Co-ed schooling and uniform options

Following some discussion on forum, rather unexpectedly around the broader topic of school uniforms, presentations and co-ed schooling I do want to set out my thoughts as evolving as they can be around this.

The first and more important thing is that for me I never saw co-ed schools as being anything other than a school that admitted girls as well as boys.

For one thing they playgound was seldom really mixed with there being groups of children playing in single sex groups together not because teachers want that but because in practise that's what the children elected even if, like me you might of wanted to play the odd game with the girls (and at the time some girls wanted to play footy with us).

P.E. was co-ed but Games certainly wasn't even at the non competition level was us been taken out two year groups at a time for "boys games" and they'd be taken out for theirs so no chance for me to play netball and they never got to play football.

How sad.

People do confuse how you dress with your sex, something I find baffling, because simply the only difference is that fabrics are cut to different patterns that have at different times been associated with either sex.

Boys and men can wear kilts, a basically skirted item, and today not a few girls wear trousers both long and short.

Let's put it this way: I have no issue with any boy wearing a suitable possibly lined skirt to school if he feels more comfortable in himself as part of the uniform and on the odd time I had worn one too as baffling as it might of been to the "he man boys".

It's no different to allowing as we do girls to wear things other than pinafore dresses and skirts to school and I really don't see why we need to by having so much energy wasted on fighting it.

It's very much different than the vexed issue of social gender transformation and medical interventions as addressed recently in the Cass report as it applies to minors.

That is about presenting as another sex in settings such as schools with different gender identities such as a new name, use of pronouns and so on.

All I'd say is to make things easier for other children and for staff to adjust, I feel making a choice on a term by term basis for anything not requiring specialist clothing needs and keeping to that would go with that so if Robert wishes to wear a skirt and Roberta feels she wishes to wear short trousers then they can and their mates get used to it.