or is Headteacher power crazy? (Uniform thread)

[RedHorse3]

So ds started his secondary school yesterday. When we had induction day in July, the teacher mentioned that they had just bought in new Logo school trousers & skirts.
Now the entire school has to change uniform as policy before was plain black trousers/ skirt. Fine. Except that the school uniform shop now has a huge backlog of uniform, and over half the school has not received the uniform. So imagine masses of parents in 1 tiny uniform shop, owner on the phone to school- apparently will allow plain black trousers/ skirt.
Except yesterday, it wasn't fine. The Head sent home over 75 pupils, local newspaper at the school, pupils bought back by parents were put into isolation. As far as I am aware, they did not send home yr7's. They did however get a massive bollocking. DS very upset.
Dp went into school this morning to get a grip on what was happening. As he was waiting, pupils were swarming past him, having been pulled out of lessons to go to conference room to explain why they dont have school logo skirt/ trousers. Ds included. Head was in conference room shouting at them & they were coming out and being taking off into different rooms(?) Dp has arranged meeting with head at 11.30am today.

OMG, just read the lin and the head lost me on 2 points, "Head teacher Lesley Ellis defended her tough action on the first day back after the summer holidays, claiming the new uniform was brought in to make things easier for parents." clearly it isn't!
and the clincher "My staff need to spend their time helping students with their learning, not dealing with uniform issues." so why make it an issue to this degree?

I felt especially sorry for the mother of the 6 ft 3 son in the 6th form.

Oh and the logo is a bit shit!

Looking at that stupid tiny logo, I'd feel my sewing box coming out. Not a difficult bit of embroidery.

Loopy waste of money and resorces.

We have nice new logo'd games kit, no one is worrying if DCs wear the plain old ones.

I felt especially sorry for the mother of the 6 ft 3 son in the 6th form.

I wont put the details as it will out the child and the family, but thanks to a growth disorder there is a child who will never fit into standard senior school uniform. He just went into Y7 with DD. I wait with baited breath to see how our uniform obsessed school will deal with that.

I have written a complaint to the board of govenors including local stats about the number of families using food banks as a direct result of the loss of FSM during the holidays coupled with the cost of uniforms. I have asked them to justify changing the full uniform for the third time in 9 years when there are over 200 pupils (based on those figures) who will have gone hungry and whose parents are asking food banks for help. I have asked them why they are not phasing in these changes so that hand me downs can be used.

The indoor PE top is £14, the same figure that a mother and her high school aged daughter had as a weekly food budget on a recent TV programme that inspired a thread on here.

That is ONE piece on a long list of required uniform. One item of each required piece, including shopping at ASDA for the generic things came to just shy of £200, which I had to borrow money for :(

Well done for writing that complaint Bogeyface I dont have DC but i will support any campaign that is started because i can see this is a piss take on a MASSIVE scale.

This is from the mum v austerity blog.

Thursday, 5 September 2013

DWP pull Foodbank lifeline from the Poorest...

I had been given information recently that Foodbank referrals from Job Centres to both Trussell Trust and Independent Foodbanks had fallen drastically over the summer months. In confidence I was told it was because the DWP wanted to see Foodbank visits fall and thus stats on Foodbank use fall. At the time I could not believe that a Government department would deliberately set out to stop people looking for work hold onto a lifeline when JSA may be delayed due to processing, or a sanction had been put in place. The Daily Mirror confirmed the info I had received:

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/food-banks-ministers-accused-breaking-2252405#.UihVcJVWh2A.twitter

To me it is abhorrent that people literally have the final chance of help at the hour of their greatest need stopped with nowhere else to go.I also find it completely farcical that one minute David Cameron is lauding Foodbanks as "Big Society" in action, and secretly on the other hand plotting to ensure the stats for visits to Foodbanks are made to fall conveniently in 2014 - a year before a General Election.

The cynical use of denying help for job seekers who literally may have no money for several weeks or months due to processing etc is an all time new low for a DWP and a Government who seem to stop at nothing to make sure the poorest and most vulnerable in society stay that way. It is akin to seeing a poor person in a gutter and putting the boot in.

To job seekers denied benefit due to processing delays or sanctions there is only one place left to go and that is the Foodbank. The Government have taken away Social Fund Crisis loans and replaced them with a tiny sum of money in the form of discretionary payments made by councils. However these payments are not ring fenced for use in crises and vary from postcode to postcode in terms of help.

Some new claims for JSA can take 6-8 weeks to process.How is a desperate person to feed themselves in that time? Job Centres, alongside GPs, Social Workers and Teachers have been able to issue vouchers and refer job seekers to Foodbanks to gain the vital lifeline of food in a time of desperate need. Many people do not know where to seek help or often that Foodbank help is available. With the DWP narrowing down option after option the Foodbank is the final open door, job seekers can gain help from.. And now the DWP seek to slam that door shut too.

And let's not forget the Foodbanks are run by volunteers mostly, and the food donated is by you and me. There is no Government input into a Foodbank. It is society that is picking up the very job that the DWP should be doing. So why on earth is the DWP pulling that vital lifeline of support that people in desperate situations need? Stats. Pure Stats. Embarrassed by the soaring rise in Foodbank use and visits, this Government want to present false stats to the nation in 2014 to show how "well" their "welfare reforms" are working. A disgusting and cynical ploy to lie to the electorate.

And what of the job seekers? Will there be Job Centre Advisors big enough to put their own job on the line by telling people where they can gain help? Not many perhaps. The biggest fear is two fold. There will be those like we see in the press on a weekly basis, who will be so ground down by fear of not being able to eat they will almost certainly take their own lives. There have already been too many reports of people taking their own lives in sheer desperation as a result of IDS's "welfare reforms". Couple lack of food with the Bedroom Tax and you have a tsunami of desperation.

I make no apologies when I tell David Cameron and Nick Clegg that they will have blood on their hands if they continue on this roller coaster going nowhere of "welfare reform" which consistently kicks the poor and vulnerable even further as outcasts from society. Feeding those hit most, at a Foodbank by voluntary donations, was the lowest thing I thought would happen in the UK, a sign that we were turning our backs on people in their hour of need. To then pull the Food out of the mouths of the hungry, when society can help and wants to help, is the act of a Government I want to see booted out of powere as soon as possible. This Mr Cameron is truly Not In My Name.....

mumvausterity.blogspot.co.uk/

A couple of decades ago my mum was a governor at a local secondary school. She was very proud of getting them to change the uniform from a horrid faun one you could only get at great cost in a single shop to a black/grey one you buy cheaply from anywhere.

Guess what? they're now an academy and have compulsory logos on everything and a single pair of girls trousers is £25, she's livid

Education is not free, the parents are subsidising it through expensive uniforms (and other things no doubt)

Dear god they are all mad! YANBU
What possible connection to discipline and personal responsibility is imposing an artificial hurdle for parents and children to fail at?

I hate the whole thing, but as for the cost - that's just barmy in the extreme. Get a campaign going, write to the governors and chair of governors, not just the head.

She looks, well, I won't say, but not someone I'd like to make decisions on my children's behalf.

having just read this story i want to SHAKE that sily womam Leslie ellis. To send kids home on their first day because of Uniform cockups and to put kids from yr 7 in to isolation on the first day is Cruel.

The North School in Ashford is a Secondary Modern School and therefore many of the new kids are just getting over the dissapointment of failing their 11+. Ellis just makes the kids feel worse over what is an ego centric attempt to prove the north school has got a smart uniform like Highworth/Knatchbull. This is the last thing a Secondary modern school should be doing on its first day back.

The HT may have acted unlawfully in sending pupils home for not wearing correct uniform. See this:
www.education.gov.uk/aboutdfe/statutory/g00210521/statutory-guidance-regs-2012/guidance/heads-power-to-exclude

There may also be an issue about the school's responsibility for safeguarding if pupils were sent home without informing parents, especially for younger pupils.

Thank you Primrose i was thinking that they must be some duty of care to pupils and that the school must be in "Loco Parentis" until the responsibility has been passed over to the parents . Cleary in this case some parents who could not have been contacted which would mean that the school was still in "Loco Parentis" and responsible for those kids.

There must be some duty of care to the pupils and that the school must be in "local Parentis" until the responsibilty has been passed over to the parents.

my gran had a great saying' he/she is an educated fool'

you can be well educated and have a good degree but you can still be one hell of a stupid daft mare of a HT.

do some people actually realise how other people live?

absolutely ridiculous.

Agree with Primrose. I'd be wanting a full apology from the HT and time missed to be made up.

I was expecting a badge for the logo, not that tiny little star thing! What a waste of everybody's time and money.

We had all this palaver when dd's school became an academy. They'd already changed from a sweatshirt to a jumper the year before, resulting in chaos because the suppliers couldn't get enough and people kept returning the ones they had because they were unravelling after being worn a couple of times.

Ds's school keeps things simple thankfully. You can buy a logo'd polo shirt and sweatshirt from the school and buy everything else wherever you want.

All that fuss over a tiny embroidered star

How on earth does a small little silver star promote unity and discipline and learning? The HT is a complete moron. And as for saying they need special permission to embroider the logo on the clothes. For christs sake woman stop making things so bloody hard for kids and parents who can't afford silly money for an embroidered skirt/trousers.

OP if you want to start a campaign let me know and I will support you

I support your campaign too. I feel so sorry for the children who came in to school full of excitement for their new year and ended up being punished for no fault of their own.

Putting that aside: not only is it putting unnecessary pressure on people living on tight budgets, but it is incredibly wasteful - sending perfectly good clothes to landfill. In contrast: my DS's school has changed one of the items of PE kit this year, but allows existing items to be worn till they wear out.

Having said that, we have logoed items that cost twice what normal ones cost and can only be bought at a single shop. Who monitors pricing competitiveness for school uniforms?

And why can state schools insist on a particular colour coat to be worn to and from school? My older DCs secondary school had a plain dark colour coat rule (and no denim or leather) - fair enough. Younger DC has gone into Y7 of a different school which only permits a plain dark brown coat. Really difficult to find and I noticed today that the one I found on Amazon, was available in black at half the price... (Fairly basic lightweight jacket £25 in brown). And I know that there is a fair chance that younger DC won't wear it much at all ... I would rather be able just to use one of the older DC's hand-me-downs seeing as they haven't had an excessive amount of wear .

And there hasn't been a single item of school wear for my younger DC that I could get other than at the school supplier shop - bar white sports socks! The uniform comes in specific shades of brown and yellow!

Other gripe is that my youngest DC is small for his age - but in the 'normal' range at the lowest end. The school specified trousers didn't come in his size and apparently as they make a 'suit' together with the blazer, I couldn't substitute ones from M and S that were a slightly different shade of brown. Luckily a friend did the alterations (waist and length) or I would have been looking at another £20 or so to have them altered, on top of paying out for trousers that were twice the price of the M and S ones.

Don't understand this at all - I'm like the posters who've said the kudoes in their schools came from wearing old style uniform.
I went to a selective school,academically very successful - the summer uniform changed the year I started.Girls with older sisters wore the previous,very different,uniform - and some families who had attended the school for generations wore the uniform before that! (similiar though less obvious situation when bits of the winter uniform changed later)

No-one cared,or thought that we couldn't learn if we weren't in matching uniform,or that it would be bad for discipline.

What they did think was how wasteful and expensive it would be if families with perfectly usable uniform at home had to buy new.

On a separate but slightly linked note my DD was very small - every skirt she had had to be significantly taken up,to end up well below the knee. The school uniform shop provided an adjustment service,but wouldn't take up DD's skirts - I had to have a letter from the deputy head to say it was ok! Madness.

pannetone Again, Ds's school does have a coat you can buy in school colours with a logo, but it's just an option if you want it, not compulsory. I love ds's school .

I dread this sort of shit in the future.

DS is 16 months old and 3 feet tall. He's a monster. I started primary school in adult sized shoes.

Based on the charts, DS will be well over 5ft going into high school.

If this happens to us (ie 11yr old in giant man pants) the HT will be getting a polite note offering her/him two options: 1. Bareknuckle boxing 2. Go fuck yourself.

The more I read about uniform policies, the more I wish I could home school DD in order to avoid all the fights I know I'm going to have with future head teachers.
I'll happily support a campaign.

I would support a campaign too. Ideally I'd support a campaign to stop uniform being compulsory at all. But failing that I would happily support a campaign to make uniform cheap, comfortable and easily sourced by every family.

I hate school uniform. This seems ridiculous.