Secondary school uniform seems really expensive!

[confusedofengland]

After months of waiting anxiously, DS1 has been offered a place at our preferred secondary school, hooray! We are really pleased & excited.

However, I have just started filling I'm forms & looking at costs & it is super expensive, compared to primary school! I'm looking at around £500 for uniform, locker & 'voluntary' contribution I really hope we can afford it as we are both out of work due to Covid so struggling anyway At least DS2 & DS3 have uniform sorted for primary school, they can wear hand-me-downs!

Somebody told me that DC get more expensive the bigger they get, and I am certainly seeing it now

Wouldn't bother with the locker. I paid a £5 deposit for the key in year 7 but DS didn't use it, too much fuss. Voluntary fees are voluntary, don't pay if you can't afford it.

Try the second hand uniform pool for uniform. I bought mostly new when DS started year 7 but it's lasted three years. I bought size 12 that was a bit big but looked fine. I'm buying second hand for the school specific items this time.

It's ridiculous, especially the pe kit. I had to pay a fortune for football boots that were worn twice and then outgrown.

PS in all the school photos there are several children wearing enormous blazers, rugby shirts etc so I think a lot of parents buy things several sizes too big so they will last longer.

We got around everything except the sports kit.The school then changed to an acadamy,not much change to the main uniform but completely new sports kit.In the last year rd went back to wearing the older style shirts.I told the school that we had bought 3 sports shirts,all labelled,all went'missing'along with a lots of the other girls trainers.
Thankfully 6 form college has no dress rules.
Don't pay voluntary contributions and do check out second hand stuff.Don't buy a new bag for school,wait a term as anything new you buy will be 'wrong' by then.

Yes, I hate paying out for the football boots every year for a child who hates football. Our second hand uniform shop does sometimes give a discount if you donate something in great condition at the same time as buying something else though :).

I posted on the local Facebook page and managed to get about £200 worth of second hand uniform for £30. Blazer, tie, 5 logo tops, 3 pe tops (different sizes), 1 pe shorts, tracksuit top and trousers (about £60 new) and 4 school jumpers. The only item that actually looks worn is the blazer so going to take the badge off it and sew it on a supermarket blazer!

Definitely check but DD needed all of the items on the list, no cutting corners allowed.

Get 5 shirts, most are polycottom and they stink when coming home. Unless you can wash under the week, get a set for 5 days.

DD has blazer, jumper and skirt with very specific requirements, no plain stuff allowed. PE Kit also comes with Logos, names embroidered and from one shop only.

The only good neues, it is now 2 years and I have to replace items. Only socks and shirts had to be bought each year.

Also check stationary lists, we had to buy a good selection of items ourselves and the school just announced more for the upcoming year as no more sharing of equipment will be allowed.

Lockers were free so far but are now £30/year.

Voluntary contributions- where do you think lots of things like workbooks, library books, kitchen equipment etc are coming from? Schools are notoriously underfunded, ours is £50/family/year.

Secondary is expensive for the start but I found the rest of the year is cheaper as less PTA fund raising, no gift buying for teachers, less parties.

Luckily DD’s school doesn’t have a blazer, so I only spent about £50 in jumpers, tie and PE kit. Her Y6 shirts and trousers still fit, so I’ll be buying a couple of skirts and then the shoes - though I’m wondering, with Covid, if I should buy another couple of jumpers... we’ve been reliably told that the aprons don’t get used, so I’m not buying them for now. We haven’t been asked to pay for lockers (yet), just to bring a padlock.

DC's school have said they envision that lockers will not be in use in September as they are all in banks very close together and require students to crowd round to get at them. i.e. not great for social distancing! So that might be worth checking (DC's school has formerly had a no-bags-in-corridors-lockers-are-mandatory policy, so this is a big change for them).

Check they will need a blazer straight away. It’s been in the news that they might be banned in September for virus control (they aren’t washed as frequently as other uniform).

Also, the voluntary contribution is exactly that. Voluntary. If you can’t afford it don’t pay it, or just pay what you can afford, eg £10/20

I'm confused... why do pupils have to pay for lockers?
Our DC have to provide a padlock for their lockers but what's to pay for?

Also recommend the classic sizing up of uniform - my DD has had one blazer throughout secondary school.

As for amount of uniform to buy, we started on one skirt and 3 shirts with midweek laundry, then added in a second skirt & extra shirts along the way and for PE kit definitely speak to other parents, generally there's no need for specific kit, if you're not in the relevant school teams.

Your school will no doubt send you out a list of uniform items that are required, probably with notification of where you can get them from. Ours also helpfully included photos of shoes that would be acceptable and ones that would not, info like that is really useful. Our school also has a school coat and logoed schoolbag that they have to have, they aren't allowed anything different.

I bought the two sets of PE kit specified but we have never used the outdoor kit, as my wussy DS is exempt from vigorous outdoor sports. If I had realised I would have saved myself the expense of it, although fortunately I didn't buy the shinguards, football boots, football socks, etc that were all supposedly mandatory. (For some reason all the parents I've mentioned this to have made clucking noises and "Those bloody shinguards, three years and he's never worn them once!!!")

Do check your area and see if there's a used uniform bank; I donated loads of good quality M&S uniform items to ours and was really relieved it would be rehomed and save another parent some cash.

I'm confused... why do pupils have to pay for lockers?

Our is £10 and it's effectively a deposit for the locker key (they are not the sort of lockers that need padlocks). I think you get it back when you leave the school. £95 is ridiculous!

Ours have to pay for lockers too. The school own the lockers and hire them out to kids who want one...not that confusing surely? It’s £15 a year for ours, you get £10 back if you haven’t lost the key! So £15 then given my children 🙄🤣

My sons school has a Facebook parents page. And lots of people sell their uniform or give it away in there. I would check if your school has one of those

Wow some of these costs are making my eyes water!

I'm a secondary teacher and at my school they can wear generic everything - except the tie. No charge for lockers (unless they lose the key).

What an eye opener!

Gin No, not a private school just strong on tennis as a sport played by both sexes, and in small teams.

I’ve realised I spelled racquet wrong. Trying to do too many things at once

My kids school uniform isn't too bad, it's about £60 for the blazer I think and skirts were maybe £25 each. But it's the PE kit. It's eye watering. About £45 for the PE bag, £15 for the socks. The hoodies and leggings are all branded Canterbury stuff and they're compulsory, you can't swap them for generic plain stuff. Hoodies are £50, leggings about £35, and the waterproof jackets are about £60. Most of the PE kit has their names embroidered on it, so unless you can find a child with the same name you can't even buy secondhand. Lockers aren't too bad, I think it was £15 or so at the start of year 8 and that is for all 7 years. Then there's £250 annual fees plus £200 voluntary contribution, then £50 for home economics, £30 for art equipment. By the time I factored in music lessons (which obviously aren't compulsory, that was our choice) I think the first year of secondary cost us about £1200. We did get two years out of the PE kit though, so that was good. Oh, and the school website shop is only open for one week each year, so you can't spread the cost of buying things, you have to buy them in one go. If you lose them, there is a very limited supply available to buy from the school but it involves a begging trip to the vice principal's office to be scolded for losing the stuff which is enough of a disincentive for the pupils not to lose stuff in the first place. And the personalised PE kit means no one can steal your hoodie etc, so there is an upside.

No blazer here, just a jumper £15, tie £7.50, sport kit comprising of short sleeved top, long sleeve reversable top, shorts and socks £35, that is it for the compulsory elements. A mere £72.50 if you do two jumpers.

Then it is just white shirts and black trousers available anywhere, plus shoes, trainers, football boots and shin pads.

We have a £15 tech contribution so all food for food tech is provided by the school, none of this I need potatoes or whatever to take into school.

Lockers were £10 and you got £5 back if you didn't lose the key.

Best advice re sports kit, teach them to remove item from their body and immediately put it into their bag, that way they know they haven't got it mixed up with anyone elses nor do they leave it behind. Mine even used a caribiner to clip their sports bag to their school bag so they wouldn't forget it under a desk!

I had never heard of the voluntary contribution before joining Mumsnet. I mentioned it to a few of my teacher friends and they had not heard of it either. Our county is quite a poor one though (low wages etc)

Ours isn't too bad even though they introduced a stupid expensive compulsory skirt last year (and it's hideous) to stop girls wearing short skirts and wear trousers instead. Apart from said skirt it's about £30 for a blazer, £20 for the PE kit and £5 for the tie - the rest you're allowed to buy anywhere, so you can keep costs down.

No uniform at all in 6th form, just a relaxed dress code - most 6th formers show up in jeans.

DD went for her uniform fitting yesterday for her new secondary school. I was prepared for it to be more expensive but nearly fainted at the total cost. The only generic thing I can buy is school blouses, everything else has to have the school logo or name on inc PE kit. It also doesn't help that we need more uniform as her time is split between my house and her dads.

DS’s uniform cost me £400 in year 7, didn’t include trousers or shirts (M&S) shoes or trainers.

DD1 was nearly as much as she is sporty so I did buy optional PE kit, but I was given a blazer. I bought one skirt (£35) and then waited for one the same size on the PTA Facebook page and paid £10.

Fortunately she is going into year 9 and is in the same uniform as year 7

Yesss! £403 yesterday but no shoes, trainers or school bag!