School dress ruined at school!

[DianaMitford]

As the title says. New dress, bought at the beginning of the summer term. 9yo DD, doing art today and black ink has soaked through her apron onto her dress. I washed it immediately she came home with Vanish and it's faded but it's ruined. I mean, she can still wear it but it's got black ink all down the front

My dilemma is that a new dress is £40 and there are no secondhand ones. Do I say anything to the school?? If so, what?!

The fuck is speech day??

Kids stain/damage/spill things, it's part of being a child. If you complained to the school it wouldn't achieve anything bar hassle for the teacher, who can't watch all 30 kids all the day. Accidents happen, just buy a new dress and don't make a fuss

Bloody hell OP, no idea why you've had a roasting on here. I swear somethings in the water at the moment.

The fuck is speech day??* It's very long and boring except if your DC gets an award/prize or some sort of mention.

OP when teaching I was embarrassed when a child got paint on their clothes and took the first opportunity to apologise to the parent at pick up. Has the art teacher apologised for the inadequate apron/indelible ink?

Derxa. Long ago my friend's mother knitted right through speech day, giggles and shock horror from some snobby fellow pupils. In reminiscences of WW1 recently in local paper mentioned the total of socks and scarves knitted in the school and sent to the trenches. This was achieved by the example of a head teacher who carried her knitting everywhere, knitting as she went, and encouraged staff and pupils to do the same. No health and safety to stop them 100 years ago!

No health and safety to stop them 100 years ago! God bless them.

Blimey, people are getting a bit shouty at the OP for committing the cardinal sin of having privately educated kids!

my daughter is at a private school. We're pretty skint, she's on a full scholarship. kitting her out with full uniform was £450, and that was only buying 1 summer dress. I was properly worried about how I'd cope with that given I was used to have 6 Tesco dresses on the go. It turns out that EVERYONE only has 1 dress - from the super-rich swimming pool and ponies types, through the ordinary folks, down to us poor scholarship families. Most of us cram in a mid-week wash, but it's not always necessary.

I'd be v pissed off if school stained my daughter's only dress. Assuming the go back in their summer uniform in September til half term (that's what we do), I'd buy her a new one now, but size up, so it'll do for the next year. And I'd seethe a bit!

No apologies from the teacher, no. We don't drop off/pick up to the classroom though....

Why should I pay to replace something the school have damaged? Because I can afford it? They can afford it better than I can.

Speech Day is the last Saturday afternoon of the summer term. Sports Day in the morning then all children into uniform and into the marquee. Speech by Head, Chair of Governors and guest speaker. Prizes and cups given out. Can all go home.

The only saving grace is that lunch is just before the speeches and I parents usually take their champagne into the marquee

I've put the blasted dress into soak this evening, so we will see....

My dd school uniform (private) costs less than my friends dd state school PE kit, before she buys anything else.
All schools are different, seems some people on here are ignorant of this fact and either wish to pick a fight or have a huge chip on their shoulders when private schools are mentioned.
It's like they wait until they read the words and butt in no matter what the OP is actually asking.
You don't half make yourselves look stupid.

Go on then, if you think it's the schools fault and you shouldn't have to pay, bookan appointment with the Head and ask for a free replacement dress.

Bet you don't.

Creme - that exact issue of approaching the school is the point of this thread..... And no, you're right, I don't see myself demanding they replace the dress. A strongly worded email about how dissatisfied I am, however..... Still in two minds.

Try vanish gold.
My son came home with black ink on his school top, I mixed some vanish hold with a little water, rubbed it on the ink marks, left it for 10 minutes then put it through a wash on 60 and the ink was all gone.

If it's any comfort OP, DS came home without his trousers today. He had cricket club after school, and was wearing PE shorts (but school shirt and jumper) when I picked him up. Ho hum, at least we have both his shoes.

LOL consider yourself lucky my DS managed to loose one shoe at school once..It turned up a week later !!!!!

He has also come home in someone else's trousers ..They were so big he had to hold them up !!!

Good luck OP... I suggest next year through you invest in a couple of dresses though as one is not even practical in any world.

My DS ruins a couple of white polo shirts a term. He leans against a white board (white board marker doesn't come off), gets marker on his top in some other mysterious way, spills paint, gets grass stains etc. He's ripped the knees out of two pairs of trousers this year too. Yes, it's irritating, particularly if it's something brand new. But he's a kid. It's school. Shit happens.

Let your daughter be a kid, for god's sake. And don't embarrass yourself by complaining to the school.

Enjoy your DDs school days OP they pass so quickly

It's your daughter who damaged the dress despite provided apron, not the school. She did it by accident of course but nevertheless. She is a kid, it happens. Don't embarrass your daughter and yourself, get her some dresses. You said she can wear this size next year as well so it won't be for 3 weeks only.

Ok....I'll be going dress shopping tomorrow

I for one think a perfectly reasonable argument to the school is "if you're going to insist that the girls wear dresses that cost £40 a pop, you can bloody well ensure that (a) they are made from a stain-resistant fabric, and/or (b) the girls are protected from ink and paint stains by appropriate covering when they're doing art projects. Or else change the uniform so it's obtainable at a much lower cost if I'm going to have to throw away dresses regularly."

I bet one of the reasons you can't get any secondhand is that no one is prepared to put theirs in the secondhand shop - they're all too stained!

Call me a slattern (you wouldn't be the first or the last to do so ) but my DD doesn't have any new dresses anymore (I'm the one whose school charges £48 for new - they're £12 secondhand). I get them all secondhand and they have all sorts of spots and stains on them. My DD definitely isn't the only one who wears secondhand dresses. She goes to what is admittedly a very posh school but I can't imagine someone making a comment on her wearing secondhand dresses or having only one dress. If the dress was grubby (hadn't actually been washed in a while or not ironed) I might hear some comments but even then in the 5 years she's been at this school I've never heard anything, and my DD is one of the messiest in her year.