Almost 100 students were expelled from class at a high school in the Mekong Delta on Tuesday because the width of their trouser legs was less than the requirement the school had set.
The management at Ha Huy Giap High School, located in Can Tho City, checked the sizes of the trousers of over 1,100 tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders and asked nearly 100 to go home and change their clothes, as their leg diameter was up to 8 centimeters short of the required length.
Only half of the dismissed students returned to the classroom later the same day.
School supervisors then warned 20 others whose trousers failed to meet the standard, and requested that they promise to fix their clothing by next week.
Nguyen Thanh Phu, the school’s president, explained that this was the enforcement of a regulation that has been in effect for four years.
Ha Huy Giap students are accordingly required to wear pants whose leg openings are 18 to 20 centimeters in diameter, Phu elaborated.
“We did not tightly enforce the rule in the previous years but we have to be strict with the students this year since many have worn trousers whose legs are merely 12 centimeters in diameter, which is not suitable in the educational environment,” he told local newswire VnExpress.
The city’s education board has protested the dismissal, saying it has not promulgated any such regulation.
“Even though this is the school’s own rule, it is inadvisable to send students home just to change their trousers,” said Tran Hong Tham, vice director of the Can Tho Department of Education and Training. “The dismissal was inappropriate.”
In Vietnam, school students are required to wear uniforms to school, with girls donning Ao Dai (a Vietnamese national costume consisting of a tight-fitting silk tunic worn over pantaloons) or shirts and skirts/trousers, while boys are dressed in T-shirts tucked into dark blue trousers.