A row erupted today over claims that teachers were checking pupils' underwear to make sure they comply with a new school uniform policy.Hardly surprising!
Stuart Gander's two daughters 15-year-old Chelsea Hay and 13-year-old Kirby Moore were told at a girls' assembly that coloured bras were 'offensive'.Now, I’m actually in favour of school uniform – but that stops at outerwear. What pupils choose to wear underneath it (if anything!) is down to them. And on the list of things that might be ‘offensive’, the colour of a pupil’s underwear doesn’t even make the top 500!
The 35-year-old foreman from Winchester said: 'They were told they had to wear white ones or very light pale bras and they would be spot checked.
'It's just a case of the girls putting out their bra strap and them having a look.
'It's obviously caused a bit of upset. Friends of mine have sons at the school and two days later they had an assembly about boxer shorts.'
And the idea that school staff could ask to check underwear, in this day and age, rather beggars belief…
Leanne Hosking, who has three children aged 14, 13 and 11 at the school, said her elder daughter did not like male teachers turning her around and checking her bra.Well, how very dare she! Doesn’t she realise they have the interests of the school at heart? You do as you’re told, young lady! It’s perfectly acceptable to let an authority figure check the colour of your bra, and those silly geese who complain about it being ‘creepy’ are just being overly sensitive!
A spokeswoman for the school said: 'The assembly was to bring to the attention of Year 10 girls what is appropriate dress for the working environment, preparing them for work experience.Ah, the usual response from panicked PR people when the organisation they work for has been caught indulging their inner control-freak. Flat denial. ‘No, we’re not doing what these parents have told you we’re doing.’
'There is no rule, we are not checking underwear. We are not checking girls' bra straps and we have certainly not had an assembly with any of the boys telling them what colour underwear to wear.'
Will the school now be suing these parents and the newspaper for libel, I wonder? If not, we can draw our own conclusions from that.
And ‘appropriate dress for the working environment’? Funny, I must have missed my boss conducting an ‘underwear check’ this morning…
7 comments:
I am so looking forward to Monday morning, and the chance to check that all my female staff are fully complying with our dress code...
I'll bake you a cake with a file in it... ;)
Is this a new practice? I remember when I was at school Mr Johnson the Geography teacher used to regularly take pupils into his office to check their underwear in private, there must have been a lot of uniform violations judging by the amount of corporal punishment he doled out.
Great work if you're a paedophile. Dream job.
'There is no rule, we are not checking underwear. We are not checking girls' bra straps and we have certainly not had an assembly with any of the boys telling them what colour underwear to wear.'
So what are they suggesting as an alternative?
That the whole pupil contingent got together one break time and spontainiously decided all to tell the same lie?
Von Brandenburg-Preussen.
That does indeed seem to be just what they are suggesting. So, let's see them challenge it in court. For the hinour of the school name..
A friend of mine who works at a major public sector educational institution in Scotland (that's all the clues you're getting!) has discovered that it has a dress code for teaching staff.
The code includes the wonderful line that "a visible absence of underwear is not acceptable".
My friend quizzed the young lady from HR about exactly what this might mean (he has a mischievous sense of humour).
After they'd exhausted all the obvious NVPL jokes, it seemed to come down to bra-less bouncers or possibly bare feet. Nobody was quite sure.
But such policies do exist, you see.
(Disclaimer - this is NOT made up)
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