To refuse to rebuy five years of primary school uniform

[Schooluniform2018]

Our small primary school has always had a uniform. I have had one child pass through the school into high school and therefore have enough shirts, pinafores and logo cardigans to pass down to my youngest two. Currently in years 1 and 3.

Deputy head was recently promoted to head and promised 6 months ago that the uniform was staying the same with a logo change in the cardigans.

Today they have decided that the colour of the uniform has to change. (Not sure if pinafore/trouser colour is changing yet)

So could we buy new pe kits, jumpers/cardigans and maybe pinafores/trousers !

So I have five years of uniform...enough for my youngest two to wear all their school life, in good condition and they want me to spend a lot of money which I simply do not have to replace the uniform.

Oh and they didn't bother to ask parents opinion, just presented it as a done deal.

AIBU to tell the school that my kids will be still wearing their old uniform colours until they graduate to high school in five years time, as I don't have the money to rebuy new stuff :(

I heard that uniform is optional at primary school, so hoping that will work in my favour.

I am so upset. It is a good school with no reason to change the existing nice uniform, the new one is made by the same uniform shop in the same materials just different colour and logo.

Yabu they’re a so much more available in Tesco, Asda,Lidl and Aldi. The shirts were £1.75 for two, trousers were cheap as were shoes at £7.99. We even bought the cheap jumpers for 4pounds from Tesco and had the local primary school badge put on. I would feel sorry for the last child getting 3rd hand me downs. I find school wear is well used come the end of the school year due to the fact it’s worn majority of the time especially with puberty when they are sweating and growth spurts. If you don’t adhere to the school uniform and put your dc in old uniform your setting them to be excluded by their peers. Surely part of being a part is budgeting costs for clothing especially for school. My parent had very little but they always made sure I had new uniform every year.

YANBU OP!

Do you not buy your children a new uniform every year ???? Please don’t send them in in the old hand me down uniform they will get bullied !!!!!!

Hilarious!

My DC are at independent school and are kitted out entirely in the loot from the PTA's second-hand shop, as are most of their peers. Coincidentally, they've just changed the PE kit, but the children are allowed to wear the old stuff indefinitely, including hand-me-downs and secondhand.

Watching with interest... at our school there is currently an option of white or blue polo shirts but the head has proposed making the blue ones compulsory and it looks like this is going to go ahead. I have pointed out that all-cotton blue ones are hard to come by and the poly cotton versions can exacerbate eczema but seemingly to no avail.

Quite apart from that, this change removes the option of buying cheaper generic multipacks of white shirts. Which will make things more expensive for many families and is also a questionable move given the school is now asking parents to contribute to general running costs.

(My contrarian very eczema-prone DD2 has insisted on wearing blue shirts ever since she heard about the proposals so is also making me look a liar to the head!)

I have sent an email to school asking them to consider rolling out only to new starters on reception next year and rolling it up the school year on year.

As this is the way other schools do uniform change as not to burden current pupils parents with additional costs.

I get what pp said about new starters might have hand me downs waiting too. But hopefully the school could help children in this situation.

Ps. There are rumours of blazer being added. I totally refuse to buy a primary school child an expensive item of clothing which restricts their movements. Kids need to run and play. I am hoping this is a fake rumour.

This happened to my DGCs when all 3 of them where in Primary school it would have cost DD many £s to change so she kept them in the original uniform until they moved to senior school she did however buy the logo and had them sewn onto their sweatshirts at a cost of 75p each.

My son's school amalgamated the infants and juniors into one primary a few years ago, and changed the colour and logo. They allowed parents to send children in either of the old uniforms for about a year I think, to use up uniform already purchased. They also provided free of charge, one new jumper to each pupil which I thought was good.

Zcarter how ridiculous to suggest that all children get entirely new uniform every year or they’ll get bullied. My DS goes to Private school and there’s no issue with second hand uniform sales where parents can get blazers and other expensive logo items. When it costs £80 for a blazer you can be damn sure that someone else will want it and that it will be wearable for a few years by someone else. Luckily our uniform while
pricey is high quality so the blazers are thick tweed more like an outdoor
Coat (and they don’t wear them indoors so they are basically a coat) so they last for ever. What a silly and wasteful attitude you have. Is not a case of being cheap it’s just being sensible! Rest assured most kids in your children’s school will have a jumper etc that belonged to a sibling. Children will only get bullied if people like you tell their children there’s something wrong with that.

OP I would talk to the school and ask what they expect from parents who have a backlog of uniform to hand down. Perhaps you can buy the most obviously different item (the jumper colour etc) and keep the other uniform? It is annoying, and as you say not everyone can replace everything in one go.

Both my DC wore the same blazers and shirts and pe kits from the start of year 7 to the end of year 11. We bought them big and as they only got taller not wider they never needed to be replaced. They each had one new skirt as the older girls wore a different style to the younger ones. They did get new jumpers as the uniform ones wore out after a few years.

Their school uniform policy was super strict and wearing a battered, worn out, tatty version of it was about the only way they could rebel. Far from being bullied it actually gave them some street cred.

When they were keeping the old uniform and changing the logo. I had already contacted the uniform shop and got a quote on an slightly bigger logo badge to see over the old logos and had talked to the school and asked if they would consider taking orders for badges only for hand me down clothes and they had agreed.

It was only this morning when the kuds were talking about the new uniform and I popped in to the office to check if they were still offering the badge only option, to be told. Sorry there is going to be an unnecessary colour change.

I feel your pain my dear.

Mine (now 21 and 22,) started 'little' school at 4 to 4.5 ish, and by 5 and 6, they were both there. When they were 7 & 8, they had built a new school and changed the uniforms COMPLETELY. Gym, and sports and games gear, the jumpers, the ties, the summer dresses and pinafores, and of course anything and everything else that the logo was on, (like the book bag for example,) so virtually everything had to be re-bought - for TWO of them.

Then they went to 'big' school, and they did the same. (When my kids were 12 & 13.) Only they refurbished the school (over around 6 months,) and stuck a new head teacher in. And HE decided everything was changing too. EVERYTHING.

He made a nice little rule though, that anyone on full state benefits (who qualified for free school trips and free school dinners,) got them for free. And to fucking hell with people who actually go out and EARN their own money.

I know not everybody actively chooses to be on benefits, but that caused a lot of anger and resentment with people who had to pay, as many 'working' people had no more surplus income than some of the parents on benefits. And they got everything else free too, so it was a massively unfair system. We had to replace everything for both of our kids (AGAIN!)

Not sure what you can do @Schooluniform2018 except get a petition going with the rest of the parents or complain to the education authority or council. If these bloody schools are going to do this, then they need to give out the new uniforms for free. To EVERYone, not just those that get everything free already.

@ZCarter

Do you not buy your children a new uniform every year ???? Please don’t send them in in the old hand me down uniform they will get bullied !!!!!!

It must be so lovely to be in your world..............

What's that like? Just having tons of surplus money to splash about..........??? Must be lovely.

I'm impressed that you already know that it won't be possible to buy a new jumper in the next 5 years
What if one of your children has a growth spurt? Or tears a hole in something? Or if it's not in such good condition after the first child wears it?

OP why don't you ask the Parent Governors and find out if it went to a Governor's meeting or not!

There was a school near here that changed their uniform with the new head. I bet when she retired they were hoping for a change. She had infant and juniors in different colours and one was ghastly. You could probably spot them a mile and a half away! She also wore stiletto shoes to work...bet she regrets that now.
My kids uniform was good enough to pass down too. My kids didn't poke pencils through the cuff or suck them until they unravelled. They knew better. I am amazed how much lost property goes unclaimed.

I get one school year out of my daughters wool blazer.... it wears at the elbows and the shoulder gets marked due to straps..

i marvel at anyone who can make a blazer last 5 years. I'm doing something wrong!!

What the hell do people do to uniform that makes it impossible to hand down ?

Shirts I get as they are thin and go grey

But seriously most the skirts I have bought have washed and dried well . The next one I have was second hand when I got it and is still going strong now despite being on the short side as she's grown in the three/4 years she's had it

The logo cardigans are 14 quid each and certainly better quality feom 5 years ago than they are now hence why I've purchased second hand and handed down as opposed to buying new ones all the time.

The jumpers at £18 each is currently the most expensive part of the uniform. Kids need 2 each year for so they want me to buy 12 jumpers at £216.

Plus summer dresses times 10 at £5 each £50.
Plus 4 pe kits at £20 another £80

So that is £350 minimum spend assuming no blazers and the pinafores and trousers stay the same colour.

Ridiculous waste of money. Plus the new head has been in the school for many years and has no need to change the current uniform.

DS' school has just consulted on this. Change of colour of PE kit, reduction on the colour accepted for polo shirts, reduction in the range of jumper options - think used to allow tank tops but no mention in consultation document.

Even if you don't have younger siblings to hand-me-down to, many parents still but larger sizes to give growing room - much of DS' uniform will last another year so I'm not impressed at the suggestion that some if it be scrapped for September. I've fed back explaining this, and asking for the option to buy logos to put on existing uniform rather than new logo-ed sweaters, but feedback won't be until later this term.

We're getting some guff about uniform showing group identity etc. but there's no problem that tightening up on the kids in variations on the uniform - being sent in trainers and brown shoes etc. - wouldn't solve. I sent DS in black trainers when we last had snow, as his trainers had better grip than his shoes. He explained it to teachers as he saw them but the day to day teachers just shrugged so ours is aparently a head teacher driven change as well.

Do you not buy your children a new uniform every year ???? Please don’t send them in in the old hand me down uniform they will get bullied !!!!!!

If this is true surely we should be teaching kids not to bully because of hand me downs, not pressurising parents to spend money to stop it!
I do buy new uniforms every year, because I can afford to and I choose to. However, I well remember having to struggle and make things last longer than they should have because I couldn’t afford to replace them, and if I’d still been in that position your comment would have made me feel like shit.

Yanbu at all op.

My senior school had a uniform change just before I started, but the school second-hand uniform shop continued to stock the old uniform and the two uniforms - which were obviously very different - were allowed to run in parallel until all second hand stocks and hand-me-downs had become too worn-out to be reused any more. The old style got less and less prevalent as the years went by but no one was forced to buy new if there was a viable old alternative. That is the only sensible way to do it.

For anyone in this situation, I wonder if it's worth totting up how much you spend with the school per child per year on voluntary payments for school trips, cake sales and all the other stuff. Work out how much it all is.

Then get together with the other parents and as a group tell the school that the money for uniform has to come from somewhere. So you will be paying for pointless replacement uniform from the money you would have given to the school. If they make you buy new uniform, they have to say goodbye to payments for school trips. Do they accept that?

As the uniform is made at the big uniform shop. Both the old and new colour (Plus a dozen more) are available and they sew the relevant badge directly onto the jumper.

So the older years could still buy a new jumper in the old uniform colour for years to come as their are made to order.

I assumed Zcarter was saying don't send the DC in the second hand 'wrong' uniform rather than don't send them in passed on uniform.
My was sent to a new school wearing the uniform from my old school, let's just say it didn't help me to settle in

If it makes you feel any better. I complained to the school recently about how many dress down days there were (5 in six weeks is excessive). I wrote to them explaining the purpose of the uniform and that my child will not be taking part and that children should learn to give to charity for the sake of doing so i.e. because they want to, not because they're going to get something out of it i.e. dress down days.

I sent my DD to school in her normal clothes. And still gave the school the money.

Don't be afraid to stand out on a limb. Don't give the school any choices, just explain this is what will be happening. Due to your financial circumstances. Also mention you are disappointed that parents were not given any say in their decision.

I am still paying instalments for the school trips my kids have been on this year.

We are a working family but on a very tight budget and simply can not cope with large outgoing at no notice.

Kids need 2 each year for so they want me to buy 12 jumpers at £216.

No they don’t. Buy 1 for each child and buy it big so it lasts two years.