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?

My daughter’s school won’t allow coats over their uniform. They have a school coat which can be worn under their blazer, they do not have a hood.
my daughter has a 50 minute bus journey every day to school which has a ten minute stop over in the middle
To change buses. child comes home soaked some days when it’s been raining!!

That’s absolutely disgusting! I’d be having firm words with the school and telling them that my child WILL be wearing a coat and they can stick their pretentious, neglectful rule up their rear!

As others have said, some parents don’t get a choice! Our preferred choice was just out of catchment and oversubscribed, ended up with third choice in the end which I only put on there as we are in the catchment and didn’t want dc ending up somewhere miles away. Didn’t feel like a choice at all.

They have a lot of rules already mentioned:
The existence of ties in the uniform, and blazers.
Coats must be removed at the door
Blazers can only be removed with permission
Skirts although aren’t branded must be bought from specific uniform shops.
Detentions everywhere, for everything. Not that it seems to help with behaviour much from what dc has said about what goes on there.
One pair of plain ear studs only
Natural hair colours only
Only clear nail polish allowed
Not allowed to go home in pe kit when pe is last lesson, dc just puts their uniform on over it rather than get changed properly just to get changed again at home.
The one that baffles me is that uniform must be worn perfectly on their way to/from school, shirts tucked in ties and blazers worn. Understand the idea, but they have school staff patrolling surrounding roads at home time to monitor this which I think is over the top, I would have hated this when I was at school and also where do you draw the line? Let them make their way home in peace.

This was my school...

You have to walk on the left
You have to stand up every time a member of staff enters the room
You can only go outside to a certain yard if the green light is on
Coats, hoodies, or any extra layers must not be worn on the school grounds. Rainy days, white blouses that turned see-through and a long walk from the bus stop to the school entrance was fun.
Forget about wearing hats, scarves and gloves, even on snowy days
Blazers were to be worn at all times, and you had to ask permission to remove it in class
Ties had to be so-many stripes long. Then it changed to ones with a logo that had to show beneath the knot
Hair had to be one natural colour, so no two-tone hair
Ears could only be pierced once, and only in the lobes. Any other body piercings were to be removed
Earrings had to be plain gold or silver studs
Bras were to be white or nude, so that they could not be seen under white blouses
The top button of your shirt or blouse had to be done up
No jewellery, other than the approved plain gold or silver stud earrings
No make-up. The head’s wife would be on the door with make-up wipes at the ready as you entered the school
No fake tan
No nail varnish, even if it was clear
No plaits or cornrows, because they were dangerous… but your hair had to be neatly groomed at all times, and not in an unusual style that might draw attention. My hair has always gone wild, even after straightening, so I got pulled for looking “untidy” quite a lot
Boys were not allowed to have hair that was too short, or too long. It couldn’t have shaved designs in it, either, because that was too distracting
Hair bobbles were to be plain black/navy, and hair accessories could not be “distracting”… so a slim bobble was fine, but a scrunchie was not, let alone anything else
No skirts
Trousers had to have the school logo on them, to ensure that they were of the approved cut
Socks must be plain black, and tights are not permitted
Trainers were not to be worn, unless for PE lessons, and even then they were to be one solid colour
PE involved a polo shirt and baggy gym shorts or, if you were on the netball team, gym skirts and shorts. Any jumpers or hoodies were not allowed
If you have PE on either side of lunchtime, you still had to change back into your uniform before going for lunch
The loos are not to be used at all except for break-times and lunchtimes. Stomach upsets and periods were fun to deal with…
Biros only
Clear pencil cases only
In food tech, everyone had to buy the same ingredients, so you ended up with a lot of waste afterwards, if it was something unusual or that you and your family didn’t like. At another school where I went, everyone paid something like £2 and the ingredients were shared out between the class, which seemed like a much more sensible arrangement, and nobody ever forgot their ingredients, and you could pay the £2 another day if you forgot it
No going out of school at lunchtimes. You either queued up for the best part, if not all, of your lunchtime for the school slop (I kid you not, the fish was almost doing breaststroke in the vat of oil), or you went hungry. If the bell went when you had just sat down, you had to leave your lunch and go to class
Current students all wear lanyards, because it’s all about the office-wear look… what 11-year-old needs to look office-ready?

If they were as heavy-handed about the bullying as they were about rules, then they might not have such a regular turnover of students.

My primary school did not allow packed lunches. Everyone had school dinner and you had to finish your food. You had to have something from each tray (ie the meat or fish, the veg, the potatoes, the pudding). There was no choice. Everyone at the same food. You could ask for a smaller portion, you could ask for no sauce etc, but you had to eat what you were given. Even if the dinner lady didn’t hear you and gave you too much, or gravy, or whatever.

Boak. (I did.)

There were two children with allergies or intolerances. Not that people believed in such stuff way back in the 20th century! But they were constantly ill. Eventually the school relented and they were allowed to bring packed lunches. But they were not allowed to eat in the hall with everyone else. They had to eat in the playground. A bench was placed in an angle of the wall just outside the office window so that they could be supervised from within. And that’s where they ate, snow, rain or shine.

I also attended a posh all girls school. The usual no earings/nail polish/hair dye etc. We also had to wear our blazers outside of school, when it was really hot ths school made an announcement that blazers were not required.

Not allowed to eat food outside of school grounds in uniform unless at a cafe or restaurant.

The dumbest rule was that we had to back to our form room after last period for five minutes to sign out at the end of the day.

We had to go to form in the morning, before lunch, after lunch and at the end of the day.

My daughter's school dont even have a form, they go straight to lessons. I cant get my head around that!

Minimum of prayers 5 times a day. But if your teacher, and especially the head dinner lady thought you weren't saying them properly, you'd have to repeat them over and over until you were. I still remember her shouting "we'll keep saying it, until you stop singing it".

We had to wash our hands and shoes before we were allowed into lunch. Inevitably we'd all get shouted at several times a week because an entire primary school trying to clean shoes with wet paper towels is obviously going to make a mess!

We'd have our hands and shoes inspected and if they weren't clean we'd have to go back and do them again. It was a brag if you managed to get into lunch without washing your hands! But you couldnt say it at the time in case the dinner ladies heard and you were sent to do them when you were eating but of course no one believed you of you told them after lunch. Such a dilemma! 🤣

We had to carry all our workbooks, equipmemt and any text books for all our lessons every day even if we didnt have that topic that day.

Given that using sensible bags or wearing backpacks on two shoulders was social death, I'm surprised at how few back issues people my age have (mid 40s).

Not for the first time, I'm extremely glad that my DCs went to school in the US and weren't subjected to any of this nonsense.

nails can’t be longer than the finger tip 😂

Going back to my old school days, the school was run by nuns.

You were allowed to wear a cross on a chain or a religious medal but not a plain chain. So crosses were often worn at the back of the neck with girls (no boys) claiming they didn't know how it had got turned round.

Only one pair of studs or sleepers, one in each ear, in the 'matching' hole.

Uniform to be worn travelling to and from school, even in snow, and being run by nuns there was no option to wear trousers.

As a teacher some school's dress codes are crazy. At one school I had to remove my nose stud, but the students didn't have to remove theirs.

Skirt length, one school skirts could not be too short, another they could not be too long. One allowed heels (probably because the head wore them) another didn't.

One school you were not allowed to lend a pen / pencil to a child, even if the pen ran out of ink in your lesson. You were supposed to keep them in at break if it was a morning session, the only time the school shop was open was at break so the student couldn't buy a pen. I don't think many teachers stuck to that rule.

One not only had a one way system but outside the VI form common room was a different coloured floor. Only VI formers and teachers could set foot on it.

Some of these rules are utterly ridiculous. Who is making the rules and who has time police every tiny aberration?
The teachers should spend more time teaching and less time behaving like the Gestapo

School uniforms are insane. I never had one. They make the kids stink, cost a fortune and look shite. Who wants a job were you have to wear an ill-fitting blazer and dodgy tie? Not even highly paid bankers / lawyers / doctors wear suits anymore. Look at the highest earning people - tech bros - they all wear t-shirts! The only places with uniforms are HomeBase and Ryanair (no offence).

My DD's school - black tights in summer. This is to prevent skirts being rolled up.

I went to a school recently (on supply) where the adults had to say ‘finished’ at the end of their sentences so the children wouldn’t interrupt. Not when teaching directly to the whole class but the rest of the time.

Training the year 2 class to get into alphabetical order before leaving the classroom in the case of a fire.

I'm pro (sensible) uniform.

If the kids all have to wear a specific t-shirt, black trousers and black shoes, there can be no bullying about kids wearing the "wrong brands" or that they wore the same thing earlier that week. It also helps keep a certain standard. Some of the things I see kids wearing around here are ridiculous.

I think most places have a dress code which is only a little step above a uniform. As an adult you'd hope most people can make sensible choices about appropriate clothing whereas kids cant. Although, reading sone of these uniform rules make me wonder about how sensible the people who write them are.

Outdoor coats must be dark. We are rural and the road from the school to the station has no street lighting or pavements. Kids have been hit by cars and lots of near misses but no, dark ‘smart’ coats it is.

No boots allowed - despite many pupils walking to school along muddy and flooded footpaths and bridleways. They can wear boots and change at infants and juniors but not at secondary - they just have to sit there with muddy shoes and wet feet and be told off for leaving muddy footprints by teachers who drive to and from school.

I worked in a school at Cam near Stroud many years ago. There were strict dress codes for teachers. No nail polish on fingers or toes, no heels ,skirts to be below knee length, no sandals with toes showing. The head was a man who made secret of the fact that he very much disliked women.

This is all nuts. At my school (private school in England) we were told to obey common sense, common courtesy and the law of the land. It was mostly fine!

The head is obsessed with the length of boys hair and what number the clippers were on. Very pale blond hair kid was forever getting put in isolation as he looked like he’d had ‘under a number3’. This isn’t an area full of skinhead gangs etc.

Also no Christmas themes in lessons. Lots of the teachers just swapped their board over if he was going round. The rest of SLT weren’t bothered.

I was at school in the 70s and the teachers didnt act like this. There was the odd ticking off for wearing black socks instead of white socks etc but nothing like what I hear of today's schools. Im all for rules and abiding by them but some of them would put a Russian Gulag to shame!!

I took my kids out of the village school in the end because it had the most ridiculous policies. They had branded uniform from socks to trousers, shirts blazer, bag and coats. All branded and super expensive. My DS got put in isolation for not wearing the branded socks!!

The identical school bags of 1000 children were not allowed to be marked in any way to easily identify them. No pins, ribbons, badged, no visible name tags. It was an absolute nightmare, especially as they have no lockers so the bags end up in piles in rooms or at break.

I relation to no lockers, they had to carry a laptop (supplied by the school) at all times. If they had PE they could be carrying a hefty weight all day.

The toilets were locked until lunchtime and to use them outside lunch you had to walk up to 5 minutes to student services to beg for a key, what happened? Well the boys pissed in the bushes and the girls stopped drinking at school, or didn't go in during their periods.

No skin fade haircuts. No idea why but they were banned and if they got one they would be put in isolation until it grew out.

Hated that school

My Dcs school is generally sane I think.

I was brought up in Australia and some of my school rules were pathetic. We had portacabins and in summer they were insanely hot. We were not allowed to drink from the water fountains not allocated to our particular year group. I once got a detention on a 38 degree day for drinking from the Year 7 fountain (closest to my class) when i was in Year 10. I thought that was crazy.

We also had a sensible rule that school was closed when it hit 40 degrees. All well and good, but it never actually happened even though I recall one day getting to 42 and we had bushfires in the area.

This is outrageous. What would happen if you attempted to put your crisps on the sandwich? What about if you had a crisp sandwich? 🤔