(UK) Banned: Schoolgirls are forced to take off chastity rings [View All]

[muriel_volestrangler]

Heather and Philip Playfoot have spent almost two years in dispute with Millais School in Horsham, West Sussex, over their 15-year-old daughter Lydia's ring. While the school's uniform rules forbid jewellery, they argue that the rings - given to teenagers who complete a controversial evangelical church course preaching sexual abstinence - hold genuine religious significance.
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Knight told him in a written parliamentary answer that while school governors had freedom to set uniform rules, government guidance states that they 'should have regard to their responsibilities under equalities legislation' and be 'sensitive to pupils' cultural and religious needs'.

Selous said while many schools banned jewellery he did not see a problem with purity rings, adding: 'Given that the government is failing to avchieve its teenage pregnancy targets, you would have thought that schools would do everything in their power to help children help themselves.'

However Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society defended the school, adding: 'If the school has the uniform policy I don't see why it should make an exception for this. I'm deeply distrustful of these Silver Ring Thing-type initiatives: the research is quite clear that they don't work.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1800271,00.html

I agree that it's really another form of jewellery - it says "look at me" just as much as a normal ring. And the best argument for school uniform - that it stops competition and showing-off of how much the children's families can afford - applies especially to jewellery.