To wish schools would scrap Christmas jumper day?

[Notspeakingup]

DC2 has a couple of little classmates with difficult home lives, one in particular without much money. There are some Christmas jumper days coming up and I have been thinking about how tough it must be to always be the child with no jumper.

I know as children grow up you can't avoid the inequalities but it would be great if we could at least stop it being an issue at primary school. (And of course there are the families who buy jumpers when they can't really afford them).

wellstop sounds like a good scheme. What size is your school? I'm wondering what proportion that is of pupils. It does give a good idea of how many are knocking about unworn.

The whole point of school uniforms is so that all children feel equal they all wear same, schools finding more times for mufti, world book day etc etc is pressure on parents to find something for their children to wear and they have to pay for the privilege for charity which alot of these kids need or are already benefitting from , great idea if you have the money, fun for kids if they have these things, but not fair, I think world book day should be 1 and only day and then find something else for children to have fun but not at any expense, I like the idea of the swap shop though and you can get good stuff in charity shops these days but I am shocked at the prices some charity shops even charge for things

Aside from the obvious highlighting of inequality in this terrible new tradition…. Christmas jumpers are fucking awful with regards to sustainability. If you want it to stop, write the headmaster/mistress/board a letter telling them that children should be being taught how to say no to consumerism and unsustainable fads and marketing. To save the planet! Maybe reference the ‘COP26’ projects the school likely did a few weeks ago.
It’s shit. It needs to stop.

Yanbu, Hated it for years. Wasteful and expensive. At our school children are expected to bring a donation to a chosen charity too. Many of the children that attend the school are deprived/low income families, most have 2 or 3 children that attend the school. There is enough financial pressure on parents at this time of year.

My daughter is just going to wear a red sweater that my mum knitted for her. No buying tat "for charity". It is not charitable to our planet to buy clothes to use it once.

YANBU. But the eco shop here does a Christmas jumper swap rail which I think is lovely and solves both issues of money and waste.

I wish schools had a Christmas jumper bring and buy sale on the 1st Monday in December each year, instead. That way you could raise money by recycling the things, and families on low incomes could participate while kitting their kids out so they could join in, too.

No, it's not pointless virtue signalling.

It really is. The “oh those poor poor children” on this one day, aren’t I wonderful for thinking of them

Schools are limited in what they can do.

No, schools are limited in what they will do.

They can, and thankfully many are, scrap stupidly expensive uniforms with bollocks like £40 for trousers in a slightly different shade of grey to the supermarket.

A good start for sure, but far too much focus is on what kids wear and not how to actually improve things for these children.

And they can also do it by massively minimising the number of days that they emphasise the differences. This is one of them.

You act as if there are days every week. There aren’t.

The fact it is there every day isn't a reason to just shrug it off and have another day where the poor kid the only one in uniform or the only one in the ill fitting borrowed top that everyone saw the teacher lending them.

It is a reason to stop pretending this one day will make a difference if it disappeared. It won’t.

So what's your suggestion?

That if children are being bullied, schools deal with it far more effectively than they do.

My son doesn’t wear jumpers at all so I always buy him the 2.99 festive T shirt or long sleeve cotton top from H&M I buy it as soon as H&M releases them cheap and cheerful and the school never complains .

At my daughters school we can pop any laundered outgrown Christmas jumpers in to the school office so if any child forgets his/her jumper they can go to the office, the school office also pop them on a rail in sizes a couple of weeks in advance so if parents can’t afford one they can pick one up, it’s not frowned upon or even mentioned as the school promote it as being a save the planet thing and actively encourage re-cycling. I’m on the PTA and last year a few of us asked the local supermarkets after Christmas if they had any jumpers at sale prices for the school to buy and they actually donated quite a few, just a thought but may be worth doing something like this?

Hate the waste too.

Saw a great 'decorate a Christmas jumper day' - rather than buy.

Lots of old jumpers decorated with tinsel round the cuff and hem, baubles sewn on.

We usually buy a huge 1 in the sale which lasts a fair few years, it is quite small this year bt still wearing it for 1 day ....

Yeah I agree it’s not fair on those who can’t really afford it and have the choice of either spending money that would be better spent elsewhere or making their child stand out as different from the others ! Why would schools do that ? Even though we can afford to buy festive jumpers for our girls, I still object to paying for them as they are not the sort of thing that they are going to wear ever again ( not outside of the house anyway 😂)!!!

I guess it depends on the school. My primary kids just wear a bit of tinsel or something on regular own clothes, half the kids just wear fancy/smart clothes or just something they like. Nobody seems to embrace the Christmas jumper Asda tradition round here. No one cares definitely no competitive Christmas jumper wearing

For my Christmas jumper day, I tack onto a normal jumper bits of scrap fabric in the shape of a Christmas tree or pudding. It does the job and can be removed easily. I did that for my child as well.

To combat this pressure, rather than Christmas jumper day my child's school usually do 'wear red day' or have a 'pyjama day' (casual) and watch a Christmas movie and hot chocolate for the kids.

For work I took this idea of my friend box of Baubles stitched onto my jumper & thick foamed sticky back stickers(Sadly this year Poundland are doing the pack with Baubles only. Before covid my friend picked up a pack that I hang on the Christmas trees.(from home bargains Max £2) which had a mix of presents, belled baubles that jingled! And I can't remember 3rd type of hanging item... It was a good mix and bought sticky penguins for £1. Jumper looked amazing and had so many compliments and was told better than the store bought.

I don't buy them, we don't have a lot of money. Kids really aren't bothered either luckily.

@Newrumpus

There are loads in charity shops that are much cheaper than the new ones. Maybe suggest that the jumpers are donated to school after they have been worn this Christmas and then next Christmas the kids could pay a pound and choose a jumper from the school collection to wear.

Love the idea of donating them to the school for resale. I have two boys and a friend of mine has two older boys so a lot of things get handed down to my sons. When they outgrow it gets handed down again. Children grow so quickly they are barely in some clothes before they are too big for them

I chair my children's school pta, and we ask for jumper donations, we sell them for either 50p or £1 online, and we donate any (and also whenever uniform is required for anyone) to families in need - this is done with our liason officer so she informs me sizes and I pass items onto her so I don't know who the children are. Maybe you could suggest something like this to your school. Plenty of people are always happy to donate old jumpers.

My dd usually buys such things at charity shops, or else outgrown ones are passed around among friends.

Do posters really think it hasn't occurred to people low incomes, who are struggling perhaps to make ends meet in the face of UC cuts, fuel price hikes, and it being Christmas, to try to get a jumper in a charity shop?

(never mind that if you've got 3 kids and the jumpers are £3 each that might be big chunk of your food budget for the week).

Plus bus fare / petrol to the charity shop, and time out of your working day...

@thedefinitionofmadness

Do posters really think it hasn't occurred to people low incomes, who are struggling perhaps to make ends meet in the face of UC cuts, fuel price hikes, and it being Christmas, to try to get a jumper in a charity shop?

(never mind that if you've got 3 kids and the jumpers are £3 each that might be big chunk of your food budget for the week).

Well lots of posters suggested other things, not joining in, decorating your own jumper, school doing an activity to create Christmas jumpers, school running a swap shop.

My daughter is now in secondary but when she was in primary they done a festive outfit day. Christmas jumpers could be worn but equally own clothes with red/green top or a bit of tinsel worn round the neck, Santa hat, antler headband etc. It was much more flexible and the children got creative with it. (Own clothes with tinsel shoelaces on trainers/ diy t shirts / tinsel hair bobble etc). They usually done it around Christmas class party days and during the Christmas assembly.