Pupils at a Kent school will now be allowed to wear fake eyelashes due to “mental health considerations.”
Uniform policy at Knole Academy in Sevenoaks, Kent is set to be changed as students were missing classes.
Parents were sent a letter informing them of the decision after attendance was affected by students wearing them.
Headteacher David Collins said students were missing school to have their lashes removed or refusing to attend without them.
Knole Academy in Sevenoaks, Kent introduced the policy
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The letter said: “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.”
“Having students in school is the most important consideration and therefore… we shall allow false eyelashes to be worn as long as they are discreet.”
However, the announcement was met with backlash by some parents, who questioned the rules.
One mother, whose daughter, 13, is a pupil at the school, said: “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.”
She said that in allowing fake eyelashes, the school was encouraging the girls to adopt age-inappropriate looks. The mother added: “It’s quite worrying because are they going to start getting the attention of older men?”
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The school announced the controversial policy (file pic)
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She added: “I get that girls experiment, and they will do things like this, but I just think it’s not part of the uniform. It’s making eyelashes part of the uniform for children.”
“The next thing would be that they’re going to announce false nails, and then where does it end?
“”I thought I might have been a bit crazy because I’m a lot more strict about it. It’s like they’re snowflakes. They don’t really care, or is it because everyone’s going down the mental health route now?
“False eyelashes make children look older…If you’ve got an 11 year-old with lashes on she’s going to look 14.”
“We are allowing this to take over what the actual role of the school is. They’re all going to do it. They’re almost being told by the school that they can do it so they will do it”.
Knole Academy in Sevenoaks, Kent, describes itself as an “all ability co-educational school with grammar stream and International Baccalaureate candidate school” reports KentLive.
It has more than 1,300 pupils aged 11 to 19 and sent the letter out on February 8 2024. Under a subtitle of “eyelashes and earrings” the letter said: “We review out school rules on a regular basis and make amendments when changes in society make a previous standpoint redundant or untenable.”
