Daft school rules

[sunhasgotthis]

Inspired by another thread. What were ridiculous rules or procedures when you were at school or at your kid's school? We had a toilet paper monitor who handed out sheets of toilet paper. We had to specify number of sheets (up to three) in the communal area! Seemed totally normal to me at the time though! Another was boys in infants weren't allowed long trousers.

In seniors, a particular P.E. teacher would pull towels off people as they came out of the communal shower to check they had nothing on underneath and were wet. She single-handedly put a number of girls off sport and exercise at school. Awful.

In kid's (primary) school it's probably just practices that some schools still do, despite research showing little benefit of (and in some cases harmful) - pen licenses, behaviour RAG display, attendance awards, busywork homework etc.

We had a PE teacher do the towel thing when I was in high school. The second I could stop organised sport I did and I’ve never been back. Awful when you think about it.

I think modern uniform rules are far too inflexible given how rapid the change in workplace dress has been. Blazer and tie all day and rigid shoes. No thanks! (Just to say, I understand the conformity part etc, I just think they could pick more comfortable uniform)

On DDs timetable last year, they had PE, lunch, Dance.

They had to change back into uniform for lunch (then back into kit)

Also if they had pe or dance last period, they had to change into uniform to go home, but can go home in kit after a sports club.

I'm a teacher. My new school doesn't allow Velcro shoes. I teach year 1 and spend a great chunk of my day doing up (wet 🤢) laces. It's madness.

Most of the completely pointless rules in the schools that I have worked in are about uniform but as most staff and parents cannot imagine a world without uniform, we have to stick with it.

At one of the schools I went to children on free school meals had to sit at a designated table together. We collected out food from the canteen with everyone else but weren’t allowed to sit with the children who’d paid for their lunch. They got rid of the rule in my last year. Several of the teachers were obviously embarrassed about it would apologise to the kids, but it was a rule they were obliged to enforce. It was so Othering my brother and I refused to have free school meals after the first few weeks and just went hungry when we couldn’t scrape the money together.

Christ, I can only imagine the shitstorm my mother would have created if a teacher had pulled a towel from around my naked body!

We had 3 tables in the dinner hall that were only for packed lunches, the packed lunch kids went in first. After they had eaten and left the now vacant tables, the kids who had school dinners and couldn't find a spare table were still not allowed to sit at the empty packed lunch tables so had to walk around with their trays until a 'school dinner' table became free.

In the winter we had to wear a particular scarf. A school one that was made of proper wool and was incredibly itchy and brought me out in a rash as I was allergic to it. We weren't allowed to wear pur coats to go between the school buildings, blazers only, so when it was very cold I really needed that scarf. My grandmother made me one that was looked exactly the same, but of a material I could actually wear, but they refused to let me wear it. I was really cold!

Oh that is madness. Our preschool specifically only allows velcro for exactly that reason.

I’m still baffled that when you asked to go to the toilet some teachers said no!

We also had to wear blazers which were stiff and horrible and offered no insulation. No coats were permitted, even when it snowed!

A local primary school made children with additional needs wear a different coloured jumper to make them more easily recognisable to playground staff up until about five years ago!

In our new school in the 60's the gym and swimming pool entrance was through the boys changing area. It caused all sorts of issues especially if you were getting changed for the swimming pool! I recall some of the looks of the girls when we were changing.
Needless to say the place has been demolished.

😱😱😱

Years ago when I first started teaching I used to read a column in an actual newspaper by a very serious education professor who had been a proper teacher since World War 2! One week he did a wonderful piece about school rules he said his favourite was a school that listed them numerically and 112 was Don't leave hockey sticks lying around in stupid places! Isn't that great.

In high school, year 7s weren’t allowed to buy chips at lunch to combat unhealthy eating 😂😂

A couple of odd procedures I remember from primary school were:

For PE, we'd get changed into vest and pants in the classroom, then put shoes on without socks to walk to the assembly hall, then do the PE barefoot.

Whenever we left the classroom, it had to be locked: I suppose this was so we didn't do silly things with stuff in there, we had proper scissors in those days! This meant lots of lining up and being counted before going out, several times each day, and then again on the other side of the door. Children who dawdled were threatened with being locked in.

@RawBloomers The "free meal tables" reminds me of a scene in Grange Hill where the pupils all rose up against this at once, standing on the tables and shouting.

So glad my (deprived) area focuses on kids being in wearing anything resembling the uniform, within reason, rather than stupid arbitrary rules!

The attitude is wear what you have but come to school, which is 💯 imo.

Students were not allowed to walk along the section of corridor past the head's study. We had to up the stairs just before the study, along the top corridor, then down the stairs just after the study.. Also we had "skirts will be between 1 and 4 inches from the floor when kneeling" As I went to school in the '70's this was difficult to enforce as they didn't make our school skirts that long! We also had "girls will wear beige socks in winter and white socks in summer" along with "girls will wear brown underwear in winter and white underwear in summer". The last one came in after our summer dresses changes from all cotton to a polycotton mix and the brown knickers showed through!

We had to wrap our school books that we wrote in. Always remember coming home looking at the different spare pieces of wallpaper wondering what would look good wrapped around my book.

My DD school has just introduced a policy where school dinners have to be paid for at least two weeks in advance and menu option chosen. This is to prevent waste apparently. School has a very mixed catchment area so there will be many children from families when they don’t qualify for fsm but are scraping by.

I’m expecting take up of school meals to plummet as many parents book the weekend before as and when they know they have got a busy week.

@DrRiverSong. Comfort is different for each person though. My children have attended. Schools that had
1 Polo shirts and sweatshirts
2 Blazer shirt tie and optional v neck
3 Shirt, tie and optional cardigan or sweatshirt blazer available but not compulsory
4 Short sleeved shirt and sweatshirt
5 Shirt, tie v neck optional blazer
6 Shirt, blazer optional v neck
7 Shirt, tie blazer optional cardigan/ v neck blazer available but not compulsory
8 no uniform (not in the UK)

The ones who have attended schools with shirt tie and blazers with optional cardigan/v neck says they were the most comfortable.

The ones who attended polo neck and sweatshirt schools says it was itchy hot and uncomfortable (yet this is often proclaimed the most comfy on mn)
The ones with the short sleved shirt and sweatshirt still bemoan the insanity of this option (that school has now changed the sweatshirt and frankly the uniform looks smarter now)

The school that was shirt tie blazer and optional cardigan / v neck were not rigid on the blazer as it was not compulsory so it meant the children had some say in their comfort level and they preferred this.

They all said the no uniform was harder due to constantly considering what to wear.

So what is one person's comfort is another's discomfort.

Edited to add 1 point and a bit of gramma

I honestly can't think of any from my time at either primary, secondary or sixth form, nor my own child's school (thankfully!!).

Even uniform at my schools were quite relaxed. Primary as long as you wore the colour, it could be a logoed sweatshirt, a generic one from the supermarket or one that granny had knitted.

Secondary school was a logoed sweatshirt and polo shirt. No blazer or tie. Sweatshirt had a choice of two colours. Trainers perfectly acceptable. No nonsense about coats indoors. At one point they even introduced logoed hoodies as acceptable uniform.
With hindsight i think they just wanted kids in the door. It was a pretty bad school and it was closed down the year after I left.

Sixth form no uniform.

I had the same re towel but later learned that it was a policy at all schools following the terrible death of Maria Colwell, teachers were tasked with checking children’s bodies for signs of physical abuse to try and prevent another child suffering. This explains why so many of us experienced ‘weird’ pe teachers.

Only being allowed to take your jumper off between April and September as these are the hotter months. God forbid you got too hot in March because under no circumstances could you take it off during a lesson.

Because vandalism and bullying happen when toilets aren't supervised plus kids avoid tricky bits by going to the loo