Shall I be cross with Next, school or myself? or all 3?

[boschy]

DD2 is very nearly 13, incredibly tall for her age and skinny as a rake. Getting clothes, and particularly school clothes, to fit is a nightmare.

So, she found some black trousers in Next Schoolwear department online which we agreed would do - plain, no logos, specifically marketed as 'school wear'.

They finally arrived on Weds, and are surprisingly attractive for schoolwear (so much so that I was a bit taken aback). She wore them to school on Thurs, no problems. This morning she has been pulled out of assembly and told they are not suitable.

Now, admittedly they are 'skinny fit' - they fit her perfectly, but they are a bit drainpipe-y (is that a word?). At a distance you could think they were jeans, except they dont have jeans style pockets or studs, and are not made of denim but some kind of (actually quite nice) polyester or something.

So, are Next wrong to sell 'schoolwear' which is too 'trendy' for want of a better word, are school wrong in challenging something which IS actually schoolwear, or should I have taken one look and sent them straight back??

(I shall be annoyed if it's the last one, as it has taken nearly 8 weeks to get these bloody ones delivered - and of course she's taken all the labels off as they fit so well...)

And also the OP talks about a 'negotiating a stand-off' regarding the skirts she'd like her DD to wear...and 'compromise' with her (a position many of us parents find ourselves in, not just the OP)

Therefore school is sometimes the only place where "Oh my God, I hate you", "That's so gay", "Why are you trying to ruin my life"....along with door slamming, muttering, and general teenage tantrums, will get them absolutely nowhere!

Someone in authority is insisting you do something you don't like?

Welcome to the real world kids!

There aren't that many rules outside of school that I don't like, Worra. And even those I do dislike I can get over because there's a point to them, unlike daft school uniform policing.

School near me does the high vis jacket patrol outside the school, to make sure they're all wearing their hideous nylon ties and blazers en route. I was (secretly) delighted when ds chose not to go there. It's important for teachers and parents to be on the same side; I'd have found it very difficult to support twattery like that.

I have a lot to learn about secondary school uniform, clearly. Those ones in the picture look nothing like school uniform. Putting black school shoes on the model just highlights that. But I am a stick in the mud who will probably make dd's teenage years a living nightmare

Or give in....

Coming from a non-school uniform country, I really don't get the big deal about uniforms. Those trousers look fine to me, it's not like they have any bearing on learning or teaching.

Some of you would have been thoroughly shocked seeing what students worn at my school during the 80's punk rock era :)

The school I went to there was only 1 shop allowed, and we had no trousers for girls.
We had pleated skirts, longer than knee length (we had to kneel down so they could check) and they were not allowed to be elasticated waistbands (they checked that too).As you can imagine, hair etc was strict too.

I really don't think they'd be appropriate at most schools, and definately wouldn't buy them for my DC.

I think you should've checked properly first cos they are quite 'different'.

We had one shop and the uniform was green and yellow. Why would they do that ??

Actually, we have a choice as adults in many circumstances. If we don't like the rules of our workplace we can change jobs. Any rules we don't have a choice over actually make sense (well most of them). Don't drink and drive, eon't steal stuff etc. no where in the adult world is anything like school in our culture today apart from prisons, so how anyone can think that you need to have lived by school rules in order to live by the law I don't know!

And wrt bullies - the absolute las thing I would want my kids to learn is to conform if other people don't like their clothes/hair etc. I ant my kids to grow up confident enough in themselves that they don't feel the have to change themselves to fit in.

Would you really change job in this day and age because they had a work clothes policy!!

"I've told her to get whoever it was to call me (I'm sure they've nothing better to do than talk to mummies about trousers after all)"

Never underestimate the time that some schools are prepared to spend picking up "uniform malfunctions". I say this with some bitterness following ds2's final two years at secondary school when the uniform shop failed to stock official sweatshirts big enough for the taller Year 10 and 11 pupils. Not a week went by without some sort of sanction being applied despite the school being clearly and politely advised of the problem.

What I would say about the Next trousers you've bought is that they'd not be allowed in any of the local secondary schools. But then their uniform lists do state "no straight or jeans-type trousers". If your dd's school just requires black trousers then you've complied, haven't you?

The thing is, DD1 has been wearing a very similar style of trousers (cotton rather than a bit shiney) for the last couple of terms if not years and no one has ever commented, despite me thinking that they were a bit drainpipe-y

So if I say "but DD1 wears them, or ones like them, and no one says anything" I might be shooting myself in the foot - and I really dont want to have to end up buying even more sodding school trousers!

Have not had the Trouser Police on the phone yet anyway...

Maybe it was the shiny material then...

Imnotmymum - well obviously I probably wouldn't, but the point is I, as an adult, would have a choice about it. I would be deciding that the risk of leaving was not worth it and to therefore put up with the uniform policy. Most children in school have no choice, and that is not like real life at all.

If the school has a uniform, those trousers are definitely not appropriate imo. And I think the clue is in the fact that your daughter not only found them, she likes them and likes them enough to wear them at the weekend! For a 13yr old girl, that can only mean that she thinks they look good - which, to be ever so slightly (but actually not entirely) facetious - is what school uniforms are designed NOT to do, on the whole.

As for pelmets (or 'belts' as they were called when I was at school), generally we got away with them because we wore them with thick tights in the winter months, and by the time it was warm enough to dispense with tights the gingham dresses were obligatory, and the just looked totally naff/desperate short (who can explain what goes on in a teenage girl's mind?!). Girls will be girls, and most of them will try it on, but I'm with the school on this one, and I think Next have it wrong. Definitely not schoolwear.

They are black school trousers I honestly cannot see the problem. If they don't want slim fitting trousers they should say so specifically. I would tell the school in no uncertain terms that they were bought as school wear and cannot be returned as labels removed. They are out of order.

Not Next's fault at all.

I don't get why a 13 year old is dictating what she will wear for school. Why are you not just buying the next size of skirt so she isn't wearing one that sounds indecent to school?

So very happy that the public schools here don't require uniform.

Have never seen the point of it. It wasn't ever a social leveller in our school. It didn't make kids wear appropriate clothes -- they always flaunted it. It is one more reason for staff to fight with kids.

I like the policy my son's middle school had. They had a fairly loose dress code. If you didn't dress according to the dress code then you had the choice of turning the shirt inside out (if it had crude or otherwise banned wording/images), choosing to wear something from a friend or lost and found or calling a parent. Serial offenders had to wear a white polo shirt and a pair of chinos for a week (shock, horror, gasp) or be suspended. Usually it only took one serial offender in the whole school for the rest of the kids to work to the (very reasonable) dress code.