uniform’ and a ‘boys’ uniform’, rather a ‘uniform A’ and a ‘uniform B’ . . . we hope the nomenclature will enable the college to make suitable provision for a pupil who wants to make a thoughtful and considered choice about the clothes worn at school in relation to their gender identity. For example, a girl who feels more comfortable wearing a shirt and tie may choose to wear uniform B.”

Its headmaster Richard Cairns, who first made changes to the uniform policy back in 2016, has previously said he wants to “give transgender children personal leeway”.