School in New Taipei City makes last May's 'boys in skirts' action permanent. School in New Taipei City makes last May's 'boys in skirts' action permanent. (CNA photo)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Just two months after a week-long experiment, the New Taipei Municipal Banqiao Senior High School (板橋高中) has decided that from the next school year, its male students will be allowed to wear a skirt to class.

Schools officials said they were not encouraging boys to wear skirts but only respecting the free will of their students, the Central News Agency reported Monday (July 22).

A Ministry of Education spokesman welcomed the decision, saying it probably was a first for Taiwan to have adopted such a measure breaking gender stereotypes following a democratic consultation process.

Despite the loosening of the dress code, students at the New Taipei City school will still have to comply to uniform rules stipulating that the clothes they wear, skirts or not, should be dark blue or black. The skirts should also never end higher than 10 centimeters above the knee, a regulation which was left unchanged from before, according to CNA.

During June’s discussions of the new measures, the length of the skirts provoked more heated debate than the decision to allow boys to wear them, a school official said.