A mother has responded to a school’s order to remove her teenage son’s spreader earring – by replacing it with another which has a skull image on it.

Nicola Mills, 38, kept her 14-year-old son Harry Blaber at home for the first full week of term after Thamesview School kept placing him in isolation because they say he breached school uniform policy.

The full-time mum, from Truro Road in Gravesend, ordered a new earring to replace his previous ring - which had a hole through the middle - in hope that the school would find it more acceptable.

However, yesterday Mrs Mills received a letter saying that the earring was “not discreet enough” and giving her a week to replace it yet again.

Mrs Mills said she is refusing to order any more earrings, branding the school “pathetic” and arguing that the new skull-adorned accessory is plain enough for school.

Spreader earrings work by inserting increasingly larger pieces of jewellery into the piercing, stretching the lobe to create a hole.

Mrs Mills said: “I got a letter saying that the replacement isn’t discreet enough.

“When it arrived it wasn’t as much like the picture as I thought, but the face is so tiny you can’t see it unless you’re close up. But you can’t get anything more discrete than what he has already got.

“The school have given me a week to get something else. I am not ordering anything more. The one he has got is fine. It’s pathetic that the school don’t like it.

“It’s not about the cost, but if you are constantly taking it in and out you are obviously going to eventually split the ear.

“There should be no reason to take it out because it is plain. The school are finding everything possible to use against my son. They are concentrating on image rather than education.”

Speaking last week, Mrs Mills said she had no regrets allowing her son to get the piercing, arguing that it is cleaner and less dangerous than a regular stud.

Thamesview School declined to comment, however, the uniform policy on the school’s website states jewellery is not allowed within school except for a watch and a “single discreet stud” in each ear.