School uniform and dress codes are increasingly controversial in the United States of America in relation to the binaries they set up between genders, races and socio-economic classes (Edwards and Marshall, 2018). In Scotland it is generally accepted that school pupils will either wear a prescribed uniform or follow a school dress code. The underlying discourse is that this helps with ethos, discipline and achievement. Other arguments for school uniform include the prevention or reduction of bullying, theft, gang violence and the mitigation of inequalities (the level playing field argument) by minimising the difference between varying socio-economic backgrounds that a common uniform or dress code may provide. This research project sought to understand the reasons that schools in Scotland give for requiring a school uniform to be worn and how school policies and guidelines position young people at school.

The difference between a school uniform and a school dress code is understood as a school uniform being a set list of required items of clothing that must be worn in school as opposed to a dress code which specifies the types of clothing that must be worn and/or what is, or is not, acceptable (Edwards and Marshall, 2018).

While beginning from a rights-based approach, the theoretical framework for this research is on two levels, firstly drawing on the work of Foucault, in particular, Discipline and Punish (1975), and then on a second level using feminist critical policy analysis (FCPA). From a feminist perspective it has been argued that school dress codes are part of the discourse that girls are responsible for how others react to them (Raby, 2005; Pomerantz, 2007). The Foucauldian lens was used to understand how school uniform or dress codes are used to control and impose self-surveillance on pupils, and the feminist lens was used to explore how female pupils and their bodies are ‘othered’. The FCPA focus is not only to see where there are distinct differences but also to highlight prejudice or unconscious bias (Bensimon and Marshall, 2003). By using this framework, it is hoped to recognise how these policies create and recreate a gendered reality and future for both male and female pupils.

Therefore, this research sought to answer the following research questions:

1. What reasons do schools in Scotland give for having, or not having, a school uniform?
2. What control and surveillance can be interpreted from secondary school uniform policies?

While the requirement to wear a school uniform is not widespread across Europe, there will be private and/or international schools where it is a requirement and many schools will have dress code policies in which similar issues relating to gender will be apparent, for example the wearing of headscarves by young women in schools in France.

To begin with the justification for having a school uniform was considered. Then uniform policies were investigated to see if there were differences between the uniform for male and female pupils, for example was there a separate uniform list for boys and girls, was it stated that girls could wear trousers and shorts. Finally, each policy was re-read to see if there was any reference to pupils who are transitioning gender and how this would be dealt with under the uniform policy.

All state secondary schools in Scotland have a website with information for parents/carers, pupils and prospective parents. The school websites contain publicly accessible information on school uniform and/or dress code policy. These policies or guidelines are in Word document or PDF files and so are easy to access. The website of every secondary school in Scotland was located and then the school uniform policy or dress code guidance document was downloaded and then imported into the computer assisted qualitative data analysis software programme NVivo. At the researcher’s institution NVivo is the licensed software available for qualitative data analysis. Each school uniform or dress code document was put in a folder for the relevant education authority so that differences between authorities could be explored through coding queries (Bazeley and Jackson, 2013). A series of pre-determined codes were made, and other codes were added as the analysis unfolded, for example the sub-codes of ‘required’ and ‘optional’ were added to the uniform item codes. Coding comparison was undertaken to ensure that there was reliability in the coding. This can be done within the NVivo programme. While no sensitive information about schools or individual school pupils is being collected in this project it was still felt advisable to gain ethical approval for the research project from the researcher’s institution. Content analysis of the uploaded documents was performed through inductive and deductive coding. During analysis it was decided to also analyse school behaviour and discipline policies and to include them in the analysis for a school if these policies referred to school uniform or dress code, for example the penalty or sanction for not wearing the school uniform a certain number of times.

Initial analysis has provided insights into how school uniforms are justified or not. So far, all schools analysed have separate uniform information for boys and girls, but no reasons are given for this. In nearly all policies examined so far there is no mention of changes being made or exceptions to the school uniform on the grounds of being transgender or non-binary. The primary conclusion to be drawn from the first part of the study is that school leaders are unaware of the control and gendered discourse their school uniform policies promulgate. Furthermore, there is no reference to how pupils have been involved in decision-making processes around whether to have a school uniform and if so, what it should entail. While other jurisdictions, outside the UK and Ireland, may not have such strict uniform policies, the frameworks of control and gender will be of interest as school dress codes can also enact the discourses of surveillance and patriarchy. As Graham, Treharne and Nairn (2017) note, it is incumbent on researchers to highlight how schools produce and reproduce normative gender discourses and to explore how to disrupt these discourses. This research is a start in identifying these discourses in Scotland and a next step will be to identify how they can be effectively challenged and replaced.

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