Most ridiculous, nonsensical rules at your DC’s school

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Mine is no baseball caps or sunglasses, despite the fact that the school field and playground have no shade.

Whats yours?

We were singled out in class assembly if we’d been identified, along with the offending item of foodstuff.

One from primary school - if you were walking up or downstairs and a teacher was coming the other way, you had to scurry back the way you came rather than pass the teacher on the stairs (however near the top or bottom you were).

Not everyone has the luxury of having a multiple choice of secondary school. Our choice was:

A - The catchment school at the top of the road, about 3 minutes' walk away.

B - the school out of catchment in a town 12 miles away. There was a school bus, but parents had to pay for it.

C - the one even further away, for which you also had to pay for transport.

Guess which one we chose!

Not allowed to wear white socks!

Not allowed to use the toilet Eve for girls on their period or they have to make it up during detention that day 😳

Gawd that sounds horrible!

And the one about not passing a teacher on the stairs?! How bizarre and what on earth could've triggered it? A kid pushing the teacher down the stairs in 1957?!

Does your school not have a second hand shop?

I honestly have none. I’m not boasting but seriously have not a single complaint.

Absolutely. Suggest all crisps are put on the sandwich!

My biggest gripe is making kids wear high collared shirts, I think it's so stupid. Taking my 4 year old to school in them feels wrong, he's not an adult in an office. Plus the fact the are white isn't practical. If I ran a school they'd be in maroon polo shirts and I think it should be that way in every school. Much more practical colour and comfortable style top.

DD's old primary had a healthy eating policy so no crisps were allowed... except on a Friday. Crisps suddenly became healthy on Fridays... 🤔
(Friday was fish and chips on the school menu, so anyone with a packed lunch could take crisps.)

My posh girls school had some ludicrous rules. In summer term when you were wearing the summer dress uniform, if it was a wet day and you were wearing a raincoat you had to wear white gloves. If it was a dry day and you were wearing a blazer no gloves were required. 🤷‍♀️

Whereabouts is that school? Has it not got much outdoor space?

DD’s school: they’re not allowed to wear PE kit to school on PE days, but they can wear the PE hoodie all the time with the smart uniform, which looks ridiculous.
DS’s school: they have to wear trousers in the summer.

You have to wear your school uniform exactly as in the rules all the way to school and home. In theory I suppose it’s so people can identify the school if the kids are being antisocial or looking scruffy. But in reality I don’t think they can or should dictate what the kids wear on their journey or in their own time. If they want to go to the beach after school or wear wellies and high vis on a dark morning I think they should be allowed a bit of fun and comfort.
Not as crazy as no music and no eating like PPs though!

Just placemarking as I have no knowledge of modern schools and it's fascinating.

There was none of this at my 80s comprehensive, as long as your skirt/trousers, shirt and jumper were in the right colours and you wore your tie (no problem if you wore it backwards as a skinny tie) you were fine.

You could take what you wanted in for lunch and load up on extra crisps, fizzy drinks, shandy and chocolate at the tuck shop, or Maxpax coffee from the vending machine. Make up, jewellery, white stilettos, Big Hair with enough hairspray to immobilise an elephant, all went unpoliced. Mini skirts were deeply unfashionable so everyone wore pencil skirts.

Smoking was turned a blind eye to as long as people were discreet. They'd never smell it on pupils as the smoke from the staffroom permeated the whole building anyway.

However, the discipline was non-existent - if you weren't in the top stream with the handful of self-motivated pupils, good luck getting any actual work done; and it was a bullies' paradise.

When Ofsted ratings came in some years after I'd left, it went straight into 'special measures' 😆 It's since been knocked down and replaced by a new school

So no personality then?!

I think sometimes rules look ridiculous until you see what its like without the rule.

Like the 6-7 thing. One child does it... fine. By the 5th child... its ridiculous.
Or uniform... skirt length sounds strict... until the girls are wearing blazers longer than their skirts. (Although i think schools would be better with an Active style uniform rather than ties and blazers.)

My DDs school has "strict" hair/appearance rules... but its to stop competition with expensive styles etc. (They did some research and found it helped attendance amongst lower income pupils... no Non uniform days for a similar reason)

My secondary is so weird about socks. They really really care about colour and style of sock. And they have a huge problem with girls wearing socks and tights when it is cold. Why?

They also don't allow any warm pe kit. So no joggers or hoodies available. Seems mad to me. I actually think pe kit can look smart like private schools do.

Wearing a blazer at all times in school, no outdoor coats allowed in school unless you don’t have a blazer. Creates a total block at school doors as kids remove their outdoor coats, which then need to be carted about all day because no lockers. My DS simply refuses to wear the blazer now because dragging a coat with him to wear the blazer as opposed to just wearing his coat is a total no brainer.

They also don't let them stay in pe kit after a lunchtime sports club. But also deduct points if they are late to registration because of getting changed.

If we wore socks they had to be beige. If we wore tights they had to be American Tan coloured (we called them baked bean coloured).

It used to infuriate me when I picked my two boys up from primary if one of them had forgotten a lunchbox/coat/letter etc because they couldn’t just nip back to the classroom to get it. No, they had to wait for the teacher to see the rest of the class out then escort them back to the classroom (near where they came out) and then back out again. They were not trusted to go to the classroom and back alone. Not just them. Any child. Similarly, I used to help in the school with hearing readers etc. But whenever I arrived the secretary always had to call a teacher to come and escort me to where I would hear readers. In a room by myself with the children. What did they think I was going to do walking down a corridor for 30 seconds by myself? On the way back out I was allowed to leave by myself.

No black ink, only blue ink…….. Even the bloody Home Office allow black ink!

Like many on here, my younger kids' old secondary had the rule that coats had to be taken off the moment they were in the building, preferably before they came in. I always found it very odd.

I once went in for a meeting with the SENCO, in my coat cause it was freeing, and a teacher was telling a kid off for having their coat on inside. When the kid pointed at me, the reasoning was, "Well she's finished her education so she can have her coat on...". When I talked to the headteacher about it once, she gushed about how they look so much smarter without the coats. It was all about the aesthetic.

They also explicitly said kids weren't allowed to have camo coats or bags at all. Not seen that one elsewhere, it was brought in when a new headteacher came in and never found out about that once.

Oh and DD’s Grammar which she is joining in September, are introducing a rule whereby girls can only wear trousers… School branded trousers, no less. However the rest of the girls in the school can continue to wear skirts! So in 30° heat, DD will be absolutely sweltering in trousers and a blazer whilst all the older girls will at least have nice, cool legs (they also refuse to allow them to remove their blazers, regardless of the heat!) Brilliant!