to think primary school uniform price is ridiculous?!

[TeaLover2468]

I'm new here but just wanting some perspective.

My dc's school has just updated the uniform policy, I've always thought it was expensive but now its getting a little silly.

Logo school jumpers £17.25 + each
Girls M&S Summer dresses £12+ each
The boys summer shirts £12 + each

On top of that they need

Logo PE tshirt £8.50
Logo PE hoodie £ £13.50
Specific PE Socks £ 5.50

This is without thiings like shoes, shirts, pinafores coats and backpacks, Logo PE bags, Hi-Viz.
Plus an Optional blazer at £30.

Is it unreasonable of me to think spending £200+ on one child a year on primary school uniform is ridiculous?
I always knew secondary schools were expensive but that's over £1300 for 6 years of primary school.
That could buy a car!
AIBU or is it getting a bit silly now?!

I agree! Our school uniform (for the girls) is a tartan skirt/pinafore so you have to use the school stockist for this £22 per pinafore and £19 per skirt!
Plus the logo PE top £8
Logo jumper/cardi £18/£20
Blazer £30
Tie £4
Everything else I get from Tesco/Next.
I save money by buying kids a good size sport style backpack, DS has lasted him 4 years so far and still going strong.
And I try to drag the best looking pinafores/skirts for DD out for 2 years and add 1 new pinafore & skirt each year so she generally has 4 available but 2 of them will be from the year before.
If you really want to save money on new term stuff, don't let DC anywhere near smiggle, that place is a rip off!!

That’s very expensive. My dc school jumpers are £10 and they don’t have to have the logo polo. The colour is purple which is harder to find school jumpers anyway. Double check if they actually have to have a logo polo.

Shirts £12- VERY expensive. Many state primaries wear polo shirts which you can buy VERY cheaply- you'd probably get a four pack for £12. Even normal cotton tailored shirts come much much cheaper than that in supermarkets or on the high street. I'd expect a twin pack at least for £12.
PE socks £5:50- utterly ridiculous and unnecessary. Will be lost/ mixed up within a week. Normal socks are fine for PE- most primary children don't have sweaty feet and PE is largely unenergetic anyway. Lots of standing round waiting for your turn. No more energetic than playtime and they don't need special socks for that....

WTF is the obsession with tartan skirts/kilts for school uniform. I've noticed in my town that many of the senior school girls are now wearing them (extremely short with knee high socks) after years of everyone wearing grey trousers.
Anyway , £17 for a young child's jumper or sweatshirt is very expensive by todays prices. I don't agree with this kind of school uniform certainly not for primary school kids. If schools insist on a uniform then it should be like what most retail staff wear. Comfortable trousers (joggers for little kids), polo/fleece or hoody in the school colours at a competitive price.

WTF is the obsession with tartan skirts/kilts for school uniform.

I think they're like ridiculous coloured blazer trim in that they're viewed as having some kind of magical impact upon academic results just by exuding their polyester magnificance in an aura of making your kids look like escapees from Butlins red coat school.

That or it's a very nice way of "oh we don't have a sole uniform supplier but only X around here stocks it" bullshittery.

That is expensive, but you shouldn’t have to spend that much per year if you

• buy second hand
• and clothes generally last a couple of years

I think that's expensive for primary. Ours has logo sweatshirts at £10-13, logo PE shirts £5, and the rest is supermarket stuff. My oldest is starting secondary this year and I have already spent £185 and still have a list of stuff he needs.
You shouldn't need to replace it all every year though, buy a bit big and most of it will last several years. All our logo stuff has been handed down to the next sibling and school sell secondhand stuff very cheaply.

No, most of that sounds reasonable. Did you not budget for that? Have a look at the older children and see if they're all in logo-ed stuff, or whether you can get away with mostly supermarket stuff - which nobody can argue with the price of. If you're just being slack you need to start planning ahead. If you genuinely can't afford it most schools have hardship funds which are used discreetly for this kind of thing.

A school shouldn't need to provide a hardship fund for school uniform for those in need. It should have affordable school uniform.

Is it all mandatory? I'd just be buying supermarket matches of it all in reasonably similar colours. The idea of having school specific socks in particular is fucking ridiculous.

@Barbie222 did I budget for them to put prices up and add in new compulsory items?
No I didn't actually!

Thank you to everyone who has replied though. I will be suggesting to he school that same colour alternatives from supermarkets should be acceptable!

Just as @BingTheButterflySlayer said last night I'm in that crappy position where we go to work, don't get benefits and get by. I spend may onwards budgeting for summer holiday childcare so I wouldn't qualify for a hardship fund either

Clothes prices have fallen significantly in real terms over the years. I think we have all grown accustomed now to the amazingly cheap clothing prices that we have nowadays in the likes of Primark, Asda, Tesco etc.

I did a few backwards inflation calculations for the costs of uniform items that my parents had to fork out for me when I was at school. Prices are from my mother's recollections and my own.

I went to a state grammar school. In 1969 the cost of my school blazer (I remember my dad nearly fainting with shock!) was £14, equivalent today to £200. My school skirt was 30 shillings, equivalent to £23.50 today. These had to be obtained from one specific shop, as did the school jumper, hat, and tie and dresses for the summer. School blouses (from Littlewoods or BHS or C&A) were approx 10 shillings each, about £8 today and a standard dark blue gabardine coat was approx £4 to £5, equivalent to £62 to £78 today.

The uniform was compulsory. There was very little 2nd hand stuff available.

Due to the cost (and despite my parents having no facilities for the quick washing and drying of clothes) I only had one school skirt, which I wore all the time; it was dry cleaned (it wasn't washable) maybe once a year, if that; 2 blouses (worn for a week at a time) and one jumper, which was washed at the end of each half of term.

Most of my friends were the same. Considering that it was also the norm to have only one bath a week, we must have whiffed a bit!

Our school does a used uniform sale run by the PTA- parents donate good used uniform and the parents buy it to raise funds for the school. It's usually 50p per item or £1 for e.g. school fleece or coat. I usually do this and top up with packs of shirts from M &S which are around £5 for a pack of three, and socks...and I do have two boys which makes it easier for hand downs as well.

Do you have to buy from M&S? Definitely walked past a 2 summer dresses for £8 rack at the supermarket. Aldi also do school uniform in small sizes at great prices.

If you have more than one child, you can pass down PE kit, jumpers/cardigans.

My gripe is school shoes. They look knackered so quickly despite not being cheap.

One comprehensive my daughter was looking at demanded kilt-type skirts at £27 each and blazers at £60 each, so you aren't doing too bad OP.

The school she is now going to will allow M&S skirts and blouses, but everything else is sold at a premium, logoed, from the supplier. I expect to spend hundreds still.

I was going to say I didn't need to replace everything every year. Jumpers and PE kits often lasted 2 years rather than 1.

That's really expensive. At our school we buy a couple of logo polo shirts and book bags. Everything else from supermarkets.

I found we needed a lot of uniform especially with girls who have summer dresses. So basically 5 of everything. I do a wash midweek but there's always something stained or lost. And by year 1 dd had grown out of everything except socks. Add three pairs of shoes a year! It's a lot!

That is an awfully expensive uniform list. I have 2 in primary and couldn’t afford spending that much. Luckily our school cardigans jumper are around £8 £9 each. Bookbags £5, PE tops and sweatshirts are £7 and £9 and the rest is generic. That sounds more like a private school price list to me. Never buy their exact size whilst in primary school. Always go up one size. Fold the cuffs of cardigans/jumpers if you have to. Only way to ensure it lasts the whole year with little ones growth spurts. I don’t understand why they have limited you to M&S summer dresses? When Asda Tesco does them for £4 £5 each. Not like they are branded! I understand your concerns here. Especially when you have to be prepared for bits getting lost or ruined and face the cost of replacement.

I have one at primary and one at secondary.

The jumpers are pretty much identical, only with different logos. Both the logos are embroidered.

The primary one costs £9.99 -£9.50 in smaller sizes, but £9.99 for a child of eleven. The secondary jumper costs £25.99 in the same size.

I can’t for the life of me fathom why when they are factory stock of the same jumper only with a different logo. Teenagers are often growing faster than 5-10 year old and are just as capable of getting messy and more capable of getting sweaty. What justifies the over 2.5x price difference? Of course there is a same rise on most other items too.

Are they really going to grow out of everything, every year? DD's uniform is very pricey but she'll be able to use a lot of it again next year and she's tall for her age (5). Only things we might need new is shoes and possibly sports t-shirt. May need a new shirt half way through school year but then that will be the size to fit the following year as well.

Sizing up is great... if you don't have my daughters who have absolutely wrecked their cardigans over the course of one year (even the expensive logo cardigans I bought so it's not just a cheap clothes thing). There's no way I can get a second year out of them - whiteboard pen stains all over the shop and everything! DD1's summer dresses already have been hemmed up about a good 8-9 cm to try to get a second year out of them (DD2's will be a lost cause with the amount she falls over - they've all got grass and mud stains on the arse).

The kids who have the logoed stuff on are probably in the minority in our school (apart from Reception where we're all keen to "do it right") - and not one of the kids really cares about it or has ever commented on who has logos and who hasn't.

I don't like the need for logos on school clothes, I can see the point in a jumper as it makes it identifiable to the school but why does it need to be on most things? DC' school has to have a logo pe shirt, school jumper and two different polo tops because there are two different shirts one for autumn/winter and one for spring/summer, it's ridiculous.

@rainingcatsanddog avoid clarks and startrite for shoes -awful quality. my son's primigi and superfit look great after 5-6 months usage (outgrown). clarks look good for about a week if i'm lucky, and fall apart within a month or so (football, scooter, ...)

Lidl shirts 2 for £2.50 skirt £3 no jumper she will not wear 1 just any old back pack PE top and shorts £5 each