To think the mandatory logo school items need to stop?

[BagelwithPhiladelphiaz]

Exactly this.

I have just paid £76 for the mandatory PE kit for my DD’s senior school. Including items such as striped rugby socks, which are mandatory for some reason for all PE lessons, rugby or not.

This is before I spend £44 on a blazer, plus the uniform items that she actually needs as well as shoes, bag etc

Next I will order the mandatory items for my primary school children. Cheaper at £14 for a jumper (need a few though to wash, and they also tend to disappear in school despite being named) and £5 for PE t-shirt. This school isn’t so strict about it being mandatory but nearly all the DC have logo ones, so ones who don’t stand out, and they are needed for sports day/school photo day anyway.

None of these items are especially good quality. With secondary, we are restricted to one local supplier and the man who owns the shop is bloody rude, which adds insult to injury.

The blazer, perhaps fair enough I think as they look quite smart, but is £44 really the best price school could find? The other items.. especially the PE kits where we could easily buy very similar items without the logo, are they necessary? Especially as we have a winter coming where some people won’t be able to pay bills.

(The secondary did have a “free second hand clothes rail” for all, at some point, but when I phoned to ask they were very vague about when it would be. I have a friend whose children are on pupil premium- no subsided option for them -
and she managed to find out what day this was but went to find the second hand uniform she found some shabby items that weren’t in her DC’s size, and no PE items.)

Our school has a collection of school uniform that can be given for free to anyone who needs it.

Tbf though, you have to clothe your children in something.

They wear uniform 5 days a week so if you're really struggling that much what else will they wear?

Clothes bought in charity shops.

Multipack t shirts. I got 2 tops fir a tenner in tesco. If I bought 3 I'd have 6 tops and still it would have cost less than a blazer.

Clothes family and friends pass down.

Sales. I rarely pay full price for any of my clothes.

Ebay sell bundles if Clothes in pretty much any size.

All of which wouod cost less than school uniform

The clothes they already have , hand me downs from siblings. Multipacks as stated by pp , and my teenagers never wanted anything new it’s all ‘vintage’ aka charity shop or de pop .

Twizbe, I love school uniform as it does save buying clothes but I get mine from supermarkets and at 2.50 for 4 white shirts etc. it doesnt leave me out of pocket (in fact saves me buying so many clothes) but logo'd shirts, blazers, trousers ETC. do

Tbf though, you have to clothe your children in something.

The clothes they already have! DS started school in age 3-4 of which he had plenty that lasted for another year. Thankfully only had to buy shoes and a jacket. Starting secondary, he could still wear the clothes he was wearing 6 weeks earlier before the summer holidays. School uniform would only work out cheaper if they just eased into it as they outgrew your their old clothes, and if they continued to wear the uniform at weekends and during the holidays.

This is what happens round here - and funnily the big academy chain are much keener on playing musical logos with schools in their trust that are in more "deprived" areas, than the one in the yummy mummy belt whose children look much "scruffier" going to school and are able to hand down uniform so much easier. Meanwhile the kids from tougher backgrounds are onto their 5th logo change in the time I've lived near the school and the changeover period is running out now so there are a lot of desperate parents trying to find second hand in the required logo.

Annoyingly the area is well served with second hand uniform banks - all rendered somewhat useless because of the damn logo changing.

Round here they try to (including our PTA running a Christmas jumper bank for funds before Christmas) - however the biggest local school is forever fucking about with its logo meaning that the uniforms can only be passed about for a year or so until the school clamps down on the "obsolete" stuff. It's incredibly annoying to see happen.

Thankfully my kids go to a different school which does have a fancy jumper with logos and coloured bands through the waist and cuffs - but it's not compulsory and DD1 is in year 6 this year (when the hell did that sneak up on me) and doesn't want the fancy jumpers this year - so I've passed her old ones down to DD2 and she's just got some supermarket cheapies that she's happier in. We get periodic requests to not go over the top with hair accessories, sensible shoes and boots and for the love of god send them in with a sensible coat - but that's about it uniform wise.

The school my ds attends stipulated generic navy uniform from any shop. So I buy it from M&S and ASDA, it's great that there's no logo.

I can clothe them in a £2.50 supermarket school sweatshirt rather than a £20-30 school jumper. This is what people are getting at. Arsehole schools who rip parents off for absolutely no reason.

I think what the anti-uniform posters are forgetting is that DC would need clothes to wear to school even if uniform does not exist. Clearly more casual clothes are going to be required for 7 days a week as opposed to 2- 250% more in fact.

For that money, why not have smart uniform clothing that keeps everyone equal?

Because what child wants to wear school uniform out of school? Whereas general clothes are interchangeable and can be worn at any time. They are also cheaper. .

The school my ds attends stipulated generic navy uniform from any shop. So I buy it from M&S and ASDA, it's great that there's no logo.

Exactly, it can be done without being stupidly expensive. Simply the fact that chain stores and supermarkets sell school uniform suggests that the choice doesn't have to be compulsory branded uniform or no uniform at all.

@ItsSnowJokes thing is that £2.50 jumper lasts 5 mins.

My friend has gone through 3 supermarket cardigans in 1 year.

The £20 jumper I had to buy still looks brand new and still fits DS he will wear it when he goes back and then his sister will wear it. Then we will give it to the PTA to hand on somewhere else.

The logoed kit from our school is not good quality. It fades atrociously and the cuffs fray in a term; they are not fit to hand down.
It’s just a con.

The supermarket gingham dresses are quite indestructible too.

My DD has supermarket cardigans that still look great from last year. Then they get passed to the school shop. At least half of the 2nd hand uniform in the school shop is from supermarkets so it's not usual for the supermarket clothes to have worn out before a DC outgrows them.

Schools' attempts to keep children "smart" are doomed to failure anyway. I recently helped out DSis who couldn't make it to collect DNiece from a taster day at the secondary school she's moving to, so had to hang around outside waiting for her as hordes of current pupils came out. It's an academy that makes a bit of a thing about uniform - and, needless to say, has more than its fair share of logos - but I was amused to see that virtually every girl had managed to shorten the skirt to arse-skimming levels, and both boys and girls were demonstrating very creative ways with ties. God Bless teenagers, you can't keep their individuality down.

I think what the anti-uniform posters are forgetting is that DC would need clothes to wear to school even if uniform does not exist. Clearly more casual clothes are going to be required for 7 days a week as opposed to 2- 250% more in fact.

For that money, why not have smart uniform clothing that keeps everyone equal?

For what money?

I bought my DCs' clothes in Walmart and off the clearance rack at Old Navy and Gap, with a good deal from the sale rack at TJ Maxx too. I would say until age 11ish I never once paid more than $5 for any single item, and everything got handed down thanks to having four girls. My son got clothes from the same places. My friends and I also put bags of clothes together for each other. They had three months of summer break, so plenty of summer stuff was needed.

While my DCs went to a uniform-wearing elementary school, I have many friends whose kids went to the public schools and wore whatever came to hand in the morning - leggings, shorts, sweatshirts, hoodies, t-shirts, skirts, dresses, skorts, etc. Nobody wore anything to school that couldn't stand up to the rigours of the playground.

When kids don't wear uniforms clothes become completely unimportant to them.

Exactly same thing I noticed too on my child’s taster day. All girl’s skirts were very short, almost showing their bums.
when I tried skirt for my child at uniform shop it was until knee length

And over the top some schools introduced logo white tops.

But some people cannot afford the £20 on one jumper all in one go but can afford the £2.50 one. So schools are weeding out poorer students straight off. Expensive uniform is not needed and should not be compulsory. I would love all schools to be tracksuits or non uniform.

It doesn't keep everyone equal. You can still tell who the poorer students are. It also weeds out families who can't afford the uniform so won't send their child to that school. That's what schools want, they just don't admit it.

When I was at school you would buy the school logo as a patch and then you could shop around for the blazer and that patch could lasted near enough the whole time I was at school and just got transferred from blazer to blazer. We all looked smart, black blazer, black or grey skirt/trousers, white shirt, a grey v neck jumper in the winter and the school tie. I don't see why we can't go back to something like that, then the uniform can be donated after it's no longer needed, patch removed and not be tied to one school. My DD's primary have changed the uniform for when we go back in September to a different colour scheme so now we have a bunch of branded old uniform that can't be used by anyone else that's going to end up thrown away. Doesn't seem right. We all need to be making the most out of our resources and schools should be encouraging this. It's better for the environments and peoples pockets if uniform can be reused by the whole community not just the one school.

In my experience at Primary, supermarket uniform lasted as long as any other.

Amongst my issues with secondary uniform from a single supplier is that their expensively priced uniform is made from cheap horrible nylon and imported from China. It's no better quality than what you can buy on any high street and the nylon threads on DD's blazer have snagged badly.

This means second hand isn't as great as some posters on this thread are making out. Shiny, snagged, worn nylon looks like what it is.

I could go with an argument about spending more money on things that last, except it doesn't last. These are rapidly growing teenagers whose bodies change and who need several sets of uniform throughout their time at school.

Uniform needs to be practical, suitable for all weathers, washable and available from multiple sources to keep it competitively priced. Where logos are preferred they can be sewn or stuck on.

And finally smart doesn't have to mean 1940s smart. The world of work has moved on. It's time schools did too.