Debate contribution: School Uniforms (Trousers) Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Nick Mathison on 30 June 2026.

MLA: Mr Nick Mathison
Party at the time: Alliance Party
Date: 30 June 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Committee Business
Heading: School Uniforms (Trousers) Bill: Second Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5653587

Text

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a real privilege to move the Second Stage of the Bill. As far as I know, this is the first occasion on which the Education Committee has introduced a Bill, so it is gratifying to see it reach Second Stage. The Committee's journey with the Bill began when it undertook Committee Stage scrutiny of the Minister's School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill last year. It is important to note at the outset that that Bill was not, as was suggested on many occasions, just about the cost of uniforms. It was undoubtedly concerned with cost to a great extent, but clause 2 of that Bill stated:
"Guidelines under this Chapter are to include provision informing such policies as to ... comfort and practicality of clothing for pupils".
That is a really important phrase. On that basis, it was entirely right and appropriate that, in its evidence and deliberations, the Committee went beyond the issue of cost, as, in many ways, the Bill directed and required if we were to do our scrutiny properly. On cost and on comfort and practicality, the Committee agreed and tabled a range of amendments to address the issues raised in evidence at Committee Stage. One amendment attempted to address the issue of the choice to wear trousers, but, as we are aware — I will not speak to this in detail — a number of amendments were not selected for debate and the Committee was therefore left to reconsider its options for enhancing the Bill. As the Committee began to discuss the issues, it was agreed that, as with a private Member's Bill (PMB), any attempt to legislate, if that was what we were going to do to address what we considered to be gaps in the Minister's Bill, would need to be narrow in focus to give us any reasonable prospect of delivering a Bill and doing so in this mandate. The many stakeholder responses that the Committee had heard conveyed a strong and consistent message on the choice for girls and, in fact, all pupils to wear trousers as part of their school uniform. That ended up being the area of narrow focus that the Committee decided to look at to try to enhance the Minister's School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill. Many Members will be aware of the powerful campaign that was run by two then primary-school pupils, Rhea and Astrid, who campaigned for the right to wear trousers and eventually secured that change to uniform policy at school level. However, the Committee formed a clear view that we should not place the burden of delivering such change on individual pupils, relying on them to run campaigns at school level, and that, particularly given the Department's legislation that had recently been passed, it was an issue for us, as legislators, to address. The Bill was floated as an idea and has now reached Second Stage. The process that we undertook drew significantly on the evidence that we heard during the Committee Stage of the School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill, but the Committee also put out a survey seeking views on the new proposal to give every pupil the right to wear trousers as part of their school uniform should they choose to do so. We held a range of oral evidence sessions as part of the Committee's preparation for the Bill that is before us. We engaged with the Youth Assembly, the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NICCY), the Children's Commissioner's Youth Panel, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Northern Ireland Teachers' Council (NITC). There was close to unanimous welcome for the proposed Bill because it is seen as helping to deliver equality and choice in a practical and pragmatic way. From a legal and rights perspective, the Human Rights Commissioner advised the Committee that there was, in fact, a strong argument that it could be seen as unlawful sex discrimination not to allow girls the right to choose to wear trousers and that article 10 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women requires a state to:
"take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in order to ensure to them equal rights with men in the field of education".
The Committee felt that the Bill fitted into that equation neatly. The Committee's Citizen Space survey ran from 12 December 2025 to 20 February 2026. We received a large number of responses, and, almost entirely, they comprehensively endorsed the Committee's proposal in the Bill. There was a total of 3,695 responses. On the central question of whether pupils should be afforded the right to choose whether to wear trousers — that is an important element: it is a choice, not a compulsion — as part of the school uniform, 98·21% of respondents indicated that they were in favour. On the question of whether any exemption from the proposal should be permitted, 91·85% said that no school in Northern Ireland should be left out of the provisions. On the basis of that feedback and the other evidence that we received, two draft approaches to developing the Bill were considered. The first was to create a separate, stand-alone Bill with a stand-alone right for pupils to be afforded the choice to wear trousers and to set that out in law. The second proposal was to amend the existing School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Act (Northern Ireland) 2026 to, first, set out that right and then to require it to be included and reflected in the statutory guidelines that were already prepared by the Minister. The Committee went for the second option. We felt that the legislation brought forward by the Department was the most appropriate vehicle to deliver the policy intention. The Bill that we are debating today has five clauses and no schedules. Clause 1 is the key provision in the Bill. It inserts into uniform guidelines the following statement:
"All pupils are permitted to wear trousers as part of their school uniform."
It goes on to require that uniform guidelines:
"must include provision— (a) implementing and giving full effect to the right of all pupils to wear trousers, as part of their school uniform, (b) permitting all pupils to wear trousers, shorts or other leg coverings, whilst taking part in recreational, sporting or outdoor activities, as appropriate for that activity, as part of their school uniform."
That second part is important. In the scrutiny of the Minister's Bill on school uniforms, we got a little tied up over how we could build in provisions on PE, but, when we got to work on this Bill, we found that there is a simple formulation that will ensure that participation in sport and PE, which, we should remember, is a statutory part of the curriculum, is covered by the provisions. We ultimately decided that it was not necessary to define "trousers", although we had an interesting legal briefing, during which there was some entertaining discussion about how we might do that. "Full-length, two-legged garments worn from the waist down" was floated, but we decided that that might obscure the intent. We therefore felt that a common-sense understanding of the meaning of "trousers" was probably more appropriate. The Bill refers to:
"trousers, shorts or other leg coverings",
depending on the activity. That was to ensure that the need for appropriate clothing for sporting activities was reflected. Ultimately, it is a permissive Bill. It is simply focused on creating a universal right to have the choice to wear trousers and enshrining that in the guidance. It seeks to give absolute clarity to every school in this jurisdiction that all pupils can, should they choose to, wear trousers as part of the school uniform and that no permission to do so needs to be sought. Once enacted, the Committee is confident that the legislation will dovetail with the Department's guidelines. It will require them to be amended, and it will trigger the reissue and publication of the revised guidelines in time for commencement on 1 August 2027, which is detailed in the Bill. I anticipate that there is the possibility that the Ad Hoc Committee may need to look at the commencement. When we were scrutinising the Minister's Bill, we found that there were a range of issues around reasonable time frames for schools and when they needed to publish prospectuses. The current commencement date in the Bill is set with the intention of the change being delivered for the next academic year, starting in September 2027. However, if the Ad Hoc Committee finds that another commencement date will deliver the aim in a way that is more manageable for schools, that is for it to discuss. We were clear as a Committee that we saw no reason for the commencement to be delayed until any academic year beyond September 2027. I will make full disclosure about the Committee Bill process. There were initial apprehensions about coordinating and delivering the project on time, but the Bill team's work was impressive. I will be honest: some of the initial apprehensions came from me. As the Chair of the Committee, I was concerned about embarking on a process that would get timed out. I was concerned that we might not complete the task that we had started. I was conscious of the frustrations expressed after the outcome of the previous Bill, where there was a sense among the public, the pupils who had given us evidence and the Committee that the Bill had not delivered in the way that it had the potential to. I was cautious about starting a process that we could not complete, which would raise expectations. However, it is a great credit to all the officials involved that they have moved the Committee rapidly and thoroughly through all the required steps to bring us to this point, which is a big achievement. The officials require significant credit for that. We received advice from the Bill Office on the legislative procedure to deliver the Committee's policy intent. We received research advice from the Research and Information Service (RaISe) on comparative best practice, advice from the Assembly's Legal Services and iterative engagement with the drafter as the Bill progressed, and that was all delivered promptly and, in many instances, ahead of time. In particular, it is appropriate for me to thank Barbara Love, Niamh Devlin and Maeve Corrigan for working together with the Committee Clerk to define the work and complete it in time to get us to the point where the Bill will now, hopefully, receive the endorsement of the House to move to an Ad Hoc Committee Stage, with the strong hope that the Bill will complete its passage in this mandate. The Committee considered whether there would be a reasonable excuse for exemption from the central tenet of the Bill to be considered. We considered the evidence received from independent schools, particularly the Free Presbyterian Education Board of Presbytery, which had requested an exemption based on its school ethos, which privileges distinctions in dress between boys and girls, males and females. The Committee considered the matter and discussed it in detail. The Committee took legal advice and ultimately decided against an exemption on the basis that the Bill offers a choice to pupils, rather than restricting them or requiring them to act in a particular way. It is a permissive Bill rather than a restrictive one. I will conclude my remarks as the Chair of the Committee, by saying that it is an important function of law and for legislators, when they make law, to reflect the values and norms of the society that we live in. Over the time since many school uniforms were designed, the societal norms have changed, and most people who gave evidence to the Committee were incredulous about the inflexibility of some schools about uniforms. That was a consistent theme in the evidence during the ministerial Bill and the Committee Bill. Law is most effective when it is clear, accessible and simple and when the public can clearly understand what the legislation does and translates to in their lived experience. The Bill does all those things. It sets it out clearly to all schools that every pupil can choose to wear trousers or equivalent for sports, should they wish. I commend the principles of the Bill to the House. I will now make some remarks as an Alliance MLA. I will try not to cover any of the technical information that we have gone through and talk more about the principles of the Bill. MLAs talk an awful lot about listening to young people, particularly in the Education Committee, and that is undoubtedly a good thing and the right thing for legislators to do. However, the complaint that we often hear from the young people whom we propose to engage with is that we may engage, but they are not convinced that we really listen. They are not convinced that their views are factored into the policies and legislative decisions that we take in tangible ways.
I am not suggesting — this is rehearsed in the Education Committee quite regularly — that engagement with young people means that we take their views and, without scrutiny, apply them to everything that we are doing. As legislators, we are always balancing competing views, voices and priorities. However, I really feel that there is a risk of losing young people's confidence in our political processes if they consistently feel ignored and cannot hear their voices or views reflected in any of the outworkings of the decisions that we take in this place. The Minister's School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Act — it was a Bill when the Committee looked at it — is one of the clearest examples that I can think of where young people took their role in engaging with legislation very seriously but ultimately felt that the Minister and Department had effectively disregarded their views in their entirety. I set out the processes for Committee amendments in my remarks as Chair and will not repeat them. I know that I cannot speak to them in detail in this context. However, I will note — this is not in relation to the amendments that we tabled — that, at any time during the amending stages, the Minister could have brought forward his own amendment that took account of the clear evidence that we were hearing from young people. Alternatively, and I think that the Committee would have been open to this, he could even have given us assurances on the record that he would put in place statutory guidance addressing the concerns that young people were raising. However, he chose not to do so. I note that he is not in the Chamber to respond. I am not quite clear in my mind as to why he is not here. The Bill interacts directly with legislation that he introduced and impacts directly on the functions of his Department. Perhaps the Minister will issue a written ministerial statement to explain that to me. Understandably, young people were baffled by and, indeed, angry at that decision and approach. It was principally for that reason that the Committee took this Bill forward. The reasons why the change is required are so obvious to most people — certainly, to most people who gave evidence to the Committee — that they almost do not need to be set out. However, as some people, including the Minister, do not think that the change is necessary, I will cover some of them, really for the sake of completeness. The first point is that women can choose to wear trousers in any other aspect of life, including working life. Therefore, I see no reason why we should put additional restrictions on the choice afforded to our young people. We would not place those restrictions in workplaces or, I would add, on the teachers who teach in the schools that those children and young people attend. The approach is outdated and speaks more to the interests of preserving tradition or gender stereotypes than it does to delivering a modern, progressive approach to educating our children. When it comes to participating in PE, the evidence that we heard was clear: girls almost unanimously advised the Committee that they would be far happier and far more comfortable taking part in sport if they had the option to wear shorts, leggings or tracksuit bottoms. However, in many schools, that option was still not provided to them. We heard evidence on period dignity for girls. So many young people talked about feeling anxious and uncomfortable having to wear a skirt when they were on their period, with some even choosing not to attend school on occasions for that reason. Surely, if we could take action to address even that, it would be a reason to take forward the Bill's provisions. We heard about some of the sensory issues that children experience. We heard about how some primary-school children in particular struggle to learn comfortably when in a restrictive skirt or forced to wear tights. In my view, those children should not have to go and seek special accommodations to be allowed to wear something different as their uniform, although many schools are very flexible when they do. Affording the choice that the Bill introduces avoids the scenario where anyone has to become a special case and make a pitch to a board of governors on why there should be flexibility. The Bill creates an inclusive environment from which everybody will benefit. A whole range of other evidence was heard on comfort more widely: warmth in the winter, being able to engage in active travel to and from school and making it easier to participate in a play-based curriculum or outdoor learning at primary level. We heard about all those things in detail. I do not feel as though I need to go into any more detail than that. It is 2026, and I do not accept that this proposal is controversial. That is why there is some frustration around the issue. As I mentioned, I admit that, when the discussions about a Committee Bill started, I was a little sceptical, not only because of timing issues but because my strong sense was that the Minister was the person who was accountable. He could resolve this with the stroke of a pen. He could, should he choose to do so, change the guidelines and have them in place before we break for summer recess.
I will, yes.
I thank the Member for the intervention. Yes, it is disappointing that the Minister is not here today. I will be fair to him: he was clear that he was not going to do it. That was his position from the outset. However, if he had been prepared to do that, it would not have taken up Committee time, Bill Office time or Legal Services time, and it would not have incurred the costs associated with drafting a Bill. I say all that in the context that I believe that it was still the right thing to do, but, for some reason, there seems to be an ideological commitment to the preservation of the independence of schools, and the Minister chose not to do that. The explanatory and financial memorandum that comes with the Bill includes part of the Minister's correspondence to the Committee, and, based on that, it appears that he does not have any particular objection to girls having the choice; rather, he seems to think that, by requiring schools to consult on uniform policies, which his Bill required, young people's views will somehow naturally be adopted by those schools. That quite clearly did not happen with the consultation on the Minister's own Bill: when young people were asked, their views were ignored. Unfortunately — I say this with regret — I have no confidence that pupils will be unanimously heard at school level either. Many schools offer really sensible, flexible uniform policies, and I want to put that on the record. Many schools do that really well, but others, regrettably, do not. To me, only legislation will guarantee the behaviour change that we need. It is not good enough for a Minister to say to young people, "But I give you permission to go and campaign. You run the campaign. Look at Rhea and Astrid: didn't they do so well?". He could give them that right tomorrow but is simply choosing not to. I do not accept the argument that there is some sort of sanctity around the independent right of schools to set their own uniform policy with no central direction being required. That just does not cut it for me. The right to afford all pupils a simple choice to deliver comfort, equality and dignity is one that I would far rather deliver than making sure that the traditional values of a particular school are preserved. That is the simple choice that the Bill provides: do we care more about schools preserving their traditional values and the image of their school that they want to project, or do we want to deliver simple equality and dignity for all pupils? That is a straightforward question that, I hope, every Member in the House can answer sensibly today by supporting the passage of the Bill. I sincerely hope that the Bill, with its simple and straightforward provisions, can make its passage through the Assembly and receive support today. Young people have made their views crystal clear to us as legislators that this should have been delivered already, so let us actually listen to them this time and make this small, simple, progressive change for our children and young people a reality.

3,637 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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