Pre-schoolers at a Perth primary school will be allowed to go barefoot if they feel like it under a policy being introduced next year.

It’s claimed it will help with “posture and sensory awareness”.

The head of podiatric medicine and surgery at the University of Western Australia told Tom Elliott the school had over-simplified the matter.

“I can understand why they are thinking this, and as a podiatrist we often get parents coming in and talking about footwear in children and when they should wear shoes, but I do think it’s being over-simplified and I don’t know where they’re getting their data from about the supposed improvements in gait and posture, because there is nothing plausible in the literature that supports that,” Dr Burke Hugo said.

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