To not get schools issue with dyed hair?

[fitforflighting]

I suspect I may get flamed for this but I genuinely do not get it.
They have a rule against earrings including sleepers. That I get especially with younger children or in sports were children can end up getting them at worst ripped out.

I can kind of even get extreme haircuts with big shaved stars or strange styles that look unprofessional and might not be allowed by adults in a professional work place.

But this week and last term several of senior age children who had dyed hair brown/red/dark purple etc were sent home from school to re dye or put in isolation by teachers with errr brown/red/purple dyed hair! One of the children's teacher has bright purple hair. It does not make her any less of a English teacher or lesson her professionalism in school I don't reckon so what is the problem for teens?

knobblyknee
Rules cannot be applied by people who break them themselves.

As has been PP Teachers are not subject to the same uniform rules as pupils, they do, however have rules on what they can wear. So a teacher who doesn't dress to the pupils uniform rule isn't breaking the pupils dress code/rule.

Unfortunately there are also many people in charge that do break rules whilst applying them to everyone else.

BoneyBackJefferson

OK, I should have said YANBU, rules cannot be applied by people who break them themselves if you are trying to set a good example to children.

Mine are in a US high school where there is no uniform, and they can pierce anything they want as many times as they want, and dye or cut their hair any way they want except no gang symbols or aryan/nazi symbols or other hate symbols.

Happy school, happy teenagers (happy as teenagers get I suppose).

Bullying about clothes/brands isn't an issue when people are allowed to wear their own choice of clothing from their first day of school. Uniform makes clothing much more important than it has to be.

The students tend to wear weather appropriate clothing, another nice side effect of allowing students autonomy.

There are no silly rules taking up teachers' and administrators' time, and the rules that there are are designed to maximise time spent in instruction for students who are having problems.

Good grief.
I am generally a conformist when it comes to school stuff.
I will and do encourage my children to follow rules because it is respectful to their teachers and usually for their benefit.
However, I cannot and will not do this blindly, and I will endeavour to teach my dcs the same principle.
Some rules are unneccessarily restrictive and inappropriately controlling and need to be challenged. And no, it is not always appropriate to challenge this by letter writing or debate.
The extraordinary reaction here to a parent staring they would go into school to stick up for their child is quite disturbing, and illustrates, imo, the over zealous, controlling nature of some schools/ teachers that is both inappropriate and unneccessary.
Now I shall get off to work and remember we are all just people trying our best. Much less bossing about needed.

My children go to a highly performing non uniform community school. With no rules about hair colour. dd likes colouring her hair. Last time she had blue and purple streaks. It looked cool. She has had it purple, lilac, silver, red and pink in the past and it has never been an issue. Currently her hair is mousy with blondish streaks as the colour has faded. She works no harder or behaves any better with natural coloured hair or bright hair.

I doubt very much that she will choose to work in an field which requires a uniform, but she is perfectly aware that sometimes she has to wear or look a particular way. Just like all her classmates really. Or the colleagues that I work with who went to the school, none of whom appear to struggle with the idea.

Unlike me! I went to a school with a stupid ugly badly fitting uniform that was enforced by scruffy teachers who wore whatever the hell they liked. It made us despise them a bit. Oh and I have grown up highly inclined to be scruffy too!

Maybe one of the reasons these strict rule unifirm type schools feel it makes such a difference, is because with all this expensive logo nonsense where it's a months rent just to have all the right items, it just keeps out those me likely to cause disruption or lower results?

are people in more deprived areas able to attend these schools where even the pe socks worn twice a week have to be a certain kind?

these ridiculous uniforms just seem a way to.keep.people.out.

oh and I see a fair few round here who look stupid. the unifirm.is old tatty faded and blazers two sizes too big. presumably bought as large as possible in order to last? or unable to be replaced as often.

which wouldn't be so much of a problem.if a three pack shirts and a standard black skirt from asda would be permitted.

And I doubt designer labels would be such a big deal when allowed to wear clothing every day.

when it's once in a blue moon people want to show off what they have. if it was every day it would soon just be jeans and a t shirt. none of it would be such a novelty.

Felicity, sorry,perhaps I'm being a bit dim here, but you seem to be saying that it's ok for parents to go into schools, into classrooms and disrupt lessons whenever they like? And that to object to that is an extraordinary reaction, disturbing, overzealous,controlling, inappropriate and unnecessary?

Re employers not telling you what colour your hair can be. I work in the nhs and was at uni before hand. At my uni interview I was told outlandish hair colours are not accepted at uni nor will they be in the trusts that work with uni.

I don't know if this rule is the same for all trusts but the one I work in would definitely give a warning for outlandish hair colours.

The extraordinary reaction here to a parent staring they would go into school to stick up for their child is quite disturbing, and illustrates, imo, the over zealous, controlling nature of some schools/ teachers that is both inappropriate and unnecessary.

Think parent who has court order against them.
Think grandparent who has been denied contact but insists on maintaining it at school.

That's part of what all the "controlling" is about.

And anyway, what right has anyone not sanctioned by the school, and yes, that does mean anyone without a visitor's badge, etc.etc.et fucking c have to be in the building?

Far too much fuss being made about nothing here.

Yes US schools have no uniform, but the one I worked in back in the 80's certainly had a dress code, and there are often things going viral about students sent home from school in the US because they violate the dress code.

I agree that uniform should be inexpensive, but as I said previously, when consulting parents on uniform rules the majority are for uniform.

MN is a weird place, schools need follow all the rules, or parents scream blue murder, yet rules are silly and "restrictive" and can be broken because someone's child deems it necessary to have pink hair during term time.

Blah, blah, deaf ears. Good luck with your storming into school btw!

St Paul's school for girls is an independent and one that is selective, so wouldn't be included in that data, like for comparisons are not beneficial.

RTF post, longtime. I specifically compared it to other independent selective schools that have uniforms.

The scenario envisaged, that of a pupil being in isolation because of a uniform breech would, one imagines, only be for a very short period of time.

Would it? If the pupil concerned refused to remedy the breach, or his parents couldn't afford to?

Loving "breech" in the context of uniforms, btw!

Hot on specific courses, especially vocational ones that is sometimes the case, but I bet it wasn't your Uni as a whole for every student?

Business studies at my uni required "business dress" in the 90s - they've stopped requiring it though because they became aware the people who have become business superstars (Jobs, Zuckerberg, Page, Brin, etc.) did not give a shit about that sort of thing and found the controlling nature of those types of rule to stifle their companies' ability to innovate and make lots of money.

It doesn't matter what the rules are, whether strict or liberal. It doesn't matter whether you as one individual think your school's rules are stupid/pointless/silly. There will always be some parents/students who find one or more rules to be stupid/pointless/silly. The school should enforce whatever the rules are fairly, consistently, kindly and compassionately.

But, culture, if the rules are, objectively, stupid, should the school not exercise its collective brains and decide to get rid of them? And, as this thread demonstrates, it's not just me who thinks that. Indeed, there are entire nations that take that view.

And I'm confused, now you agree that isolation is allowed, when previously you said it would contravene the school's funding agreement?

Long term or repeated teaching in isolation would contravene the agreement.

I think the issue about schools breaking rules relates in part to the schools which ignore government guidance on uniform. The guidance is roughly to the effect that uniform should not be so expensive as to price some families out of going to the school in question or cause financial hardship - yet school increasingly opt for expensive blazers and shirts with logos in direct breach; and some go in for exclusion which is also in direct breach of the law on exclusions. Not the best example to their pupils.

As for uniforms preventing bullying - that isn't necessarily the case when parents have, not unreasonably, bought to allow for growth and children turn up in oversized blazers, or when their shoes become particularly shabby.

You think it's a stupid rule, many don't. It's not objectively stupid. Your opinion /= objective fact.

Do you really think that a private, high-fee paying,highly selective girls school that gets excellent results is a good example of why ordinary state schools would get better results without uniforms? That school would get excellent results with or without uniform or a more formal dress code. It may be one small factor in the atmosphere of the school, but that school is a place of privilege where parents are highly invested (both financially and emotionally) in the school, where only the brightest are admitted.

Sorry I misread that, but don't RTF me.

But gruntled, as previously stated your statement about "silly rules" can be applied across the board, other people may think other rules are silly and choose not to follow them.

"refused to remedy the breach, or his parents couldn't afford to?" These are two very different scenarios, finances can be taken into consideration, and money is available to support those in dire financial need. However if a pupil refused to remedy something then of course it would escalated, parents involved etc. If both a student and parent refused, then they may be suggested to find another school that suits their needs more, or a school transfer arranged. The school does not have to kow tow to you, it has to place the needs of the community ahead of individuals.

I have said previously that I don't think we should bother with hair, but if some schools have decided that they need to ( and maybe it was causing massive disruptions, being taken too far, you don't know why these decisions have been made) then I think as a parent you should cooperate. How can you have a collaborative approach to education when you are so deliberately obtuse and obstructive over something so minor.

I dealt with a parent yesterday who refused to accept that his DD wasn't going to be allowed to do her controlled assessment again, because she got a poor grade (they've had two goes already), this was a silly rule, it was controlling and effecting his DD's education. No matter that the support had all been in place (twice) and that no she can't do either of the same questions again, which again was "silly".

Purple - teenage years are the time when a persons boundaries and personality are doing most of their development so telling kids they can't self express through their appearance is majorly interfering with that process!

I understand that there are some places where you are customer-facing where they discourage bright hair, but from my experience there are a great many more who have no issue. My thoughts are that your life is not solely work or school so unless their is good reason (conformity not being one of them) they shouldn't interfere with private life. Work to live not live to work and all that I guess though!

I suspect that those who are saying that they, or their children, have no issues with non-uniform in relation to brands and bullying are perhaps those who have been able to afford to dress their children in a way that does not stand out in such an environment.

As I have said on here before, I was on a 100% scholarship to a 'posh' girls' boarding school. Uniform up to O-level, non-uniform but dress code for sixth form. I was year-accelerated, very bright, and came from a MC but poor-as-church-mice family (I put on a fair amount of weight in my first term, simply because I wasn't used to having the amount of food that the school considered 'normal').

Uniform years were fine - there was a second hand shop and all my clothes came cheaply from there. OK, my weekend 'home' clothes were not like other people's, but we only wore them on at and Sun afternoons, so it wasn't an issue, and there was no bullying or other comments.

Sixth form was a nightmare. I could not possibly have asked my parents to buy me the kinds of clothes that were 'normal' for other people, so I continued to wear home-made skirts and 'knitted from unravelled wool from outgrown items' jumpers, except for the one 'shop' jumper that my grandparents gave me each year for Christmas. Was I bullied? Oh yes. My 'differentness' was hugely emphasised by my clothing.

In non-uniform contexts, I suspect that those who have 'what is expected', and those who are able to buy 'something similar to what is expected, maybe just one or two items but not them all' are OK. Those who genuinely cannot manage ANY of what is expected may be a very small subset - clothes are cheaper than they were when i was a teen - but genuinely DO suffer. The effect may be particularly bad for those who are already 'on the edge' of social acceptability within their peer group through other types of 'difference' - and it is these vulnerable kids, not the 'unvulnerable majority' that we should be seeking to nurture.

Green, students have plenty of time to express themselves outside of school. As people often complain, there are many school holidays (13 weeks I think?), weekends and evenings too. When over 16 they can choose to work or go to a college/school sixth form with no uniform, whatever they like. I do think that it's a useful life lesson that you can't always do what you want all of the time when you're in a group setting.

boom no not the whole uni but that is not what I am trying to show. My post was in regards to another poster saying that wearing uniform/hair colour would not be picked upon in employment. My post proved that some jobs do require certain hair colour etc. Nothing to do with other courses. My nursing course was more like being at work, most of my time was spent on placement

YANBU it really winds me up. Why does everyone have to dress the same? It doesn't prevent bullying or any of that crap.

I went to a sixth form with no uniform and there was less bullying than at my school and everyone actually worked better because no one was picking on silly things like hairstyle

You're wrong teacher.

I went to a uniform middle school and a non-uniform high school and we were not well off at all (single parent family on benefits most of the time). I got more teasing at the uniform school, because despite what people say about uniform being a great leveller, kids can actually tell when you can't afford to replace uniform often as you outgrow it or it gets torn or marked up or lost. It was easy in our uniform school to order children, at least roughly, by money by looking at what they wore.

At the high school though there were various groups with different styles. And while there were a few who kept diaries on what they wore so they'd never be in the same outfit twice and who shopped at stores I couldn't afford, there were also kids who bought their clothes at the market and used their ingenuity to adapt them for next to nothing and make their own style. And there was the biggest group of all who turned up every day in jeans and t-shirts and jumpers who just didn't care much. It was much easier to find a place where I fit when diversity was encouraged and valued.

At the high school though there were various groups with different styles. And while there were a few who kept diaries on what they wore so they'd never be in the same outfit twice and who shopped at stores I couldn't afford, there were also kids who bought their clothes at the market and used their ingenuity to adapt them for next to nothing and make their own style. And there was the biggest group of all who turned up every day in jeans and t-shirts and jumpers who just didn't care much. It was much easier to find a place where I fit when diversity was encouraged and valued.

This was my experience of college too

I do think that there is an odd connection in the public mind between 'smartness / strict application of uniform' in a school and its 'perceived quality as a school'.

So I have consistently heard Primary School A described as 'better' than school B because 'the uniform is much smarter - at school B they only have polo shirts and some wear stripy tights, whereas in school A they wear ties and they all look just the same'. As a teacher, I know that school B, on every possible count, is a better school. But the uniform counts HUGELY in public perception.

Equally for secondaries 'You can tell that school X is a good school with great discipline, because they all wear their uniform correctly and llok smart' whereas 'School Y isn't any good - look how scruffy some of them look out of school with their ties loose and some even have dyed hair'.

While this link between 'smart = good school, variation in uniform = bad school with poor discipline' exists in the public mind, you can't blame schools for trying to manage their reputation for quality and discipline in this particular way - especially when it is cheap and easy relative to other deeper changes that GENUINELY affect school quality.