new school uniform's is a con

[james1900]

ever since schools have been sold and become private i.e academy
the local authorities who are running schools are over charging for school uniforms'

Average Cost of a Junior School Uniform 2019

The basic school uniform including a pair of school shoes and trainers costs around £160 per child on average—£180 with a blazer—if your school doesn't require school logos (giving you flexibility on where to shop). Prices range significantly depending on your choice of retailer and the age of your child, with parents paying anywhere from £70 to £250 or more to dress their child for school. Read below to learn more about average prices for school uniform by age and gender. Those needing to buy uniform emblazoned with the school logo will most certainly pay even more.

Average Cost of School Uniform Items

Excluding shoes, we found the average cost of a basic list of school clothing is £96 per child. Add in a pair of PE trainers and school shoes, and the average uniform cost jumps up to £162 per child. Since a basic, plain blazer averages £18, we estimate the total uniform cost including trainers, school shoes and a blazer would be £180.

As your child grows, so do the costs of a school uniform. Between age 4 and 11, expect costs of basic clothing to rise by over 40%, as you can see in the following chart. You'll also notice that the uniform for a girl will cost a bit more than for a boy. While many items are sold unisex (e.g., shirts), you'll find skirts tend to cost a few pounds more than boys' shorts. And if your daughter wears a pinafore, expect to add a few more pounds to the uniform cost estimate

My DCs never had 5 pairs of jeans in a given year.

Kids here wear leggings, jeans, sweatpants, t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, cardigans, comfortable shoes or boots. They don't wear a fresh item of clothing every day unless what they wore got ruined by food or paint or whatever.

The clothing can all be washed and worn on weekends, to parties, to visit great aunt Bertha, to play after school.

Clothing is usually chosen with comfort and washability in mind. Children can easily play outdoors and take part in messy school activities without parents complaining.

Clothes worn when the weather gets warm in spring are worn all summer (summer break is almost 3 months) and into autumn.

The cost of civvies is well worth it.

they wouldn't need 200 quid worth of clothes every year.

I can only imagine that’s true if you shop in Primark, but those clothes wouldn’t last long enough.

I’m pretty sure I spend more than £200 each on clothes for my kids (mainly supermarket stuff) even given that they spend most of their time in uniform.

The stuff you buy from uniform suppliers is not better quality than what you'd buy from Primark, but you pay a hell of a lot more for it.

The logoed uniform I buy for my kids through their school is really good quality, way better than the supermarket unbranded stuff (which they are also allowed to wear).

Logos/ties/very specific cuts and colours of uniform are basically head/governor vanity projects. Uniform suppliers stuff is definitely no better than supermarket and is the biggest reason for poor families taking payday loans.

Even Govt. guidelines say this stuff should be affordable and unbranded. Why isn't every school just expecting black or grey skirt or trousers, white shirt or polo and a plain black or grey jumper? Simple, plain and affordable.

To the poster who said people will spend money on a cleaner or a holiday, so what? It doesn't make branded logo'd stuff any less of a waste of money.

The logoed uniform I buy for my kids through their school is really good quality, way better than the supermarket unbranded stuff (which they are also allowed to wear

Then you are lucky. However that's not always the case. If what you got was worth it then there would be less of a problem.

No 30+ item of clothing should have the lining coming undone . Most people would return a 5 pound product for doing that and likely not purchase again. Yet here we are having to spend it

For many items there is zero difference in thickness of material, fit, comfort, composition. But some piping and/or a logo turns a 4 pound skort into a 16.99 skirt.

If supermarkets can produce items that last. I have an asda pinafore that lasted several years and did 2 kids.

I have 2 5 pound tesco skirts that lasted from yr 3 to yr 6 and are still all good for dd2.

I have a next skirt I paid 50p for at a second hand sale. It's still going strong having been through at least 3 children.

So why is it many of these expensive items are falling apart, thin, see through, and 100 percent polyester exactly like ones available in supermarkets at 1/3rd the price.

What the hell is wrong with a smart black.or grey pleated skirt that can be purchased from.£4.

What fuck wit wakes up one day and says "you know what our school is missing? A hideous polyester tartan monstrosity that parents have to pay 20 quid for and just for good measure we will make sure that it cannot be washed with any other items except maybe our blazer"

Cos that's the other slap in the face isnt it. That you then have to put the washing machine on for 2 items.

Someones having a bloody laugh.

"Cos that's the other slap in the face isnt it. That you then have to put the washing machine on for 2 items"

Not good for the environment

Grass the school up to Extinction Rebellion. You never know they might do a little demo at the school.

Thatll put a stop to it

Is it not an option to buy the logo from the school to iron on yourself ? Back when i was at school my mum just bought packs of logos and sewed them or ironed them onto the clothes she bought at the supermarket. What do these schools expect low income families to do when they can't afford the cost ? Starve the children to pay for it ? Miss out on other household bills and fall into debt ? Its madness you can't punish people for being poor and not been able to afford something!

I can only imagine that’s true if you shop in Primark, but those clothes wouldn’t last long enough.

I’m pretty sure I spend more than £200 each on clothes for my kids (mainly supermarket stuff) even given that they spend most of their time in uniform.

I never spent more than a few dollars (US) each. Maybe max $50 including a new swimsuit and underwear and socks, and shoes. I passed clothes and shoes down to the DDs and DS got clothes from friends - bags of clothes did the rounds every season.

When they got to puberty clothes cost more because they grew faster and developed different body shapes and tastes. DS's shoes in particular nearly bankrupted me - his feet grew to the biggest size they could before needing custom made footwear, and he went through 3 or 4 pairs a year. This would have been the case if he had worn uniform though. As it stood, he wore cheap baggy sweatpants or basketball shorts to school.

After the first week, when they all paid a lot of attention to their clothes, my newly-free-fro-RC-school-uniform DDs got over themselves and developed the healthy habit of picking whatever was clean or smelled ok from the top of their bedroom heaps to wear to school. Brand consciousness tends not to be a thing when you get used to wearing whatever you want.

My DCs wore uniform to elementary school and changed as soon as they came home. Uniform items were far more expensive for girls than boys - plaid pinafore or skirt plus banded bottom shirt for girls, only available via the official supplier, but khaki style trews and short sleeved polo shirt for boys that could be bought anywhere. No logos except on optional sweatshirts, and certainly no blazers. These are considered a necessity to an education only in the UK.

There was a uniform exchange where you could dump your old uniform items and get other people's used things (free). For girls, the pinafore or skirt cost between $40 and $50, and the banded shirt was in a similar range. Boys' gear could be bought for less than $10 apiece for each item.

In secondary they wore civvies. PE uniform (unisex - nylon shorts and cotton/poly T shirt printed with school name and logo with a space to write your surname) was available in the school bookstore for $15. You could rent a spare kit from the PE lost and found for 50 cents a class if you forgot yours, obv with no guarantee of a clean one or one that fit. Weirdly enough, despite not having a fancy logoed PE kit, the school still produced teams that were acknowledged national Number 1 teams in two sports in particular, and several Olympians.

*And disgusting as it sounds, the school issues school swimsuits for mandatory swimming lessons, with the assurance that they are all boil washed nightly. Speedos for all...
This is actually a big improvement over naked swim classes that used to be the case up to the late 70s.

(All swim classes always sex segregated).

I’m glad that you can get good quality items at a reasonable cost from your supplier, noblegiraffe.

I can’t.

Ive just checked - the swim trunks ds needs to have are £16 on Schoolblazer. They are standard speedo trunks, in navy. Available in John Lewis for £13 (not in a sale) and on amazon for £11. That’s an unacceptable mark up, but at least this particular item is available elsewhere - no such luck for the overpriced tracksuit (£40 for the top, £32 for the bottoms) which cannot be tumble dried, so it’s a tricky job getting it washed and dried overnight in winter - home after 6pm from a match, kit needs to be back in school by 7.30am next morning. Same for the sports top (£36 - 2 different colours required). And they don’t last very well - trying to find a decent wearable one in the school second hand shop is a tricky business.

At least with ds I can buy his school trousers elsewhere, rather than pay the stupid prices for the ones from schoolblazer - I couldn’t do that for dd’s pinafore/skirt due to colour/pattern requirements (again £40ish pounds each)

I don’t think it’s normal for schools to have branded swimming trunks as part of their uniform.

Yes, sure. Pick the one item that I already mentioned I can get cheaper elsewhere.

It probably isn’t typical, but it’s ds’ school policy. Thankfully, swim shorts (being an actual reputable brand and of decent quality) are also one thing that is readily available in the second hand shop, so I don’t have to pay the ridiculous supplier price anyway.

But no comment on the other items? The ones not available elsewhere, of crap quality, at vast expense, that don’t fit your mould of ‘good quality items at a reasonable price from school supplier’?

Far easier to ignore.

I posted upthread that if you are being charged well over the odds for a logoed kit then that is a reasonable complaint.

But that it doesn’t apply to all schools. If your school is doing it, it should be challenged, and the government supports this.

If your school insists on branded swimming trunks then that’s fucking mental.

But who is defining 'well over the odds'? The schools will argue that their pricing is in line with other uniform suppliers and therefore 'fair'. Even though irl no one would contemplate spending £40 on a tartan skirt for a child. And most families would need two of them because of the washing

Noble the problem is that the government doesn't support parents who are being ripped off because there are no hard sanctions for schools whose it. There are just guidelines, which these schools get away with ignoring. That has to stop. Hit schools in the budget when they have rip off uniforms, or better still put them straight into special measures, then maybe they'll fall into line.

There are plenty of sad face newspaper stories about parents cross that their kid can’t wear Nikes and a skinhead haircut to school.

Maybe there should be a few more ‘my school insists on branded swimming trunks for £££’ instead.

Yes, insisting on branded swim shorts is odd. Although, tbh, I couldn’t cant email it as more odd than insisting on a particular tracksuit, or a particular hideous tartan skirt.

If a school wants a uniform, and one for sports as well, then swimming is as much a sport, requiring the children to look uniform, as football, or rugby, or netball - all of which have their own uniform requirements.

That particular insistence is the least of my uniform worries, given that I can buy it for less elsewhere, and not fall foul of the uniform policy. (The fact that it isn’t explicit on the suppliers site that the trunks are ‘just’ speedos until you’ve paid the overinflated price is more annoying).

That is the point that most posters on this thread have been making - a single supplier, for impossible to find elsewhere items (due to stringent uniform policies) is not acceptable.

The one item you insist on coming back to doesn’t fall into that category, given it is widely available elsewhere (and also available second hand since it is a good quality item that lasts), and I only used it as an illustration of how single suppliers with a monopoly clearly overinflate their prices, as they are selling this item at over recommended retail price.

No idea what ‘email’ in my second sentence is an autocorrect for. ‘Think of’, maybe?

noblegiraffe

I can see some sad face paper stories coming tbh. Once it starts being a bother to people other than the poorest, then you'll see people taking note. When little Tarquin and Sebastian can only have 1 horse riding lesson that week because they're uniform has cost £200.

Tbh I can't really see the problem with Nike and skinheads to school either. Trainers are comfortable and kids tend to own them already.
When my son's were in primary, they all had buzz cuts - nits were rife in their school, so it seemed practical. They were happy because there was less hair washing!

That said, if school want a uniform, I'm happy to buy it but I think they ought to be more reasonable and meet parents halfway. I don't appreciate feeling like a cash cow to the school, particularly as we already meet other costs such as photocopying, paying for 'compulsory' swimming lessons and insurance for school trips etc. It's not like we are refusing to help at all.

How are people still missing the bloody point.

I would kill to be able to kit out my kids for 200 quid. God knows on shoes and trainers alone that's 200 quid.

Its not just about the logo. Yes the logo items are expensive and often shit quality.

It's the deliberate attempts to ensure that it not only costs a fortune but that uniform cant be re used.

Take the pe kit.

A sensible smart pe kit could easily consist of black or blue shorts. And a polo shirt and a plain black or navy hoody. Navy joggers and/or a plain generic black or blue skort.

All available in asda individually well under a fiver. Pack of 2 polo shirts 2.50 ffs.

But no that's not good enough.

Piping required for skort. 16.99 please. And make sure the name.is embroidered on it so no one else can ever use it.
No hoods allowed. Fuck your 5 pound plain.black asda hoody and take this 19.99 crinkley shell suit material logo oversized jumper.

2.50 polo shirt? Nah far better to have another thin polyester sports top with a logo and of course no cheap thrifty arses allowed here cos we must have our names embroidered on the front. Either we pay 12.99 + for the privilege or we just call every child we ever have Susan Smith so we can re use the pe kit.

Oh and kids just love to belong dont they so we can have them all in different houses. Ha ha ha look at you all trying to match up sizes, sexes and houses in your sneaky cheap little uniform.swap face book groups... go right ahead a new head starts next term.and it's all gonna be fucking useless anyway...

Dont fret however we are going to make.it easier for you. It's all available at this web site. Will cost you 5 pounds delivery , 5 pounds To send back, we won't be able to deliver all of it and refunds take up to ten days but think.of all the fun you can have when you get sent home for not having an item we have made unavailable anywhere else .

Tell.me how much of that is actually necessary. Even to obtain good quality stuff given no one seems to believe it could possibly he a pile of shit cos schools never screw up right

And yes, as some others have mentioned - compulsory name embroidering is the latest one to prevent uniform handing down. Done at a small extra cost from the official supplier of course - means no more handing stuff down between siblings (I do the A + B Smith name labels thing) and no selling on easily (unpicking machine embroidery is nigh-on impossible).

School my relative's kids are at in one of the most deprived areas in a very very deprived city is pulling this stunt now - so no more passing jumpers down between siblings as it has to be A. Smith on the outer back of the neckbands of all jumpers etc.

Leveller huh

Oh fgs embroidered full name is ridiculous.

I used to have to have my initials embroidered in outside of sports kit, in house colour, but this was done (as was convention then) with a thick thread, using a chain stitch easy to unpick.

My ds’ school insist on full name on large (inch deep) name tags in outside of sports kit - that’s bad enough, but full name embroidered in everything? That’s utter madness.