Say goodbye to your school skirt, Hermione.
British schoolboys everywhere are mourning over a recent trend in the U.K., where the notion of the school girl fantasy is fading fast.
In an effort to curb the rise of the hemline, some British schools are adapting a new uniform policy by placing an outright ban on skirts and forcing female students into slacks. And while the problem is recurrent with every generation, some schools like the Nailsea School in southwestern England decided to eliminate the root of the problem altogether.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Nailsea is a part of a small but growing group of British schools fed up the distraction of inappropriate hemlines and bare legs, leaving some administrators no choice but to mandate a skirt-free policy.
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Last school year, Nailsea officials threatened to forbid skirts if female students couldn’t manage to follow the rule, and by the end of the year a decision to outlaw skirts was in effect. School headmaster David New implemented the new policy this school year.
“We didn’t want to waste any more time on it,” New told the LA Times. “It just means that teachers can concentrate on what’s important in education.”
Though the new rule gives way to more teenage angst, New said his students are likely to find another means of altering dress code.
“I suspect that, teenagers being teenagers, there will be a new uniform violation that becomes the habit,” he said. “That was true when I was at school, and I’m sure it was true when my father was at school.”
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