Debate contribution: School Uniforms (Trousers) Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Mr Nick Mathison on .
- 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 5653715
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will not speak for long, and I do not plan to rehearse everything that has been said. However, I begin by doing something that I overlooked when I spoke at the beginning: thanking the Deputy Chair of the Committee who first proposed the Bill. It is important to note that it was the Deputy Chair who started the conversation. We appreciate that. We have talked a lot about the different views and about whether this is a good idea or not such a good idea. It is important to reflect, very quickly, some of the comments that we received from stakeholders who contributed to our Committee evidence. That will remind Members that this is not about what we think or our opinions; it is about what the people who matter think — those who have to wear the uniforms every day. A member of the Children's Law Centre's youth panel put it really well. They said:
"I think the reluctance to do this is really worrying, because the biggest issue is that not enough young people feel comfortable at school as a whole, not just physically and in a practical sense, but safety-wise and identity-wise, and that really needs to change".
We should be listening when we have a young person saying that it would be "worrying" if we did not take this forward. Cara Hunter and then Claire Sugden raised issues around period dignity. We heard from the Menstruation Matters charity, which made a comment that sums up the concerns around why this is a good thing to do from the perspective of period dignity alone. It said:
"We are deeply disappointed in the Education Minister's School Uniforms Bill blocking school students' choice to wear trousers. Girls are telling us what they need, so why aren't we listening to them?".
That is the question. Young people, particularly girls, are telling us what they need on this issue. If we have learned anything from the experience of the School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill, it is that, when we fail to listen to young people, they will, perhaps, decide that they do not need to listen to us. We need to take seriously their concerns. These are not radical proposals; that is clear. I do not plan to go through every Member's contribution in the debate, because the theme of most of them was the same, namely that it is hard to understand why we are having to debate this in 2026. However, I want to pick up on one particular thing. I tried to intervene when Julie Middleton was speaking. I appreciate that the DUP is not going to divide the House, because it is important that the Bill goes through and has the opportunity to be scrutinised further at the ad hoc committee stage. I hope that it progresses to law. However, the position of the Minister and the DUP, which Julie reflected in her comments, is that there should be a focus on school autonomy — that that should be a core principle. I cannot put that argument together, because, if we look at the Minister's School Uniforms Bill, we see that it requires schools to do a lot of things. It puts in place some things that schools are mandated to do. It puts in place statutory guidance. I will name a few: the school uniform must be affordable, so schools have no autonomy on that; and schools must consult with parents when they are changing their policy, so they have no autonomy on that. I could go through every one of the guidelines. The Minister's Bill puts in place things that schools must do, so a line has been drawn on issues in which schools should not have autonomy. We accept that when we look at minimum content in the curriculum: we say that schools should not have autonomy. Certain content is required at a minimum, which schools must deliver, regardless of whether they like it. We can also look at how we monitor assessment. The Minister is bringing through changes that will mean that it is not acceptable for a school to say, "We're not going to assess children or monitor their progress". Rather, schools will be told, "These are things that you must do". It does not matter if they do not like it; they do not have autonomy in all things, and that is the purpose of legislation. It is a question of where you draw those lines and where it is appropriate to give schools autonomy — in some cases it is — and where it is not. Young people told us clearly that this is a fundamental issue for them. They expected that their legislators would simply listen to them and deliver. We failed to do that, and we have to set that right. I thank everybody who spoke in the debate and everybody who supported the work on this Committee Bill. I hope to see it pass, and I thoroughly recommend it to the House. Young people will thank us if we can get this one thing done in the Assembly today and in the months ahead as we get the Bill through to Final Stage.
873 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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