Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Finnegan): I welcome Nick Mathison MLA, the Chairperson of the Committee for Education; Pat Sheehan MLA, the Deputy Chairperson of the Committee for Education; and Aoibhinn Treanor, the Clerk of the Committee for Education. I invite Nick to brief the Committee. Pat and Aoibhinn, you are welcome to make further remarks if need be. We are short on time, so I encourage you to be as concise as possible.

Mr Mathison (Committee Chair - Committee for Education): Thank you, Chair. This is a bit of a reversal. I feel as if the tables have been turned. I hope that there is no karma in store for me that will make this a rough ride. [Laughter.]

I hope that I have treated witnesses well when I have been sitting on the other side of the table.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to present to you today. I will run through what I hope will be a brief presentation. I spend my time at the Committee for Education saying to everybody about how long they take, so just give me the nod if we run over. We will then be happy to take questions.

The Education Committee's journey with the School Uniforms (Trousers) Bill began when we undertook the scrutiny of the Minister of Education's School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill. That Bill centred on affordability, but stakeholders who gave evidence to the Committee on that Bill brought a whole range of perspectives on issues such as sustainability, uniform restrictions, comfort, sensory aspects and flexibility with uniform policy. At that time, the Education Committee had tabled a number of amendments in areas in which, we felt, the Minister's Bill did not go far enough to address the range of issues on which we were taking evidence. Bearing in mind the evidence that you will hear today, we tabled an amendment on the right to wear trousers. At that time, however, the Committee tabled a very broad amendment. We took a range of advice and evidence, particularly from youth stakeholders, who were very keen on an amendment that reflected taking a gender-neutral approach. I will not read you the text of that amendment, as I am sure that you have it in your pack.

You will be aware that, as it turned out, the vast majority of Committee amendments were not selected for debate in the House, so none of those amendments was made. We reviewed our options at that stage, as there was a very strong appetite on the Committee to address the issues around affordability as well as the comfort and dignity aspects. We received so much evidence on those issues, particularly from youth stakeholders, who were astounded — I am not overstating that — that being given the choice to wear trousers was not going to be in the Bill.

We then discussed a range of options and decided that it was appropriate for the Committee to legislate. I assume that this is covered in your pack, but there was some difference of opinion among the political parties that are represented on the Committee. There was not full consensus, and we can unpick that when we answer your questions, if that is helpful. Ultimately, however, there was a desire to find a consensus position so that we could move forward with some legislation.

We began to develop a potential Bill. Although we had heard extensive evidence, we put out a survey to seek further views. We landed on a proposal to give all pupils the right to choose to wear trousers as part of their school uniform. The proposal was therefore permissive rather than prescriptive, which is a really important point. As well as the survey views, we held a range of oral evidence sessions. I would say that there was as close to unanimous support for the Committee's proposals as possible. Our Citizen Space survey, which ran from December 2025 until February 2026, received 3,695 responses. On the central question of whether all pupils should have the right to choose to wear trousers as part of their school uniform, we had a response of 98·21% in favour. The Committee felt that that was a very clear and comprehensive endorsement of its proposal.

On the question of whether there should be any exemption to that right, 91·85% of respondents said that no school should be left out of the provisions, which should cover all schools in Northern Ireland. Taken along with the legal and human rights advice that we received, that response therefore influenced the Committee in deciding against any exemption on any grounds. Again, we can take questions on that if Committee members want to explore it further.

In developing the Bill, we looked at how we could create legislation that could be activated quickly so that there would be no lengthy delays. We had to decide whether it would be a stand-alone Bill that would be separate from the Department's Bill. When we were discussing that, the Minister's School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill had not yet received Royal Assent, so we were looking at having a stand-alone Bill. As things progressed, however, and when the Minister's Bill received Royal Assent, it felt more coherent to keep the policy to the same legislative provisions and to bring our Bill under the scope of the existing legislation, while ensuring that the guidelines reflected the right to choose to wear trousers.

Very briefly, I will summarise the content of the Bill. It has five clauses and no schedules. Clause 1 is the key clause. It inserts into uniform guidelines in the School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Act (Northern Ireland) 2026 the statement:

It goes on to require that the guidelines that the Department publishes, which are statutory guidelines, must include provision that gives:

and a second provision that extends that to participation in sport. Again, we can take questions on the details of those provisions.

We also considered enforcement provisions. The School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill had its own set of enforcement provisions in place, so, by factoring that new provision into the existing guidelines, the same enforcement principles apply. Ultimately, if a school is found not to be adhering to the guidelines and not affording that choice to pupils, the Department must make a direction to the school in the event that it finds it to be in breach of that provision. There is also always the option of resorting to judicial review, should that be required.

Other evidence was heard, and it is important to highlight the Human Rights Commission's evidence to the Committee. The commission provided very detailed advice to us during our work on the proposal. As far as I understand it, a convention rights memorandum has been shared with your Committee. The chief commissioner's summary was that the fact that this is permissive rather than prescriptive legislation means that it is a Bill that will enhance rather than restrict rights. Again, that helped clear the pathway for the Committee to take forward its Bill. It is important to note that the chief commissioner also provided very clear advice that the commission felt that there was a very strong argument that, if a school were not to allow a girl to wear trousers as part of the school uniform, it could leave the school open to a claim of unlawful sex discrimination. The Human Rights Commission highlighted a case from 2017, which was settled out of court but that dealt with those issues, where it appeared that there was a likelihood that that would be the finding.

I will mention exemptions very briefly. We considered whether there should be any exemptions or excuse not to comply with the Bill's provisions, as we had received contact from the Free Presbyterian Education Board of Presbytery, which had asked for an exemption to be built in, given the religious ethos of its schools. The Committee took legal advice on the issue and discussed it in detail. Again, we decided against including an exemption, on the basis that the Bill offers a choice rather than adopts a prescriptive approach.

There are a couple of other things for me to mention briefly before we move on to taking questions. I will talk a little bit about some of the detail in the Bill. There was extensive discussion about how to define "trousers". That took us down some quite bizarre routes on what legal language would describe a pair of trousers, but we were very glad when the drafter came back to say that they felt that a common-sense meaning of trousers would be understood by everybody. I will not go into the detail of some of the definitions that were floating about. It is harder to define than one might think when one gets into the detail. We also ensured that the Bill refers to:

That is to cover what is worn depending on the activity, because we were very keen for the second provision in clause 1 to ensure that participation in PE was covered.

There was some discussion about whether uptake and compliance with the Bill needed to be monitored, but we felt that that was an undue burden to place on schools and the Department. The enforcement mechanisms in the existing legislation had been strengthened by Committee amendments, and we felt that those would probably be sufficient.

I will finish with one reference to commencement. The Bill as drafted has the commencement date down as 1 August 2027. When we were dealing with the School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill, there was an issue about what an appropriate commencement date would be. The Department brought us some evidence on requirements for schools to publish prospectuses, which must include their uniform policy, at a specific point in the year. We had a desire to ensure that we would give schools the opportunity to have the provisions in clause 1 in place for the next academic year, hence the commencement date of 1 August 2027, but it may be the case that the Department will want to give your Committee evidence on whether it feels that that is a manageable timescale for schools to meet. We felt, however, that it was important, if we were to get the legislation delivered in this mandate, to look at the next academic year as being a reasonable starting point for the provisions.

That is really all that I have to say. That was a bit of a whistle-stop tour of what brought the Committee to the point of introducing the Bill. This has been said at our Committee, but I put on record my thanks to the officials who worked on the Bill at considerable pace to deliver the proposals. It was always going to be a difficult task to get it delivered so quickly, but they really delivered. I also thank the Deputy Chair, who, from the outset, argued very strongly for the need for legislation. We also had good cross-party support on the Committee to get us to this stage.

The Chairperson (Ms Finnegan): Thank you, Nick. Pat, do you have any comments to add?

Mr Sheehan (Committee Deputy Chair - Committee for Education): No, I am happy with what has been said.

The Chairperson (Ms Finnegan): You are happy enough that everything has been covered. Aoibhinn, you are happy enough?

Ms Aoibhinn Treanor (Committee for Education): Yes.

The Chairperson (Ms Finnegan): Good stuff. We will open it up to questions now, and I will start. You have answered my question on leg coverings. We discussed that before you came in. I get that you have to try to cover all aspects when talking about PE. When you were discussing proposals for the Bill, what was the rationale behind choosing the commencement date? Did you consider an earlier date?

Mr Mathison: I referenced it briefly, Chair, but I am happy to give you a little bit more detail. When we were discussing the Bill, the Bill team supporting the Committee took the view that, if we wanted the provision to be developed for September 2027, we needed to give schools a reasonable run-in time. The date of 1 August 2027 was therefore suggested. Given that we did not know how long it would take for the Bill to go through the Assembly processes, we felt that, had we gone for an earlier commencement date, it might not be deliverable.

I have to be honest about the Committee for Education's discussions. Members were pretty open-minded about the commencement date that was chosen, but there was a strong desire to see the provision in place for the next academic year. If this Committee feels that there is a need to take evidence from the Department on what would make that date more deliverable, that is absolutely in its gift, but we feel that a commencement date of 1 August 2027 will give enough lead-in time in the summer for the legislation to be implemented. I do not know whether the Deputy Chair has a different view, but I have no objection to an earlier commencement date.

Mr Sheehan: We want the provisions to be implemented as quickly as possible, but we understand that there are practical difficulties with doing so. I would like the legislation to be in place tomorrow, but that is not going to happen. We took advice from the Bill Office and others about what was a reasonable date to suggest, and 1 August 2027 was the one on which we landed.

The Chairperson (Ms Finnegan): OK. Thank you. I have one more question. We have looked at the extensive evidence that came to the Education Committee. I know that there was a lot of talk about the provision, and the Minister then decided not to include it in his Bill, which was regrettable. One of the positions that he took was that girls can already ask for permission to wear trousers. There are two points to make there. First, as a woman, I will not be wearing skirts for lots of reasons, one of which is the cold weather. Secondly, as a woman, the mother of a daughter and the auntie of a niece, I do not think that, given that girls have periods, my daughter should have to ask permission from the school to wear trousers because she is having her period and may be afraid of a leak, want a bit more protection or whatever. For me, that is a discussion for inside the home. On that basis, and given the decision that was made at the Education Committee, can, at this very minute, schools still say no? If so, has the Minister provided any pathway for tackling that?

Mr Mathison: I am happy to speak to that. Again, if the Deputy Chair wants to come in with anything additional, he can. We, as a Committee, were very clear. There is some difference in political opinion, however. To be clear — this is all on the record — the DUP members of the Committee were very keen to prioritise the autonomy of schools. They wanted to give schools autonomy over such decisions. That was their position. The members from all the other parties around the Committee table were of the view that girls should not be required to go and ask for permission. It is great if they go to a school that makes a proactive decision to give them that right, but what if a school does not do so and they then have to go and make a special case when it comes to issues such as period dignity? We do not feel that we should put any child or young person in that position. We do not think that women should have to lobby for their rights in a school environment.

Although we paid great tribute to the youth campaigners who came forward, having mounted fantastic campaigns in their school, we do not think that they should have had to do that. Under the 2026 Act, there is no mandatory provision for the wearing of trousers, so it is clear that, if a school did not proactively offer provision, pupils would have to ask for it. The only area in which the Department has to intervene — again, as a Committee, we are not convinced about the effectiveness of the provisions — is on affordability issues, if a school is seen to be in breach of the guidelines. It is not clear to us whether those measures are robust enough, but, on the trousers issue, it is clear that there is no mandatory provision in the current legislation, so we felt that doing this was an absolute requirement. I completely agree that no young person should be put in the position of having to campaign for their period dignity before their principal or, potentially, a room full of men on a board of governors. That just does not seem appropriate.

Mr Sheehan: One young girl who attended a rural primary school told us that pupils sometimes went into the field beside the school for nature study or whatever. She said that it was unfair that, when they went into a field where there were nettles or brambles, the boys could wear trousers but that the girls were not allowed to. Her evidence to the Committee was powerful. It is absolutely disgraceful that, in 2026, a girl or a young woman should have to ask somebody for permission to wear a pair of trousers.

The whole Act is disappointing. Now that schools have reopened after the summer holidays, we are hearing anecdotally that parents are paying no less this year for uniforms than they did last year. Moreover, the Minister could have resolved the issue with the stroke of a pen. He could have issued statutory guidelines stating that all girls have the right to wear trousers. He would not do it, however. That meant that the Committee had to go to the Bill Office and commission drafters. Drafters do not come cheap, let me tell you. Although this is not a lengthy Bill, it costs money and takes up Assembly time. All that use and, in my view, waste of resources could have been resolved by the Minister, but he did not want to do that. Why did he not want to do it? My view is that, in 2026, somebody who says that girls cannot wear trousers or that they have to ask for permission to do so is in dinosaur territory.

To me, this is pretty straightforward: girls are going to be given the right to wear trousers. Given that the Human Rights Commission has already said that, in referring to a case that was won on the basis of sex discrimination, this is straightforward legislation.

Ms Treanor: From a procedural perspective, a Committee Bill is unusual. At the beginning of the previous mandate, several party manifestos and statements from Members expressed a wish to make Committee legislation. After the hiatus, however, that disappeared from the agenda. The non-Executive process is usually better known through work on private Members' Bills, the work on which is done sleekly. Things are progressed by a single Member and a team of secretariat staff. Such Bills come to the Assembly when they have been developed and unintended consequences have been vetted out.

There was a bit of apprehension about whether it would be more unwieldy to have nine Bill sponsors making all the decisions, but there was real desire among Committee members for the Bill, and they and secretariat staff responded well in order to get this done. The prioritisation and narrowing down of the proposal was a significant factor in making it an effective proposal that was accessible to people. The Chair and the Deputy Chair have talked about how the Bill is permissive. When it comes to unintended consequences, its being permissive is reassuring. No foreseen impacts were identified as detrimental consequences in legislating for the measure. The Human Rights Commission's chief commissioner mentioned equality impact assessments (EQIAs), but, for the Committee's reassurance, there are no EQIAs in a non-Executive Bill development process, so, although the Assembly is a designated authority for section 75, that applies to the functions of the Assembly Commission and not the work of individual Committees. In the time available, we managed to follow all the processes and procedures. I hope that that will help you run your process within the mandate.

The Chairperson (Ms Finnegan): Thank you very much. That is useful. I will now bring in members.

Ms Sheerin: Thanks to you all for coming in and presenting. Pat, you gave a wee bit of an explanation of how the political side of things unfolded. All of us watched it from the sidelines. We know that there is a gender pay gap and that women and girls cannot access equality in the way in which we wish them to, but, on the surface, there is no forum that I can think of in which sex discrimination is the status quo and is permissible other than in schools, where it is really obvious. Did you receive any rationale from the Minister for why he would not make a policy change in order to do this easily? In the submission, you stated that DUP members of the Education Committee had different views from other members, but they have always said that they supported the change in principle.

Mr Mathison: We were offered two strands to the rationale. The first was that the autonomy of schools needed to be protected and that it was not appropriate for the centre to direct schools to have that level of granular detail in their uniform policy. The second — the Deputy Chair and the Committee Clerk can correct me if I have missed any others — was more along the lines of the legislation that the Minister was introducing giving pupils the right to lobby for what they wanted at school and building in a process whereby pupils would have to be consulted when the school revised its school uniform policy. That is the rationale that was set out, but I will be clear: I was not persuaded by it. If we translate that to the workplace and imagine a scenario in which women in the workplace had to lobby their employer for the right to wear trousers, there seems to be a major disconnect there. I did not find that rationale persuasive or feel that it was acceptable, and that is why we are where we are. I think that most members around the Education Committee table were of the same view.

Mr Sheehan: Judith Gillespie, the former Deputy Chief Constable of the PSNI, said that, when she was in the RUC, any female officer who wanted to wear trousers had to ask their superior officer. On many occasions, that superior officer refused permission to the female officer to wear trousers. Girls could therefore be in that situation now. A girl could go along to the school principal, or, more likely, she would have to lobby the board of governors, and the board might say, "No. You will not be permitted to wear trousers". That is the situation in which we find ourselves.

Ms Sheerin: Sorry, but I need to understand. What rationale was presented for why the autonomy of schools had to be protected? As constituency MLAs, one of the biggest problems that we have —.

Mr Sheehan: There is no consistency in that position. In many other areas of the education system, schools —

Ms Sheerin: It is enforced.

Mr Sheehan: — are dictated to by the Department or the Education Authority. There is no real rationale behind it, in my view. I said that we are in dinosaur territory when we talk about not giving girls the right to wear trousers, and that is really what is behind it, more than any rational argument about why the provision should not have been part of the Minister's Bill. You can work it out for yourself.

Ms Sheerin: Go raibh maith agat.

Ms Treanor: The Bill will continue the work on gender budgeting that the Committee did with the Period Products (Free Provision) Bill on period poverty in the previous mandate. The Bill will also raise awareness that not giving girls the right to wear trousers at school is unlawful sex discrimination.

Mr McMurray: Thank you, Nick, Pat and Aoibhinn. Some of my questions have been answered, but your point about the autonomy of the school versus the autonomy of the individual was an interesting way in which to band it up. Both of my questions stem from that dichotomy. First, you have expanded on it a bit, but is there anything more that you can say to explain how the Committee has got to the place of having an Ad Hoc Committee to see this Bill through as a result of that point about autonomy of the school versus the autonomy of the individual?

Secondly, I think I think that you said that there were 369 responses, Nick.

Mr Mathison: It was 3,695.

Mr McMurray: I had a conversation about that with someone and could add another response. You will not be surprised to know that that response is along the lines of, "Are we even debating this?". That was from a 21-year-old woman. Pat and Nick, what message was being conveyed by young people in their responses? Those are my two questions. Sorry for banding them together, but I thought that it would be easier to do so.

Mr Mathison: I will be brief, and I am happy to bring in Pat afterwards. The autonomy of the school versus the rights of the individual is probably the best way in which to frame this. It just does not make sense to me, given that the Minister's Bill was all about telling schools what they had to do with their school uniforms. He told them that they had to consult, had to ensure that school uniforms are affordable and had to publish details of supplier arrangements. That is not giving schools autonomy. Rather, that is highly directive. I therefore do not know why this issue is different. There was no rationale for me on that that stood up to scrutiny.

On the feedback that we got from young people, the evidence taken on the School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill was ostensibly, though not exclusively, about affordability. It was very clear in the Bill's explanatory and financial memorandum that the Bill was about more than just affordability. Every single youth organisation and young person who presented to the Committee referenced the issue of girls not being allowed to wear trousers. Some framed it around gender-neutrality, but the vast majority referred to issues to do with period dignity and girls feeling able to travel actively to school: on a bike, for example. All the issues concerning upskirting and so on were raised. I could list examples all day long. It was also about basic comfort. The evidence was unanimous. I could break down the survey results, but you have them in your pack. It was very hard to find any significant number of people saying that they had was any issue with the proposal. There was overt support for it.

Mr Sheehan: I will stand corrected on this if I am wrong, but I cannot recall any young person who gave evidence to the Committee agreeing with the current policy. Every young person who gave evidence supported the right of girls to wear trousers, for all the reasons that Nick outlined: active travel, period dignity, upskirting and equality. There was no dissent whatsoever.

The Chairperson (Ms Finnegan): Thank you for coming in, Nick, Pat and Aoibhinn. I also thank you for all the work that you have done on the Bill. Clearly, a lot of work has gone into it. Thank you very much. We appreciate your giving of your time.