Would I be THAT parent

[MrsJunglelow]

To write and complain..?

DSs school uniform came to over £100 and on top of that, for PE they also want him to have studded football boots, essential apparently for health and safety , a branded coat, branded rugby jumper, football shin pads, tall football socks, branded jumper...
That’s in addition to the cost of school meals and I imagine in the future trips out and residentials too.

I have bought him the school branded PE top and black joggers and trainers but quite honestly, I’m getting quite fucked off with the exorbitant price of things I’m just expected to keep paying out for and will be punished if I don’t.
If he wears an unbranded hoodie for example, we’ve been told it’ll be confiscated as only the branded allowed.

Some families are really poor and frankly, it strikes me as really discriminatory and cruel.
Where do they think parents have the money?

The branded coat for example, we bought him one, it cost £40!
It’s a shitty cheap Mac fabric, no where near worth £40.
The supplier took weeks to send it out and when it finally arrived, no exaggeration, it would have fitted a muscular adult man!
My DS is 11, the coat was loose on my 34 year old DH...

I’m just feeling really hacked off.
The prices are excessive, the products aren’t worth it, my child will be punished if he doesn’t have them.

AIBU?

How on earth do poor families cope?

@SpongebobNoPants

They cannot insist on all branded items of clothing for starters, uniform policies can state items need to be a certain style/colour but they absolutely cannot insist it is branded so I’d fight that for starters

They can. What makes you think they can't?

there is no second hand if the head changes the uniform

Schools seem to actively discourage handing down uniform now. By way of having different colours for different years and houses and forcing you to have names printed or embroidered pe kits.

So now not only do you have to match up the size and the sex , you also have to match up houses and year groups too. That and change all your kids names to Rebecca Jones...

It’s ridiculous charging so much if it’s poor quality clothing. My dd is at a private school and the uniform & sports kit is pricey - but after parent complaints the school changed suppliers and I have to give credit that the quality has vastly improved. Now I don’t mind as I know it’ll last and dd uses her hockey equipment a lot outside of school too. Plus the school 2nd hand shop does a roaring trade because the quality means clothing can be passed on. But it’s crazy if your school supplier is charging you top whack for rubbish quality. Perhaps the parents could band together and lodge a complaint?

Presumably parents know the uniform requirements before they select the school? I mean, it's not great, but everyone expects to lay out on school uniform at the start and the schools don't hide the requirements or the costs if it's very specific items / school badged.
Most schools have a way to get second hand uniform to less well off parents, or will have a hardship fund. Or you share amongst parents on the Friends of XX School Facebook page.

I agree, this is our first year of buying school uniform and I've been shocked by the prices, and also wondered how lower income families are supposed to afford enough pieces of uniform so that they don't have to have their washing machine on every day.

@Z0rr0

Presumably parents know the uniform requirements before they select the school? I mean, it's not great, but everyone expects to lay out on school uniform at the start and the schools don't hide the requirements or the costs if it's very specific items / school badged. Most schools have a way to get second hand uniform to less well off parents, or will have a hardship fund. Or you share amongst parents on the Friends of XX School Facebook page.

It’s such an unnecessary thing to have to factor in. Great school,✔️ easy to get to ✔️ teaches triple science ✔️ and the language dd wants to learn ✔️ uniform prohibitive 😞 Back door selection and the government specifically counsel against it. Yet Billy big hillocks new head teachers stamp their mark and keep the povos out by insisting on £££uniform

I suspect some schools have no idea how the costs mount up. DD has spent most of her school life either being constricted or swamped by her uniform.
I think you are perfectly justified in complaining, but could you make some constructive suggestions about what alternative arrangements would be helpful?

How about:
Secondhand uniform shop (if the school doesn't have one it could be a private Facebook group perhaps)?
2-3 year phasing in of planned uniform changes with 9 months' notice of changes proposed (so you don't buy the soon to be replaced stuff)?
Family members to all be put in the same house (so they can hand things down/across)
Team shirts for rare/one-off fixtures that can be loaned (probably not a goer in these covid times)?
Sew-on badges to be made for plain blazers/jumpers etc.?

DD's school has volunteer families "road test" new uniform when the shop switches design/supplier (after a lot of complaints about quality).

Certainly try to buy secondhand. My sons went to a quite expensive private school where there were many very wealthy parents. There was huge demand for second hand uniform as no one wanted to pay the sky high prices the individual bits cost , even if they could afford to do so they didn't want to. No stigma attached. When I sorted my DS2's blazer out to go back to the second hand uniform shop at the school I found 6 name tapes under his!

Now you've bought all the correct stuff, can you find similar looking kit elsewhere and get the school logo embroidered onto it? There's lots of companies near me who offer this. Plenty of families buy supermarket and get school logo added, generally for about £5 a go

Two of our three dc went to a boys Grammar school. The PE kit has changed twice while they were there. The new PE top and socks I have just had to buy my youngest cost £62 and £9.50. Seriously unimpressed. Especially when he needs three tops, two pairs of shorts, two different pairs of socks and two different pairs of footwear. All just for PE. I buy his blazer, tie and jumper from the school shop and the trousers and shirts are good old Asda.

My daughter went to a Grammar too and one kilt was £50.

I was under the impression schools weren't allowed to only have one supplier to make sure there was a fair deal for uniform.

If my child wasn't planning on leaving next year I would definitely have had a word about this ridiculous expense.

In my day we all wore the same PE kit with a sash to differentiate what team we were on.

I'm amazed that so many state schools get away with this.

DD's secondary ask you to buy the school tie, and iron-on badges for the blazers from them.

Everything else can be bought entirely from Asda or other supplier of that sort. They do have an official uniform shop where they have pre-ironed on the badges etc, but their blazers were nearly 3 times the price of Asda.

PE kit was literally black joggers and a polo shirt in a particular colour.

Yet, the school up the road - also state - has the most incredibly fancy and expensive looking PE kit. DD's school has a sports specialism so I was rather expecting an expensive list.

Pretty sure they aren't allowed to insist on branded/logo'd items.

My daughter is at the local secondary and her uniform cost me £700 in year 7! Thank goodness she isn't a fast grower is all I can say. We have just replaced some it in Year 10 and it cost around £500. This is not including shoes, bags etc, just the school uniform list items. Her school skirts are £47 each....

Annoyingly she was in year 7 when they changed the uniform too, so she's the oldest year group wearing the items we need so there isn't a lot in second hand uniform for certain items. However, I do top up where I can using the school second hand shop? Does your school have one of these? Most people use them in my experience.

It’s all very well saying that if you choose the school you sign up for it, but realistically in many areas parents don’t really have a choice of school, they have to send their kids to their nearest. I know in theory there is a choice and they can put down an alternative school but if they’re not in that school’s catchment area they’re unlikely to get in.

My friend runs this in Glasgow www.apparelxchange.com for exactly this reason.

Cheap, very good quality (she's very, very fussy) and reasonable postage if the uniforms work for any schools over the country.

Definitely complain to the head and copy in the head of governors. My DDs school is in a mixed income area and allows them to wear a plain black hoodie or sweatshirt in the winter, over branded PE leggings and top (and that is expensive enough). Doubling up on PE kits and branded everything is scandalous and discriminatory.

They're taking the piss demanding a second set of the uber expensive logoed stuff. I'm annoyed enough about our school doing painting without any aprons (because covid) in PE kit and the kids coming out head to toe in paint... with PE again the following day. It's taken a nightmare of scrubbing and throwing all the contents of the laundry cupboard to get the bloody thing clean and not in an overnight turnaround - we've had to buy duplicate stuff, but at least it's supermarket level stuff - and that was annoying enough as an extra expense because no one clocked the timetable and thought "hmm".

to buy my dds uniform knew costs £370 not including any shoes football boots or trainers.
I also only had 2 trousers, and one set of pe kit.

But the school PTA has a second hand uniform sale at the year 6 induction evening.
I bought eveything for £75.

I did later have to buy a new pe hoodie, as they didn't have any in stock. But I didn't mind that as the rest was cheap.

Pretty much every school has a second hand dept. If not, be the one who volunteers for the PTA and set one up.
I did that at primary and the school jumpers did a roaring trade through generations of kids until they were finally worn out.

YADNBU. My son's school even made me buy branded base layer leggings; Just his PE kit came to over £230!

ds(16) school is black shoes, black trouser, black jumper, white shirt and school tie. The only school item is the tie 5-6th year are asked to own/wear a blazer, but if weather is poor they don't enforce. They'll let them away with trainers as long as they are all black. They all look smart.

PE they wear what they want (shorts/leggings) as long as it is not a big logo/offensive, although he does have football boots for football as he prefers them.

Insisting on expensive branded items at prices is to raise funds for the school. I would challenge it.

I remember this when my 3 kids were at school - and my mother remembers it was I was at school so...…….there has to be a valid reason? We both struggled - and I remember standing out when I did not have the 'proper kit'. Kids can be vile.....

Pretty much every school has a second hand dept. If not, be the one who volunteers for the PTA and set one up.

NOPE! Our local secondary academy has changed the logo, again, for the second time in about 5 years and there's one-year leeway for the old logo - and the entire PE kit has changed and gone logoed, specific colourway etc as well with no leeway built in for a changeover on that at all.

Completely kills any chance of supply of second hand uniform when the academies (yep you knew it was an academy) behave like this. Takes everything second hand apart from school ties out of the equation again (they have logoed jumpers, skirts, the lot - they'd have you logoing yer knickers if they could get away with inspecting THOSE at the school gate).

School uniform is a ridiculous insistence anyway.
Of the top 10 countries in the world for education, only 3 of them commonly wear school uniforms.
It's got nothing to do with education or personal development, and everything to do with class, conformity and control.

But yes, insistence on branded, expensive stuff is unfair for many reasons, pricing out poorer families and also terrible for environmental/sustainability reasons too. Parents should be free to buy clothing for their children that fits within their budget, ethics, allergies, size, etc.
It's creating a barrier to education when children are refused entry to school for wearing the wrong shade of trousers or an unbranded hoody.

Definitely complain about having to buy the branded items.

One thing that really annoyed me.

ds and dd in schools next to each other, one boys school other girls school.

boys school - branded blazer (but not expensive) and tie. But any white shirt and black trouser.
Asda /M&S school trouser = about £15 for 2 pairs
Asda/M&S school shirts = about £15 for 2 or 3.

girls school, stripy brand shirt, and blazer, specific hard to copy uniform skirt or trouser
school uniform shop trousers £15 each
school uniform shirts £25 for 2.

Literally double the price.

YANBU

Forked our loads for uniform this year and after 1 week of term we were told they are to wear games or PE kit for all but ONE day a week (covid/no changing facilities for when they do clubs etc)!! So the kit is worn to bits already and needs replaced and the rest of the expensive uniform and shoes sit barely touched....Grrrrrrr

My DC have all been right the way through the independent system, and I can count on one hand the number of new 'regulation' items I've ever bought. It has all been passed on by other parents, or has come from the second-hand shop. The 'new' cost is horrendous - but the stuff is made in the UK and lasts incredibly well, so can easily do three children in a row.

I always bought boys' trousers from M&S, if I had to buy new. The prep schools never stipulated a particular brand - just a colour. You would have been a bit made to have bought them from Schoolblazer.

Boarding school uniform came from a mixture of sources, but all was second hand. Once they've been wearing it for 10 mins, it looks second hand anyway. DS's school coat (long, black, cashmere/wool - fortunately, the school just said any long black coat was fine, so there was no regulation coat) was a tenner from a charity shop.