In the UK, a 12-year-old girl was removed from classes for wearing the wrong type of skirt as her mom said her hips are “too wide” for the uniform skirt.
Shylah Johnson,12, has been put into the isolation unit at her school, Brookvale Groby Learning Campus in Leicestershire.
Her mother Daisy Johnson and father Dharmesh Patel, says Shylah’s hips are too wide for the school’s pleated skirt.
The school said they have offered to help tailor a skirt to fit Shylah but the family and the headteacher have been unable to reach a solution. Daisy said she had spent the summer trying to find a pleated skirt that would fit her daughter.
According to Leicestershire Live, due to sizing issues, Shylah and her mom discovered that off-the-peg black pleated skirts would not fit properly.
They also tried a number of different versions of skirts from shops such as Marks & Spencer, New Look, Next, Matalan, and Primark over the summer holidays.
Daisy and her partner, Dharmesh, had no other option but to send their daughter to school wearing a plain black skirt instead of a pleated one.
Shylah was then removed from classes and placed in isolation for not wearing the correct school uniform.
“We have spent hundreds of pounds ordering skirts that didn’t fit and returning them, we’ve tried everywhere.,” Daisy said. “But because she has wide hips and a small waist the skirts don’t fit properly.”
“So we had to get her a regular skirt that does fit, but she was immediately sent to isolation because of it not being pleated,” Daisy added. “She has missed two tests already this week because she can’t be in full-time education, all because her skirt doesn’t have pleats in it.”
“She’s being discriminated against, really, because she doesn’t have a body shape for their uniform policy,” Daisy said. “The school even gave us one of their skirts for her to wear and it doesn’t fit at all around her waist.”
Daisy has communicated with the school to try and resolve things, and despite having discussions with school representatives, she has been unable to reach a compromise.
“They told us to just turn it down and wear it like that for now, but there’s a lot of gap off her waist and it doesn’t fit,” Daisy told Mail Online. “It’s not like she doesn’t want to wear the school skirt. She is in Year 8 and wore one throughout her first year. But she’s had a growth spurt over the summer and her old one doesn’t fit.”
“She has issues with her anxiety at the best of times and this really isn’t helping,” Daisy said. “The school has told us if they let her wear a plain black skirt, others will use it as an excuse to wear one.”
“But it’s not the case for her, they should be punished for breaking the uniform policy willingly, Shylah would only be breaking it because she has no other option.”
Will Teece, the headteacher at Brookvale Groby Learning Campus, said the school has offered a variety of options to try and get Shylah back to class.
“The school has had the same uniform policy for many years, we’ve provided the family with a skirt, offered to take them to the shops, and offered to have it tailored – but it simply seems like she doesn’t want to wear the skirt,” Teece explained.
“We’ve got 1,500 other students who have not had any issues with their uniform and have settled well into the start of the new academic year,” the headteacher added. “We’ll do all we can to offer support to students to get them the right uniform, and everyone else on campus is in the right uniform.”
“We’d like nothing more than to get the student back into full-time education, and we feel we have offered more than enough options for the parent and student to do this,” he added.
Brookvale Groby Learning Campus is a co-educational secondary school and sixth form sited in Groby in the English county of Leicestershire.
The school was founded in September 2012 from Groby Community College and Brookvale High School. Previously they were both community schools governed by Leicestershire County Council.
Both schools converted to academy status in partnership in July 2012. As the former schools were located next to each other, the combined school teaches across an integrated campus.