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AIBU?

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Original poster

School uniform - I agree with uniform and I realise I chose a school with a uniform policy, BUT ....

148 replies

BigSandyBalls2015 · 09/02/2016 10:42

.... sometimes I feel they are making a mountain out of a mole hill, and wasting too much time and energy on it:

DD(14), wore a collared white school shirt yesterday, top button done up, with a skirt, and we had a letter home.

She should have worn her open neck white shirt, as she had a skirt on. Had she worn trousers then the buttoned up collared shirt would have been fine, with a tie. Not allowed to mix the two.

Detention will be given if it happens again.

Only another 16 months to go ...................

OP posts:
Mistigri · 09/02/2016 13:17

I'd be seriously tempted to write back to ask whether the author of the letter didn't feel slightly ridiculous while typing it.

Quite honestly it's the sort of silliness that actually suggests the head teacher might actually be slightly insane, or at the very least somewhat unwell (I mean that quite seriously, and with no disrespect to those suffering from mental illness).

jelliebelly · 09/02/2016 13:19

Presumably though the uniform policy states this so everybody should stick to it. A collared shirt with a skirt would look odd wouldn't it?

HesterShaw · 09/02/2016 13:20

Utterly ridiculous.

dementedpixie · 09/02/2016 13:23

My daughter wears a collared shirt with a skirt and a tie. It's not odd at allHmm

TiaTheTulipFairy · 09/02/2016 13:29

I saw an article recently about this. Brighton college are going to introduce a skirt uniform and a trouser uniform and all pupils will simply be allowed to choose whichever one they identify with. Will be interesting to see how it works in practice and whether other schools begin to follow.

HesterShaw · 09/02/2016 13:29

Some of these really very average schools seem to think that being fascistic about uniform will somehow improve their reputation and attainment. It isn't so.

I went to a former grammar school, which had become comp with grammar school ideas, in the 80s and early 90s. We got away with a lot, uniform wise. The school's results were outstanding.

I wonder what a family coming over and living the UK from mainland Europe would make of this hardline uniform obsession.

The primary school in our village has recently become an academy and have put their KS2 pupils in shirts, ties and logo-ed blazers. Little 7 year old kids in blazers! They look ridiculous :(

diddl · 09/02/2016 13:30

"A collared shirt with a skirt would look odd wouldn't it?"

Back in my day(Grin) it was what all girls wore.

Skirt, long sleeved shirt & tie.

I considered myself lucky as a few years previous the Wimter uniform was a pleated pinafore!Grin

I see at my old school that there's no longer a tie, just blouses with revers, but both long & short sleeved so I'm guessing still the Winter/Summer thing.

And "correct uniform must be worn at all times".

Also no sports trousers when I was there-pe skirt come rain, shine or snow for cross country running, hockey, netball...

TiaTheTulipFairy · 09/02/2016 13:31

Sorry that was slightly off the original topic. I imagine in brighton's case it would be one specific uniform shirt so no silly collar/tie/skirt/trouser details.

Sadik · 09/02/2016 13:51

AFAIK DD's school uniform specifies either black trousers or black skirt, without specifying boys/girls (plus jumper/polo shirt etc). Strangely enough, I've never spotted any boys choosing the skirt Grin

(Mind you, only a vanishingly small proportion of girls wear the skirt, even in the hottest of summer weather - a school skirt would appear to be up there with a waterproof coat in terms of clothing acceptability.)

OOAOML · 09/02/2016 14:00

When I went to primary there was no school uniform, at my son's primary it is pretty relaxed - there is a blazer and tie, but not many wear them. There are logo polo shirts and sweatshirts, which quite a lot wear but not all. Most wear generic supermarket stuff, navy and royal blue jerseys etc. I quite like him having specific school stuff because they do a lot of painting so we're not risking his favourite minecraft tshirts or anything.

I'm shocked there are still schools that don't let girls wear trousers - I'm 43 and when I was at school we weren't allowed to wear trousers and it was fairly obvious that was outdated even then.

To the person who asked about boys in kilts - the (state) Gaelic primary in Edinburgh started with a kilt option for both boys and girls, but I know when the school started there was an article saying none of the boys had opted for it. I don't know if many have now, but I've just looked at their website and it lists 'kilted skirt' not kilt. They start at £32 so I wouldn't shell out for them anyway - both my children have been pretty rough on their clothes at primary.

Ameliablue · 09/02/2016 14:17

Wow that's pedantic.

WhatWouldFlopDo · 09/02/2016 14:28

Frozen that made me smile. Reminds me of when our year refused to wear P.E skirts and those horrible knickers, and all wore tracksuit bottoms instead. Nowt was said and we paved the way for future years.

howabout · 09/02/2016 15:19

demented Just had the new handbook for DD3 Scottish primary. Yes there is a one para on school uniform, but it is followed by 2 paras outlining that no DC should be denied an education because of a lack of uniform. I think this is a Scotland wide policy and definitely a difference in emphasis from England.

SanityClause · 09/02/2016 15:22

the school said if they allow girls to wear trousers boys have to be allowed to wear skirts

And?

FrozenAteMyDaughter · 09/02/2016 15:38

Exactly howabout - it was good for future generations.

Unfortunately, your PE skirts/gym knickers story reminds me that, for some reason, our collective action appeared to fail us in relation to sports gear. We were made to wear (at a Convent school no less) brightly coloured polyester athletics knickers (without skirts) that were frankly an affront to human dignity. I think maybe the school introduced them when our year was in sixth form and we had bigger issues to worry about than embarrassing sportswear. As a result, they lasted a long time after we left. I managed to dodge them by being appalling at athletics.

How a school that made us keep our socks and shoes on sitting in the sun at lunchtime in case our bare feet excited any men in the grounds simultaneously forced us to prance around in public dressed in something Miley Cyrus would reject for lack of modesty I have no idea.

Dreamgirls234 · 09/02/2016 15:40

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

flatmouse · 09/02/2016 15:45

DD is in violation of skirt length again. She keeps growing! If she's rolling it up, then fine - she can take the punishment, but i honestly do not think it is too short AND i am sick of inconsistently applied rules amongst the years. (Skirt bought start of Jan and complied to length regulations when bought).

waitingforsomething · 09/02/2016 16:04

Yanbu at all. There is no need for that she hardly wondered in with a blue Mohican and her jeans on.
I am a teacher and whilst I approve of uniform I object to the amount of time I spend on tiny things like this

Gileswithachainsaw · 09/02/2016 16:27

DD is in violation of skirt length again. She keeps growing! If she's rolling it up, then fine - she can take the punishment, but i honestly do not think it is too short AND i am sick of inconsistently applied rules amongst the years. (Skirt bought start of Jan and complied to length regulations when bought)

there is something quite disturbing about people who would spend time looking at childrens' skirt length and humiliating them over it.

pippistrelle · 09/02/2016 20:29

My daughter's friend was accused of having rolled her skirt up. She explained that she hadn't, it's just that the skirt was inexplicably short. She was instructed to get a new one.

Turned out she was wearing the shorter skirt of the classmate she'd been getting changed next to at PE. Both of them noticed that their own skirt was weird, but neither was able to join the dots: it took mums at home checking the name tags to do that.

ArriettyMatilda · 09/02/2016 22:44

This kind of thing makes me so angry. Dd is only two but to hear she might not be allowed to wear trousers and may have to ask to permission to remove items of clothing fill me with rage. If boys are allowed certain clothes, so should girls and vice versa. It just all feels a bit ridiculous in the 21st century. Is it just a method of exerting power and domination over children? To show them who's boss?

Dreamgirls234 · 09/02/2016 22:50

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Mistigri · 10/02/2016 06:07

there is something quite disturbing about people who would spend time looking at childrens' skirt length and humiliating them over it

This, it's disturbing and borderline perverted. If an adult woman in the workplace was given a dressing down because, after close inspection by her superiors, her skirt was deemed to be a centimetre or two shorter than some arbitrarily-determined ideal, then MN would spontaneously combust.

In fact most of the weirder rules mentioned on here sound like they were written by someone who in other walks of life would probably be considered to have a personality disorder.

Gileswithachainsaw · 10/02/2016 07:07

agreed mist

people on MN are so frightened of disagreeing with a school and upsetting even the nastiest teaches. that I swear they would jump off bridges naked should school stick it in a rule book.

it's just hair
it's just clothes
if no attention was paid they'd all get pretty bored pretty quickly of using to to make a point..

the best service and the nicest people I have met have been dressed in leather or had bolts through noses and hair in all sorts of colours.

school is fir teaching/ learning. I want a well rounded child to come out if it. not some sheep afraid to move should she get a detention.

Ellybellyboo · 10/02/2016 09:19

if no attention was paid they'd all get pretty bored pretty quickly of using it to make a point

Hear hear!

Our school makes the most ridiculous fuss about school trousers to the lengths of actually measuring the width of them just in case, God forbid, they were narrower at the ankle than at the knee. WTF??? It's just utter nonsense. Surely teaching staff have got a million better things to do, like actually teaching! The world won't end of my daughter is wearing tapered leg trousers.

Last summer teaching staff were actually sent out to check students weren't committing the heinous crime of removing their blazers on the way home from school

DD's hair lightens in the sun and goes a bit streaky. A couple of years ago she was taught in isolation for a day as she had 'unnatural hair colour'. It's not an unusual phenomenon, my hair goes streaky in the sun. When I rang school to explain they suggested I buy hair dye and dye it back to her normal colour. Fuck off!

Why does any of this matter? It's nonsense.

Our school has a horror of anything vaguely approaching fashionable, therefore none of the kids want to wear it. If they just relaxed a bit I'm sure there'd be far less rebelling going on