When I saw that the Guardian had published an article titled ‘Gender-neutral uniform policy’, I was excited to see that it was about my secondary school, Lewes Priory. To my surprise, my school, which had skipped my only assigned LGBT lesson in sex education, had understood what gender-neutral meant. Not only this, but it had made an attempt to encompass it in the uniform policy to make trans students feel safer and more comfortable. I expected to see a uniform policy that allowed students to be able to choose to wear trousers, shorts or skirts regardless of their gender identity or sex.

However, this new ‘gender-neutral policy’ in fact makes it necessary for everyone to wear trousers, although, as the Daily Mail reports, there will be a choice in summer between skirts and shorts. The justification behind the uniform change is firstly that short skirts are 'indecent' and secondly that a ‘gender-neutral’ uniform ensures the inclusion of transgender students. Yet, as a former student of the school, I think I am in one of the best positions to argue that the policy only perpetuates sexist ideas about uniform and confuses what gender neutrality is. If their intention is to protect girls and trans students, they therefore fail on both counts.

Firstly, I would like to question the 'indecency' of short skirts on girls. As a student of Priory for five years, I, and many other female students, have faced sexist and sexualised comments from the age of eleven from staff. If a girl did not have her skirt below knee length, it was common for teachers to comment that students looked like ‘prostitutes’. Regardless of whether you think ‘prostitute’ ought to be used as a derogatory term for how women dress, there is no doubt that using it to describe children under sixteen is unacceptable. From a young age, alongside Maths and English, at Priory I was being taught that it was acceptable for adults in positions of power to make sexualised comments about the way girls dressed.

"Alongside Maths and English, I was being taught that it was acceptable for adults in positions of power to make sexualised comments about the way girls dressed."

Priory presents the problem of 'indecency' as being solved by fixing what women can wear, rather than fixing the society that sexualises their bodies without their consent. What I think is important is instead for us to be able to critique our antiquated notion of ‘decency’. I fully support smartness and uniform in certain contexts, but Priory is the only place I have felt wrong for wearing a skirt above my knee. From balls to formal dinners at Cambridge, where looking smart is paramount, never have I or my peers been made to feel ‘indecent’ because we dared to wear a skirt. It would be better for schools to teach their students how to respect women regardless of what they are wearing, rather than teaching them that short skirts are 'indecent'.

Moving on the to the ‘gender-neutral’ aspect of the uniform that caught newspaper headlines, I agree that gender-neutral uniform would be beneficial for all: the ability to choose what to wear without fear is surely something all can agree on. However, Priory shows a misunderstanding of gender neutrality that is harmful both to women and to those in the trans community. It is not gender-neutral to have trousers as the only permitted clothing, as neutrality is not the same as undeviating maleness. It furthermore perpetuates an idea that to be non-binary (not identifying as either male or female) one must present as masculine and wear ‘male’ clothes.

Cambridge itself offers an example of a successful gender-neutral dress code: their graduation dress code allows dresses and suits to be worn by students regardless of their gender. CUSU LGBT emphasise on their website the importance of a non-gendered dress code for formal events at Cambridge; for example, they recommend stating that "the dress code is black tie suit or a formal dress" rather than specifying different codes for men and women.

All schools, including Priory, need to be upfront and able to critique the internalised sexism in their uniform policy whilst having an awareness of how a gender-neutral uniform ought to look. I hope that Priory’s uniform policy can become truly gender-neutral in the future, although I guess I can’t have very high expectations for a school that taught Piers Morgan