The headmaster who sent 200 schoolgirls home must be applauded

Three very loud cheers please for headmaster Alun Ebenezer, who sent 200 girls home from school this week because their skirts were too short. Many of these girls who were 13 or 14 were also wearing false eyelashes and fake fingernails. 

But instead of parents being grateful that, finally, a headmaster was enforcing the rules at this underperforming school and trying to protect their daughters too boot, many were furious. Some actually cried.

Cried! For what? Because Ebenezer was doing what THEY should have been doing – trying to protect their teenage daughters from harm? And, yes, in an ideal world women and girls should be able to wear exactly what they want without being attacked or, worse, raped.

But we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world peopled by freaks and weirdos and rapists who even when they’re caught rarely get prosecuted.

Do parents really want to play that kind of Russian roulette with their daughters’ safety? 

Since time immemorial, girls have hitched up their school skirts the minute they leave the house. The difference is, back when I was at school, that little rebellion lasted until we walked through the school gates where teachers would insist we pulled our skirts back down. Those who didn’t were sent home. 

And had I complained to my mum about those teachers who were just trying to protect my modesty, she’d have grounded me for a month for being so stupid.

Alun Ebenezer hasn’t been at Caldicot School, Monmouthshire, South Wales, for long but Ofsted says it needs to improve. So he thought a way of doing that would be to enforce the rules already in place – rules that say girls have to wear skirts to a certain length, in this case the knee. 

To that effect, he sent a letter to all parents warning them that this was about to happen.
“Students will not be allowed to walk around school if the guidelines are not followed,” he stated.

So he was clear. And if my child was at that school, I’d be delighted that at last there was a headmaster who wasn’t afraid to impose rules or authority on children who think the rules don’t apply to them. 

But no, many of the parents were up in arms. They even objected to 13-year-olds being told to remove false eyelashes! 

What the hell’s wrong with these people? They’d be the first shouting the odds if their daughter was attacked by some testosterone-charged lad. They’d be screaming that their daughters should be protected in school, yet they’re savaging the bloke who’s trying to do just that.

The fact is a teacher’s role is to teach and enforce authority, but authority is long gone from so many of our schools which is why many are performing so badly. Teachers end up having to corral and control kids instead of teaching them.

Katherine Birbalsingh, one of Britain’s best headteachers, often referred to as its strictest, says: “Our detractors don’t believe in the authority of teachers to stand at the front and lead learning.” 

And she’s right – we indulge kids way too much. Their freedom of expression, their opinions, their wants shouldn’t trump what the teacher or the headmaster wants. 

What Alun Ebenezer was trying to do here was about so much more than skirt lengths. He was trying to re-enforce authority in a school which is performing badly because authority has been ignored. 

Children need stability and structure to flourish. They want adults to set red lines and when they’ve accepted those red lines, that’s the moment they begin to learn. 

Ask Katherine Birbalsingh, who runs Michaela, one of the best performing schools in the country in one of the poorest areas. Parents fight to get kids into her very strict school because they see them achieving results they could never have dreamed of. 

And that’s all because Birbalsingh says: “You follow the school’s rules – or don’t come here.”

And that’s exactly what Alun Ebenezer should do. If those parents creating hell last week don’t like the rules at Caldicot School, send them somewhere where there are no rules. 

See how their kids turn out then. 

Because asking a teenage girl to keep her skirt at a length that doesn’t expose next week’s washing isn’t an infringement of her civil liberties. It’s an attempt to protect her and it’s teaching her to respect authority.

Parents who don’t get that deserve exactly the kind of wild children their sloppy “no rule” lunacy will produce. Trouble is the people who’ll really suffer in the long run – are the children!