Worcester school branded 'degrading' after replacing mirrors in toilets with motivation posters
A headteacher at a secondary school has responded after replacing all the mirrors in a girls' toilets with motivational posters urging them to stop wearing make-up.
Christopher Whitehead Language College and Sixth Form in Worcester, a mixed secondary school with around 1,200 pupils aged 11 to 19, has been criticised by parents for its decision.
A picture shared online showed one that read: "If all girls started wearing no make-up and comfortable clothes, guys would have no choice but to fall for girls because of natural beauty."
The posters were based around self-image, make-up and society.
Others read: "Beauty is nothing without brains" and "Dear Girls, make-up is a harmful drug. Once you start using it, you'll feel ugly without it."
"The school has removed all mirrors from the toilets (including the boys), however in the girls' toilets they’ve covered the wall in place of the mirror with ‘inspirational quotes’, however they are far from that," a parent said.
"The quotes are degrading. This is not the message we want to be sending to extremely impressionable girls as young as 11," the parent told Worcester News.
They added: "In the boys' toilets, they’ve blocked off some urinals only leaving two available, as well as removing the door of the toilet completely leaving anyone to be able to look in."
Responding to the backlash, the school's headteacher Neil Morris said the mirrors in the toilet had been removed temporarily after a "period of misuse".
He added the posters were then put up by the English department as a way of sparking debate - but admitted they should have been placed in the classroom instead.
Mr Morris said: "Mirrors have been removed temporarily after a period of misuse where the toilets became a congregational social area with older students blocking the path to toilets, whilst they socialised, often late to lessons. All students have been written to.
"The English department has used this as an opportunity to provide some argumentative discursive letter writing. They put some provocative posters up in the one toilet area in their corridor before the lesson.
"This has produced some ‘frenzied’ powerful writing and debate. With hindsight, the posters should have been placed in their classroom area, not in one toilet."