Fake lashes are now permitted as part of the uniform (Picture: Getty)
A mum has shared her frustrations after a school altered its uniform rules to permit false eyelashes due to ‘mental health considerations’.
Knole Academy in Sevenoaks, Kent, sent a letter to parents after seeing attendance was affected by ‘lash appointments and mental health.’
Headmaster David Collins told parents about ‘students taking time off to have false lashes removed or refusing to attend school through mental health considerations’.
It added: ‘Having students in school is the most important consideration and therefore, from Monday 19 February, we shall allow false eyelashes to be worn as long as they are discrete.’
He added they made changes to uniform ‘when changes in society make a previous standpoint redundant or untenable’.
But one parent of a 13-year-old girl at the school has said she’s furious: ‘It’s making my daughter do it which is causing me a problem because I’m literally having to peel them off her in the morning.
The school has been questioned over the new policy (Picture: Nigel Ramidal)
‘There is a lot of peer pressure at the school. We’re a society being run by children which I’m not going to stand for. Rules are rules and that’s the end of it.’
The mum also said that in allowing eyelashes, the school were making them part of the ‘uniform’.
She added: ‘The next thing would be that they’re going to announce false nails, and then where does it end?’
She described the policy as a slippery slope which leads to more problems but admitted other parents were not as concerned as her about the policy.
‘It’s like they’re snowflakes. They don’t really care, or is it because everyone’s going down the mental health route now?’ she asked.
She also expressed concerns over the fake lashes making children look older: ‘My daughter is quite tall and slim so she already does look older than she is anyway.
‘It’s quite worrying because are they going to start getting the attention of older men?’
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Knole Academy describes itself as an ‘all ability co-educational school with grammar stream and International Baccalaureate candidate school’.
It has more than 1,300 pupils aged 11 to 19 and sent the letter out on February 8 under a subtitle reading ‘eyelashes and earrings’.
The letter read: ‘We are increasingly seeing attendance affected by students taking time off to have false eyelashes removed or refusing to attend school through mental health considerations.
‘We need to balance this against having a standard of dress which helps to create a work ethos and sets parameters for behaviour.
‘In this case, having students in school is the most important consideration and therefore, from Monday 19 February, we shall allow false eyelashes to be worn as long as they are discrete’.
The letter adds rules will also be changed to allow one set of small silver, pearl or crystal studs – rather than just gold.
Metro.co.uk has reached out to Knole Academy for comment.
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