To think this is rediculous for school uniform!

[worriedwinfred]

Polo shirts for foundation stage children (all school children but how messy is foundation stage) have to be embroidered and cost £8 each! I was planning on sticking up on ASDA ones at 2 for £3 so as soon as we get a stain or fadeing DS will always look smart. Jumpers and t shirts are £8 each I just think that for a t-shirt is abit much. I will be buying them obviously but it'll be a struggle and I can imagine maybe others won't be able to afford new ones every time there's a stain.

Aibu to think school colours but not embroidered would be a better idea? They also expect £1 a week "voluntary" donation to school funds

Maybe paying £8 will encourage you away from the terrible throw away disposable clothing culture. So wasteful.

I'd bet the same people are making both sets of t shirts! The price hasn't increased because they're ethically sourced I know that much!

Umm I think this is about schools trying to differentiate themselves. I bought the official school sweatshirts and polos in previous years (with embroidered logos) but to be honest they didn't fit or wear well. Some supermarket brands aren't great either so I've compromised and gone with M&S this year as the jumpers and polos etc wash well. We have an embroidered polo and sweatshirt for when we need it

It is not mandatory at all, Asda polo shirts will be fine.

I'd bet the same people are making both sets of t shirts! The price hasn't increased because they're ethically sourced I know that much!

Have you compared the supplier's ethical policy and where the shorts are made with Asda's?

That's awful Hopping
This is our closest school and I do worry about sending my DCs to a school where most will be alot better off than us

Just been to the welcome morning for my youngest sons start in reception in September. Jumpers are £11 each and both my boys require 3 each (tried 2 this year for my son in year 1, didn't work, why do they have to be so messy?) so it's a pretty penny. Luckily the school doesn't have embroidered polo shirts and trousers and shirts I will get in Asda. I do think if a school requires you to have logo'd stuff it should be considerably cheaper.

I spent a while googling 'ethical school uniform'/'fairtrade school uniform', until I found things that sounded like a good attempt, as much as you can trust these things. And I found that the brand the school uses for shirts is actually in that list. But trousers I struggle with, and again compromise. But I buy fewer items of good quality that are least likely to be made in the worst conditions. I don't count £1.50 from Asda in that.

Thanks, and I certainly agree on the Asda ones. Ours are provided by PMG Schoolwear, who are a huge supplier and also do brownies. I'm not sure how ethical they are but they don't seem to have an MSA statement which they should do.

I have just checked the manufacturer of the school polo shirts ds has (£8 each) and - assuming they are true to their word - then they are much more ethical than the cheapo Asda ones, it seems a lot of their products are made in the UK

I'd bet the same people are making both sets of t shirts! The price hasn't increased because they're ethically sourced I know that much!

I think you're right. But I also think that we have to work harder to look after the stuff we have, rather than a "one stain and bin it" type of mentality.

The planet is seriously fucked and we just can't go on like this.

I'm sorry that this comes across as a derail from the problem that you've raised. I do think though that the climate crisis needs to underscore everything we do right now, and we (and schools!) should be more shocked than we actually are by the idea of polo shirts costing a quid or two.

For the poster who mentioned families living in poverty and using food banks, believe it or not I care about them too.

DD is in y6 and remarkably still wearing some of the polos I bought for her in reception.
Very very few kids will still fit polos bought for them when they are 4 years old, when they are 11. I am kind of shocked that any kid would still fit their polo.

Most kids grow quickly and so their clothes do need replaced. Nobody is going to want to buy paint stained second hand clothes. So nearly always these clothes will not be passed on, especially as they have a logo on them.

OK, I've found this =

pmgschoolwear.co.uk/ethical-policy.php

It's shit. It's just a promise not to break the laws of the countries in which they operate. Asda's literally cannot be worse than this.

I do think though that the climate crisis needs to underscore everything we do right now, and we (and schools!) should be more shocked than we actually are by the idea of polo shirts costing a quid or two.

Exactly. I think we should see £1.50 shirts and instead of thinking "Oh, that's good, let's buy six" we should think "OMG, that is wrong in many ways I won't encourage that."

It's shit. It's just a promise not to break the laws of the countries in which they operate. Asda's literally cannot be worse than this. Yes, ok. I wouldn't buy from them. But my reasoning wouldn't be complaining about the price! There are other suppliers with better policies, for aruond £8 per shirt, I promise.

@greengrowtherushes I still wear clothes that I bought 30 years ago. And I would put kids in stained clothes to play outside or in the garden, or to do messy play. But no I would not want kids to walk around with stained clothes generally.

We have school logo jumpers and polo shirts which have happily worked their way down 4 children. The supermarket stuff wouldn’t come close to doing that.

I do think we have way too much of a throw away culture and cheap clothes adds to that.

We have a t shirt printing shop here. My friend used it. She purchased asda t shirts and they embroidered the logo on. They didn't look any different and worked out much cheaper.
My ds school polo's are £16 each. He's a teen and a sweat bag. 3 wasn't enough for the wash dry and iron rotation so. Had to get 2 more was expensive but much easier and less. Hassle for me.

For example Guide uniform can come from here: www.davidluke.com/sustainable-future/our-ethical-policy which isn't perfect, but provides a baseline, and Asda are probably worse.

I’m assuming you went to look around the school and chose it whilst aware of their uniform policy? I get that you find it frustrating but it would hardly have been a surprise. I think when you choose s school, you accept that there could be aspects of their policies and rules you might not like but in the end, you chose to go with them.

I think you have to suck it up and see how you can do it more cheaply. Any hand-me-downs? Any second hand selling page? Uniform swap shop?

And the reason embroidered logo school uniforms are expensive is because these items are expensive to buy from suppliers, because the runs are relatively small. Totally different for multi nationals that make hundreds of thousands if not millions of one item. So no school uniforms with embroidered logos on would cost what people here are saying anyway. But it is an unnecessary expense. I would rather buy decent quality t shirts without a logo from a shop much more cheaply.

Both my DC's schools officially ask you to wear the shirts with the logo.

But, in practice, it's fine to wear non-logo ones, no one has ever complained. (Took me a year to work this out!) Are you sure they're strict on this?

The really cheap ones are a false economy though IMO. They get really crumpled in the wash and stain more easily.

Get non-iron ones, still cheap, but much better quality IMO.

Uniform isn't mandatory at primary school,it's an 'agreed' uniform.

Ds's bog standard secondary school had a PE kit which was over £90. That made me wince!

But no I would not want kids to walk around with stained clothes generally.

Agree completely, me neither, especially not at school. And some stains just won't come out. But we need to try hard to look after the things we have. It's just too easy at the moment to ditch and replace (apart from anything else, it doesn't make good economic sense to spend half an hour scrubbing at a stain on a two-quid shirt. I get it.).

I was thinking back and in primary school we used to wear colourful patterned smocks over our (expensive) school uniforms. It's not that we were little angels or anything, it's that clothes were much more pricey and there were systems in place that made it easy to take care of them.

To be honest the schools which have "better off" parents don't get much funding. Dd is at such a school (I did choose one closer but it was 0.1mile out of catchment - i.e a 6 minute walk ) and we have to buy them pens/pencils/glue to take in. They don't have huge funds for the things other schools do as they don't have the same funding from having lower income students. Obviously this is all part of attempting equality, which I am all for, but the woeful under funding is very much apparent at dd's school, whereas the other (closer) school has a new art block and various extra activities that our school simply can't maintain. So we have endless requests to bake/donate toys/flower pots and suchlike. The government seems to forget that most people know someone using a school and the funding cuts, meal charges, teacher stress and dilapidated buildings are obvious to most of the population.

Do you really need to buy proper school uniform for full price?
A lot of children wear non logo ones, and none of other children really cares at my dc's school. And they have second hand uniform sale regularly, where you can buy good quality logo ones for 1 pound.