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One of the oldest and largest independent providers of school uniforms in the UK will no longer sell uniforms for boys or girls. Instead, they will market their uniforms as gender neutral, even removing packaging from clothes if its colour signifies a gender divide.
Stevensons, which has been selling uniforms since 1925 and serves more than 500 independent and state schools nationwide, including Eton college, St Paul’s girls school, Westminster Cathedral choir school, the Duke of York’s royal military school and the Royal Ballet school, said it was responding to concerns from schools.
“I have every sympathy with the move towards a gender-neutral school uniform and we’re in the process of removing all references, direct and indirect, to boys and girls in the lines that we sell,” said Mark Stevenson, the managing director of the business started by his grandfather.
“But when schools ring us to discuss the issue, my first question is whether their own uniform rules are gender neutral; we’re only selling uniforms dictated by the schools themselves and sometimes, it turns out that their own guidance is still gender specific,” he added.
Stevenson, who is also an executive on the Schoolwear Association, said it was an issue that the whole industry is working on. “We’re all very aware of this issue and trying to be better at it,” he said. “We’re even changing the colours of the packaging that clothes come in to a gender-neutral colour.”
Stevensons’ decision highlights the fact that other uniform retailers have yet to embrace the gender neutrality debate: John Lewis and M&S still market their lines for boys or girls.
Under new plans put forward in the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto, schools would be ordered to allow children to wear gender-neutral uniforms. Layla Moran, the party’s education spokesperson, tabled a bill on the subject in the last parliament. She said the existing rules were “totally out of date”.
“Removing the association of ‘boys’ or ‘girls’ with particular clothes in a school uniform policy may not change the way pupils dress, but it could be hugely important for many young people. It’s time to build a culture of acceptance in our schools,” she said.
Schools in Wales have already adopted a gender-neutral policy, which means there cannot be separate dress codes for boys and girls. The move came after a heatwave in 2018, when some parents claimed school uniform policies were too strict.
But such policies are not always welcomed: parents and pupils protested outside the gates of Priory school in Lewes, East Sussex, after it made trousers compulsory for new and existing pupils.
The school introduced the policy over worries about the length of skirts and apparently in response to the concerns of a small number of transgender students.
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