To have decided secondary school uniform actually looks ridiculous (most of the time!)

[youarenotkiddingme]

Dropped ds at school this morning and for some unknown reason traffic towards my work was heavy and crawling.

As I was sat in car I saw primary kids and secondary kids and employees all off on their day.

It struck me how the primary kids looked comfortable in skirts and trousers, warm tights and jumpers. The employees has work clothes that looked smart but were bought to suit shape and size and were practical.

The secondary kids are in thin tights (not allowed the super soft thick ones), all girls in same style skirt regardless of shape, size and height and girls just looked ‘odd’ in the ties. The blazers looked a good style on some pupils but others just looked like they were wearing something designed for someone else!

It struck me that despite me agreeing with uniform and the community feel of all wearing a uniform - logo and belonging etc but the reality is 1200 individual children all show horned into a one size fits all style.

I had to visit bank after work where all the staff wore ‘same’ uniform and logo but there were a variety of styles which were chosen by staff to suit their comfort, style and shape.

So AIBU to think that this idea that shirt, tie and blazer and 1 style skirt or trousers actually looks more odd than smart?

Not he actual wearing of the uniform that makes the behaviour better I agree - however the less disciplined kids seem to kick harder against uniform and perhaps opt for the polo and sweatshirt offering schools?

I agree with pp about how at an age where positive body image should be most promoted, girls are made to dress identically in a uniform that makes the majority look (and feel) pretty awful.
My own was an awful head-to-toe green. Very expensive although the quality was rubbish. Flappy skirts and boxy blazers etc. It made anything big look massive, anything thin look scrawny and childlike, and hid anything nice. Perhaps that's why we had to wear it.

Our only local secondary school that had jumper and polo is the one everyone’s after and very oversubscribed - but because it’s one of the best pastoral and academics wise.

This is more if a problem for girls. Boys normally look fine wearing standard cut trousers, blazer tie etc. But, as with all clothing in general, girls come in more variety shapewise (think proportional, too heavy, bottom heavy, busty, flat chested, fat, skinny, short, tall, straight up and down, extremely curvey all jumbled up in various combinations) while with boys it's all just variations on the same themes of shoulders broader than hips with varying degrees of height/width. It's always better if clothingus tailor made but for girls even if the clothing is tailor made some styles just don't suit sone shapes and it just looks wrong. Also don't understand what the whole tie wearing thing is about-I can understand that worhbots it mimicked professional menswear but girls uniforms are generally very far removed from professional womenswear.

I think it's a bit ridiculous in this day and age. Times have changed. I can't see how making kids wear something identical to everyone else and mostly uncomfortable is going to help them learn or behave better.

We had polo shirts and jumpers at school and think we looked smart enough. All our locals are moving towards blazers with shirts/blouses and I think they are so awkward (esp. speaking as a large-busted woman who avoids anything button up...).

Yes I agree with PP's that say that generic uniform is a bit more forgiving on boys than girls.

There's a school by us that has the girls in pleated skirts, the cut of the skirt means it sits quite high on the waist and the pleat is quite a wide one. It looks dreadful on the bigger girls as the skirt sits not much below their bust, this drawing attention to it, especially when you add a tie and a buttoned up shirt and the pleats don't sit right on anybody with curves. They are at such a self conscious age and the uniform just draws attention to everything they probably want to hide! Surely a choice of skirt and choice of wearing an open necked blouse would be much more flattering!

There was the head of a seriously expensive private school (I forget which) who said they didnt have a uniform because all it did was teach the students to dress badly.

School uniform doesnt teach students anything except rebellion.

As workwear its terrible. Silly office shoes which are entirely unsuited to walking to school, walking round school, doing art, science, technology classes where things get dropped and spilled. Plastic clothes wholly unsuited to sweaty teenagers.

It's made of cheap materials put together in sweatshops.

There is no actual evidence that it impacts on academic performance.

What exactly are its redeeming features except to give a new head the money shot being photographed next to head girl and boy in the new uniforms introduced to mark the head's territory?

If a school must have uniform then it should be similar to what most retail staff wear nowadays. Polo shirt/fleece/hoodie in the school colours, comfortable black trousers, all supplied in the school shop at cost price. If it's good enough for succesful businesses then why isn't it good enough for schools?
The shirt tie and blazer combo just looks bloody stupid on boys and girls. It's not fooling anyone, no secondary school children don't look like professionals.
As for skirts, don't even get me started.

noeffingidea
Skirts do my head in.

I couldn't care less if schools have uniforms or not on one condition: whatever rules/guidelines are set are followed.

E.g. if it's non-clingy black bottoms then it's no leggings / if it's no trainers then it's no trainers
Dress code means covered bums/midrifts then obviously turnibg up with your boxers showing/crop tops etc is an issue.

What annoys me more is when people sign up to a uniform but then are plagued with 'but DC wants to wear..."

Maisy the senior school my boys attended banned skirts, but that seems to have changed again, so nearly all the girls seem to be wearing short skirts again. The strange thing is, no one seems to ever wear skirts outside of school, at least never in the winter.
Personally if I was a head teacher everyone would wear the same, as I said above. No one moans when they have to wear trousers and a polo shirt for work, they just turn up for work and get on with it. It doesn't affect the image presented by the staff or customer relations.

I don't understand what - sign up to a uniform means?

School admissions are pretty much get what you're given in our city. Nobody that I know chooses it based on uniform. As if there's even the luxury of that choice.

Luckily, our local secondary school, which is Ofsted outstanding, is plain trousers, white polo necks and sweatshirts. Sensible.

All the schools in my city are academies, mostly with that nasty uniform that looks like it might catch fire if you walk in it too quickly. Horrid.

Nope it looks stupid and ridiculous and is all about style over substance.

How one style of skirt or blazer can fit everyone regardless of being six foot tall and skinny or 4 ft tall with massive boobs or have a body shape that results in having to look like a sack of spuds just to make sure you comply with the skirt length police, i dont know.

All a lot of crap if you ask me. It's a strangely legal way of pricing out the riff raff.

My cynical brain says that schools use excessively strict and impractical uniform as a way of excluding students they dont want to keep for other reasons. That's how you get good results quickly if you are a new head who wants to make an impact. Exclude the students who arent going to achieve good results because they are wearing the wrong coloured socks.

I work near a public school, and in the mornings see the public school pupils and the kids who go to the local comp.

The public school pupils are all in regulation uniform, look smart, comfortable and appropriately dressed. The comp pupils are all wearing their own version of a uniform, so the girls wear ridiculously short skirts and the boys wear black trainers and fleeces. They look a mess.

Therefore from my own unscientific anecdata I'd say the problem isn't uniform, it is whether or not uniform is strictly enforced.

Therefore from my own unscientific anecdata I'd say the problem isn't uniform, it is whether or not uniform is strictly enforced

My dd is still at primary. She's not abnormally small or abnormally large however she is one of those kids in a ridiculously short skirt given all skirts in the mext size up are too big.

She's going to secondary next year. They can enforce all they like it doesn't stop multiple skirts and trousers tried from being far to sodding big.

Besides it's just a skirt. Who cares anyway. Isn't there actual problems to be dealing with. Our local just appeared on a local news website for the bullying that's going on.

If your faffing about worrying about socks and blazers whole parents withdraw their kids your priorities are all wrong

I used to be quite pro school uniform, but the ridiculous lengths some schools go to to enforce it.

At my DD3's school they have an absolute bee in their bonnets about skirt length, even to the extent of measuring the girls in their form rooms and discussing their leg and skirt lengths within earshot of the rest of the form. Most of the girls felt violated by that, and most of us parents, who are not normally the complaining types, did actually complain loudly.

I was one who complained, and I had a telephone call from the headmaster apologising, assuring me that this method wasn't school policy. It was two admin staff who had taken this upon themselves and he had put a stop to it.

That should have read that the ridiculous lengths some schools go to to enforce it has put me off it and started to turn me against it.

I’m actually relieved to see others share my view!
As I said upthread I have a ds who actually looks ok in the uniform - average height and willowy build (he’s a swimmer!).
Therefore I hadn’t really noticed how impractical it was for females.

I honestly couldn’t work out how these poor young woman forced into a uniform that looked uncomfortable were gaining a higher standard of education from wearing it!

I’m not sure about comfort but I know what looks better.
2 local schools secondaries I drive past every day are full of girls in what look like leggings, huge amounts of make up and lots of jewellery. One doesn’t have a blazer at all and quite frankly they all look pretty scruffy.
DD’s School has a very strict policy and a specific outfitters and guidelines on hair and make up that ARE enforced. They all look very smart, including the kids that are larger.
I have no idea if there is a correlation between learning and uniform because although DD’s School DOES perform better than the others there are other reasons for that so the uniform issue may be irrelevant on that count

'Where I live it is the better schools that have the smartest uniforms. I believe that it has a positive effect on their behaviour and helps to equip them for the workplace.'

I went to a very academic, independent school that didn't have uniform. Neither I, nor any of my peers were delinquents, and we've all managed to fit into 'the workplace'. Plus, these same children will become young adults who manage to spend 3+ years at university without being forced to wear a uniform, yet somehow managing to study and avoid stealing cars.

Incidentally, that same school now has a uniform because it's what
a new generation of parents wanted. So, ignore academic achievement, let's dress children like miniature accountants because pushy lower middle class parents like it.

Girls in England wear more makeup, are more clothes obsessed, have less of a sense of what clothes suit their bodies, and seem more competitive about what they wear, than their European and American counterparts. I think uniform makes clothes more, not less, of an issue, and also gives kids fewer opportunities to develop a personal stile.

In countries without uniform, you see less highly gendered clothing choices, and less obsessive behaviour over it. If uniform were such a great leveller, England would be renowned for being the most classless, egalitarian society.

Uniform exaggerates small differences between people, and forces teachers to lower themselves to the absurd position of having to talk about what kids are wearing, which really should be beneath their notice.

Ds1 is in Year 8. His school uniform is black trousers, school logo white polo & school logo navy sweatshirt. I think it's fine - smart but also practical. They held a consultation last year about changing to blazer & tie but obviously parents didn't want that becasue they kept the uniform how it is.

I am pro uniform. Went to a school without and one with and much preferred having a uniform for a number of reasons - felt like part of a team funnily enough and also was very difficult to keep up with all the latest fashion fads at the non uniform school .
What I really really hate is seeing girls in blazers ties and trousers. Ugh. No teenage girl can pull that off! If they're allowed to wear trousers then let them have nicely fitting ones and a blouse and jumper or something.