School blazer - £90?!

[Livvielo]

Posting for traffic really… DD 11 starts secondary school in September, and we are just purchasing her uniform… £90 for a blazer?! Is that the norm?! That’s without the school skirt, PE kit and various other bits that have to be purchased from the school. How many blazers do you buy? This is just a catholic comprehensive girls school, although it is regarded as extremely good.
But £90 for a blazer?? Is that not a bit OTT?

Ours was over £100. Will be using the same one for younger daughter.

That is bonkers.
Dd uniform, blazer is 30, skirts are 22. Jumpers I think are 15.
Lasts until its outgrown.

That’s more than our private school uniform!
Not much more I’ll grant you 🙄

Tenner for rugger socks anybody?

Is there a second-hand shop?

My DD is due to start high school next year. I’ve just had a look at their uniform. Blazer is £34.50, jumper is £24. They have specific shirts & skirts on sale but they have no logo on so I’m hoping I can just buy generic ones.
We have a local fb page where people sell second hand uniform do you have anything similar?

My immediate thought was Brentwood too - YANBU OP but your description is outing

Buy up!!!! My kids started school wirh their little paws hidden in folds of cloth - they now have ‘3/4 sleeves’. I hate uniforms.

This is good oldschooluniform.co.uk/

That is awful-partly polyester for that price!

They certainly like stripes!

Ouch £90!

DDs was on offer from £35 down to £25.

I've got her shirts and skirts from Tu @ Sainsburys.

Also, for families on free school meals & etc., if you contact the school, there may well be some sort of grant for uniform. I know there is at ours. There is also priority (for kids who have passed the entrance exam) for the free schools meals pupils. They actively want to encourage these children to apply (selective state school).

@ComeonJulia

I actually don’t think that’s expensive considering it’s going to be worn 6-7 hours a day, 5 days a week for 39 weeks at least.

I wouldn’t buy one thats too big to make it last. Teens can be cruel and I remember witnessing bullying of poorer children whose parents had done this. Not nice.

You always get one on these threads don't you. You do realise many people never ever pay that kind of money for clothes, right? Of course it's expensive, and completely unneccesary. My son's blazer cost £24 , he had 2 over 5 years and they lasted perfectly well. My daughter's school uniform all came from Asda (no blazer), it all lasted for years once she was fully grown. Supermarket clothes (and shoes) do the job perfectly well.

If it’s good quality then it’s worth it. My DS’s blazer costs £35 but falls apart after a few months. By the time they both leave school I’ll probably have bought about 15 blazers! The PE kit on the other hand is made to last. Stretchy and good quality, lasts years and can still be handed down!
If you can make the blazer last a couple years it’ll be worth it.

@MoomaidAhoy

Second hand shop people! Good grief! Our school blazer is more than £90, don’t know the exact price because I got one in great condition second hand for £20. It would have cost more than £400 to buy the uniform my one child (not including shirts and trousers from the high street) if I’d got everything new. I got it ALL for less than £100 in the second hand shop!

You realise that not all "people!" have access to a second hand uniform shop? Good grief.

YANBU @Livvielo - from what I've heard some uniforms are ridiculous costs. Is uniform mandatory? My DD (13) this year, I bought a multi pack of black leggings, a couple of white shirts and a couple of black cardigans (though she prefers to wear a hoodie). Black trainers she already had as feet haven't grown since last summer.

Our school does have an optional blazer, think it's around £30

I think I know the school - I used to work there! The uniform is awful and so distinctive. Definitely buy a bit bigger and try to get a few years out of it. Uniform pricing is completely out of control and should not be allowed in all schools! The first year they start secondary is horrendous but hopefully next year you won’t need to buy so much. Hope you get on ok...the school is lovely!

My boys' public school uniform is about £400 for the basics that they HAVE to have. Then more for specialised sports. It's outrageous.

Mind you DS3 is having his first ever NEW blazer going into year10 in sept. He's always been in hand me downs.

OP is there a Facebook page selling old uniform? Our school has one and it's really good.

YADNBU
A school near me (not private) has wool blazers and I saw when I was getting my DC uniform that they are £97 each. Thankfully my own DC blazers are around £35 and washable. When its an item that may well need to be replaced after a year or 2 I think that sort of money is unreasonable.

Lots of MN trot out the line "you would have known about school uniform costs before having kids", as an excuse, but the discrepancy between different schools and how strict/how many compulsory items they have, is vast.

Most people I know that have kids at that school say the blazers smell like wet dog if they get wet (and probably take about 3 weeks to dry!)

Also, for families on free school meals & etc., if you contact the school, there may well be some sort of grant for uniform. I know there is at ours. There is also priority (for kids who have passed the entrance exam) for the free schools meals pupils. They actively want to encourage these children to apply (selective state school).

The school I mentioned in my previous post has a uniform grant of (max)£75. When a blazer is near £100, and then there are multiple other items to buy including 2 pe kits that's not really going to stretch very far....

2 schools on opposite sides of the same road. One grammar - blazer is £57.95 and skirt is £35.95. The other is a comprehensive- blazer is £35.50 and skirt is £19.50. So serving the same area, and sometimes the children from the same family. Worst bit is they use the same uniform supplier. How the grammar can justify the extra cost is beyond me

Not the norm. Our blazers are £30 - or you can buy the badge for £5 and attach it to any black blazer. The only things we have to buy from the school supplier are ties (£5), pe tops (£15) or the aforesaid badges (£5).

Same here, £84 and dry clean only so another £10 each half term plus endless bottles of febreze.

It lasted 3 years though (well due to lockdown, I think otherwise maybe 2) and she now outgrew it. Very distinctive piping and bagde, no way to get away. with a plain navy. one.

I think we paid over £400 to kit DD out, luckily the grandparents told us they would sponser part of it.

Utterly pointless in my opinion. Coming from a non-uniform wearing country I still fail to see any relation between expensive and often ridiculous looking uniform and decent grades.

And don't even think about "uniform takes away the need to compete", pah, just replaced by phones, trainers, bags and other items they wear outside school.

Yes, wool blazers do smell like a wet dog if they get rained on!

My blazer, I recall, was £35 in 1973!

Girls state grammar.

As for the people screaming second hand - my dd went to the grammar I mentioned above but it had changed the uniform the year before she started so there was no second hand. Also they insisted they had pe hoodies (£39.95) that had to have their full name embroidered on the front. The probability of a second hand one coming available in the right size with the exact same name is slim to none.

I remember my mum finding school uniform a really struggle, I was at the local girls grammar in a SE England town and the colour scheme was v specific and almost every item had to come from the local school shop. No blazer, but specific shirt, skirt, jumper and even all the PE stuff had to be specific school colours. Thankfully no blazer. We were low income and that would have broken her.

My DD is at a local private school, about to start P1 (Scotland) and was there last year for her preschool year. We can get a few bits from Markies (mostly PE stuff) but majority from uniform shop. I know she’s at private school and we can manage well but our blazer is £110 😱 all in I reckon I was about £600 last year. This year I probably spent another £150 to replace stuff outgrown, including shoes. Still need pinafores but they can wait til October as she’ll be in summer dresses until then.