School Policy - Earrings and PE

This is a reminder regarding our uniform policy around piercings and PE lessons. Our Uniform Policy is designed to ensure our pupils and staff members have the safest experience in their PE lessons. The policy follows the national guidance issued by the Association for Physical Education (AfPE) and has the best interests of our pupils at heart.

AfPE guidance states that:

“Schools have a duty of care to ensure students are able to participate actively without unnecessarily endangering themselves or those working around them. A clear and consistently applied policy for the removal of personal effects should be in place. The Association for Physical Education (AfPE) strongly recommends the practice of removing all personal effects at the commencement of every lesson to establish a safe working environment. This applies to all ear and body piercings, including retainer and expander earrings.”

It therefore states in our policy that pupils should not participate in PE lessons or physical activity whilst wearing earrings or jewellery. This helps ensure all pupils and teachers are safe. We accept that piercings take time to heal and this can be up to 6 weeks. We would therefore always advise that if you are considering piercing your child’s ears, this is undertaken at the beginning of the summer holidays so as to maximise healing time.

Any piercing that cannot be taken out at school will ultimately be detrimental to your child’s physical education.

If a child arrives to a PE lesson wearing earrings, they should take them out and place them safely with their belongings.

• Children are not allowed to tape up earrings
• If a child is unable to remove a piercing, they will be offered an alternative role in the lesson.
• Once children can remove their studs, we recommend that on the days they have PE, they do not wear them for the full day. This helps reduce the time needed to get ready for a lesson. 
• For consistency, this policy applies to all PE lessons, swimming, sporting fixtures and extra-curricular sports activities.
• Staff cannot take responsibility for earrings or other valuables at any point.

Thank you for your understanding.

School Uniform Policy