to think school would look after uniforms....

[iliketosleep]

As anyone knows, uniform for 3dc isnt cheap! but over £100 later they are all kitted out for school....

4 weeks later dd1 comes home with a big hole in cardigan from name badge, dd2s cardigan was taken by another child despite it having her name in and also whiteboard marker all over her shirt which wont come off (i've tried!!) and ds who has what i can only think is glue but looks like big grease marks on his jumper that wont come out


they look like scruffs

[Doodledootoo]

Message withdrawn

[TheApprentice]

I do symapthise with the expense this is causing you but, speaking as a teacher myself, what do you expect the schools to do? Perhaps name badges could have been made better, but with the best will in the world we can't prevent children from getting mixed up with their clothes (at least you had named the cardigan so hopefully you will get it back), or stop them getting food etc down their fronts.

I always remind children to put on aprons before artwork but its hard to have eyes in the back of your head - some things inevitably get overlooked.

[iliketosleep]

not cheap are they, jumpers are 8.99 and cardigans are 10.99 just cause the have school logo on

[iliketosleep]

i dont know tbh it just really annoys me

[TheApprentice]

Do you have to get school logo ones? Coz in schools I've worked at lots of parents just buy the equivalent from Asda/Ethel Austin etc, the same colour as the school but without the logo.

£100 is a lot of money.

[kslatts]

I agree it's annoying, but I don't really know what the school could do. Does your school have a second hand uniform sale? Our school does every couple of months after school, I always make sure I get there really early and stock up on sweatshirts and anything with the school logo on, that way it's not sure a big deal if they get lost.

[iliketosleep]

they have the ones with the logo as everyone else does and i remember all to well how you can be outcast for being "different" we dont have 2nd hand uniform thing

[chopchopbusybusy]

Could you suggest the second hand uniform sale - maybe offer to run it. DDs school always had a stall at any school event with uniforms for sale. Parents either just donated it and school got all the proceeds, or it was sold on behalf of the parents and the school took a percentage.

[andiem]

if you want to hear something really bad at our school the psa take all the clothes out of the lost box cut the name tags off and then sell them as second hand I really wonder why Ibother to label things when this happens btw we have complained about it

[puddle]

That's why I love dd's school where uniform is optional. It's so much easier for her to find her own clothes after pe when they don't look like everyone else's. And she can wear patterns which don' show up every little mark like a plain sweatshirt or a white polo shirt does.

DS has compulsory uniform for the first time this year (in year 3) and he's come home with someone else's sweatshirt many times already.

[Ripeberry]

Pity the schools can't just sell the badge by itself so that you can buy your own clothes and attach it.
But then again there may be a problem with different shades of clothing.
AB

[nimnom]

I'm completely with you - ds1 got permanent white board marker on £8 sweatshirt 3 days after he started reception. On his back so someone was obviously doing it to him!!
He also constantly comes home with paint, felt tip etc on white polo shirts - what happened to the apron I sent in?
It's turned me into a real rebel (not generally in my nature) - no more school sweatshirts (we're allowed plain jumpers and sweatshirts) and he now has red polo shirts (were allowed until the year my son started).

[3littlebats]

andiem that is AWFUL - stealing in fact.

[iliketosleep]

they also use non washable paints which will come out after an hour in bleach but......grrrrr

[bookwormmum]

My dd came out minus her school cardigan on Weds and even I couldn't find it after searching the hall, corridors, lost property box and classroom. Someone's taken it home....

A few of the parents at the school exchange uniforms amongst themselves for younger siblings which seems to work pretty well. btw my dd's uniform probably costs me about £100 to kit her out totally (summer and winter plus PE kit, shoes, plimsolls, art and cookery aprons) which I think is pretty cheap for clothes she's going to wear for 40 weeks of the year, 5 days a week .

[Hulababy]

Fortunately we have had no problems with DD's uniform and it is all in really good nick - all the too small stuff is suitable for selling.

But the school do help with this. Part of the unoifrom includes:

1. an art apron - long sleeved type one - which is used for all messy craft type work
   
   
2. lunch apron/tabard - which protects mess from food
   
   
   I was a bit when I first saw uniform list but believe me they have saved us a lot of time (washing) and money!

[bookwormmum]

I was miffed when the new head stipulated that the school trousers had to be grey (after I'd just purchased new black ones) and she was introducing a school PE shirt which had to be bought from the school. It should save the artex shirts a bit more though.

[bookwormmum]

Airtex even

[puppydavies]

lol @artex shirts

[Pixel]

Dd has worn plain sweatshirts or cardigans for the last couple of years of primary because I got fed up with the poor quality of the school logo ones and refused to buy any more. What's the point of having a uniform if by the end of one term all the children look like scruffs with their sweatshirts in various shades of blue from all the fading? I don't mind paying for sweatshirts for ds as his school has good quality ones that actually look good until they are more or less outgrown.
This year dd changed schools and I'd heard other people complaining about the sweatshirts. I went to an embroidery shop and got some good quality shirts done with the school logo. They are identical, no-one would suspect I hadn't bought them from the school but they actually worked out cheaper!

[emj23]

DS has lost two lots of PE kit in the last five weeks. It's not in lost property and the school don't seem to give a toss that I have to keep going out and replacing it. I think that they should check that the class (five/six year olds) are putting everything back into their PE bags and hanging it back on their pegs, which clearly isn't being done. It also makes me cross because the chances are that another child has taken labelled items home and their parents haven't bothered ro return it. I'm not surprised you're fed up.

[shimmy]

sorry but I think yabu

teachers have a hundred million things to do every day - keeping your dcs' uniforms pristine are not one of them.

Most uniforms are pretty tough and withstand a great number of washes. Schools make sure that the children wear overalls for art and put discarded clothes in to a lost property box which it is your child's (and your) responsibility to check.

I would not want my children to go to a school where they didn't do messy activities or got told off for getting dirty. I also do not want my children's teachers spending a good 10 minutes at the beginning of every lesson reuniting lost clothes with careless owners.

Taking responsibility for yourself and your property is a good thing for children to learn.

[TellusMater]

I think of my dc's school uniform as boiler suits really. If they get mucky, they get mucky. Can't see my children ever not looking like scruff though, however new and shiny their uniform

[OrmIrian]

Iliketosleep - our school has badged clothing for sale too. Not cheap! First time round I religiously bought the whole set to find that the colour faded on the red sweatshirts and the white polo shirts shrunk. So second time round I bought none of the badged stuff. DS#2 has one badged sweatshirt inherited from DS#1 as a spare but it's so battered now. Asda and Woollies are cheap enough that it doesn't matter so much when they damaged/lost. Annoying but not too painful.

I'm sure if you look at the older classes you will find that most of them do not have badged clothing. They won't be that different.