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.)

We have to have logo'd from the school online shop cardigans or sweatshirts (primary) for normal uniform and also the logo'd PE t-shirts and zip up hoodies.

Optional polo shirts but can also buy plain from the supermarket.

Nothing else has to be logo'd! The children still look the same/smart etc because their cardi/sweater/PE tops are all the same but the trousers/skirts/pinafores/PE shorts/joggers can be from anywhere. Trousers/skirts must be plain grey and PE bottoms must be plain black. It's easy and it doesn't cost a fortune.

It seems a sensible middle ground to me. We're in a very much lower than average percentage for pupil premium area too, so if we can have that here when people aren't perhaps quite as tightly stretched as other areas why can't it work everywhere?

I wish they’d ban uniform it its current guise. I’m dreading high school and it’s ridiculous rules. My niece got a detention for not having the correct PE socks. Seriously. How has it got to this?

When I was at high school we just had to wear grey trousers, skirt and jumper and white shirt.

It’s not the great leveller people think it is by a long stretch. Like you can’t tell who has more money by a million other obvious metrics.

26 is still alot though. Last time I looked they were about 11 pounds in asda or sainsbury..one if the two.

You could get 2 for 26 pounds and still have change.

Totally agree. Someone has started a swap shop thingy at our school, which is handy but it'd be just so much easier without uniform. They don't have uniforms in europe etc why do we need them? I think with the cost of living crisis now is the ideal time to do away with them.

Secondary uniform is eye watering.

I've just spent £330 on two polo shirts, two jumpers and a full PE kit each (top, Rugby top, shorts and socks) for 2 dc.

That's before I buy trousers (Asda), bags, shoes, misc other stuff.

Primary aged dc3 was a fraction in comparison. Supermarket pack of polos, primark joggers and green t shirt for PE (house colour) etc.

Its the PE kit in comp that really gets my goat. Two different PE tops, £23 each. Shorts £16, fucking socks £12. They could be kitted out for so much less.

@Pinklady245612

But why is PE kit that’s so expensive necessary at all?

What more than shorts, t shirt, tracksuit bottoms and jumper are needed?

I could get all of that for less than £20 in ASDA.

Logo'ed and initials here! Can't even be passed on.

Definitely. We do one every term, sometimes two if we've got a lot of stock in. And it's very much advertised as an environmental initiative too, so no one's embarrassed to use it (I hope!).

Judging by how busy it is I don't think anyone has a problem using it anyway. We make a few quid for the school (we sell jumpers for £1 and polos/PE tops for 50p so we don't make loads) and everyone gets a bargain. We don't sell tatty stuff either, it items are donated that aren't good enough to sell they get cut up and used for cleaning/crafts in reception class and KS1 etc.

We also have one generous mum who is quietly very well off who every year since her child has started buys a load of brand new branded uniform in various sizes and donates it straight to us to sell as 'second hand' in our sale. Which is just lovely.

But why is PE kit that’s so expensive necessary at all?What more than shorts, t shirt, tracksuit bottoms and jumper are needed? I could get all of that for less than £20 in ASDA

It's not even a case of being able to buy PE kit in Asda cheaper.

I have 3 boys who already have plenty of joggers, shorts, sports kits. If there was no compulsory PE uniform, the cost for us would be £0 because they already have it all!

Also, could you start your own Facebook group? We have one for our town but you could make it for a specific school. People post with anything school worthy (not tatty) that has been outgrown - includes bags, trainers, football boots etc

Our primary school logoed tops are awful quality.
They are burgundy but rapidly wash to a sort of greyish mud colour.
For approximately five times the price of the supermarket ones.

Exactly this! Schools now have to have a bank of good second-hand uniform. How to access it should be on their website-but this might not be until September which doesn't really help now!

I've just refused this year. Polo shirts gone up from £12 to £16 each and they're not even decent quality. I got 4 for £10 in sainsbury. We're in Scotland and our school aren't mega strict, just logo polo's and sweatshirts (which oddly are cheaper than the polo's!). Regardless as a single parent I am not paying £60 for school polo shirts that won't last the term!

It's ridiculous. Primary uniform should be black/navy/grey joggers, polo shirt and plain sweatshirt in school colours, school jumper with logo optional. Pe kit black/grey/navy shorts/joggers and a plain t-shirt in school colours. Secondary school can wear black smart trousers, white shirt, black jumper and £4 school tie. pe kit could be black shorts/joggers/leggings and either white t-shirt or t-shirt in their house colours.

My old kit lists for school were so long and everything had to have a logo. No teen needs 3 different types of branded PE socks.

My mother just got a new embroidery machine and we were joking she should start a PE sock side hustle.

@SoSoSusan absolutely. It makes me really annoyed.

We've got the added situation where not only does too much of the uniform have logos on but now the school has decided to change the badge so the logo is changing.

Our primary school (although less insistent on the uniform having logos) has changed the logo for next year and also some of the colours of things. A completely pointless change meaning a lot of perfectly good uniform is now unusable and going to waste.

Our Secondary School had a complete uniform change 3 years ago. The old uniform was very dated though. Logos are compulsory on everything other than trousers and shirts with no cheaper option being available and obviously, because of the uniform change, very limited second hand options available.

There was no consultation, from either school, on any of the changes.

Named socks are essential for maintaining pupil discipline and behaviour and deterring the riff raff from attending.

Obviously.

Yes, obviously, but the heads weren't prepared to say that out loud (even among friends) and couldn't come up with any other reason.

YADNBU
This is a huge bugbear of mine (I've started my own threads about it)
The problem is that some people think if you object to compulsory or branded items then you're against school uniform altogether. I'm not, I'm OK with uniform, I just begrudge being told what shop I must buy it from at great expense

A local school to me (not private) insists on wool blazers that are over £100 each. Their uniform grant (iirc) is £80.....so not enough to cover a blazer, or pe kit, or logo shirts. Some schools insist on initials being sewn onto PE kits so even difficult to pass between siblings!

I buy (and sell) uniform from my Dcs school on their fb uniform page, but when the uniforms are generic colours (black, grey, navy, bottle green etc) why can't they say you can buy blazer/skirt/trousers etc wherever you want and either buy a badge, or just have a logo jumper or tie. My DDs school skirt is a boring colour. It has to come from the uniform shop at £25. I can get an almost identical one in M and S for half the price!

Having searched high and low for a suitable pair of trainers in a 9 1/2 I am so over petty uniform rules. I’ve relented on DS’s back to school haircut because they haven’t actually enforced a hair rule yet. Out of petty spite he’ll be shiny as a new pin in hundreds of pounds of clothes and a mullet.

The state school my dc attended sold sew on logo badges for a couple of £. You just bought any black blazer and sewed the badge on. When the blazer needed replacing, you just removed the badge and sewed it on the new one. The rest of the uniform was basic and could be bought anywhere. The only other item to buy was the tie and there were loads in the second hand uniform sales. All schools should do this.

At DDs school the head used covid as the opportunity to change the uniform from logo-Ed everything to a much simpler option.

Interestingly a core group of parents are the ones up in arms and trying to force it back to before.

However, the Head has been able to show that behaviour and attainment in the school has actually been much better since the change (she firmly believes is because the kids are more comfortable and I’m seeing nothing to disagree with her) so is pushing back hard.

The fact that the lead parent has strong family ties to the local business that is the only place that sells the logo-Ed items has shown a lot about the reasons for their campaign imo.

This started being a "thing" towards the end of my time in school. I never wore anything logo'd while I was at school. You knew which school kids went to by the colour of their uniform.

My secondary school had an unusual colour choice which meant you only had two choices of where to get it - a cheap shop or an expensive shop. Even then my Mum declared the cheap shop too expensive so refused to buy anything other than trousers from there. Instead she sourced the wool in the right colour and knitted my jumpers for me! How I didn't get mercilessly bullied I'll never know! 😂 I hated my knitted jumpers but also didn't moan too much as I knew how tight money was.

My BIL's just had to buy their DC's first Y7 uniform and it's cost over £200. Of course they shoot up in size each year too, so although they might get some wear out of the uniform when the younger DC goes up to secondary school, they could potentially be forking out that sort of level of cost or more each year for the next 8 years.

I realise they're trying to standardise all children so there isn't a difference between them (perhaps therefore proving my point of having a hand knitted jumper highlighted our lack of finances!) but they need to be more affordable.

OK - Blazer I can understand, but PE socks?!

I can imagine my son's friends all trying to one up each other. Plain shirts and trackies won't cut it, they'd want named stuff which becomes just as costly. My point to OP was that the school is taking the p*ss as our school logo pe kit is half the price of hers