£140 for 3 school skirts?

[User112]

Wtf!? My friend’s DD is in secondary school, she paid £140 for just 3 skirts !! Wtf !! its a STATE school.

how do people from low income families even afford this? How are state schools able to demand such expensive uniforms? Why don’t they have something fairly simple and standard like primary school uniforms?

I get 2 full sets of uniforms for my primary school DD for under £100!!

I teach primary in Scotland. In Scottish state school we can recommend a uniform, but cannot insist upon it actually being worn.

In primary, almost all pupils wear something that resembles school uniform (e.g. polo shirt, summer dress, school jumper, although many also wear leggings or joggers and trainers). We have a big eco push, making it ‘cool’ for kids to help themselves to our second hand gear, so I regularly give things out to pupils not wearing uniform.

Our local high school asks for (any) white shirt, black trousers or skirt, black shoes and black jumper or cardigan. They give out the school tie to all new pupils. A blazer is recommended (but not mandatory) and costs £39.

It's ridiculous!

Luckily ds2's school (it's an all through school) sent an email before the 6 weeks holidays saying they were scrapping the logo uniform so I'm extremely pleased about that. The only thing they do need is a logo'd blazer.
From what I gather, people can still buy logo'd uniform from their supplier (£££) if they want to but all I'll be doing is using the logo'd jumpers passed down from dd when she moved schools then when it needs replacing it'll be from the supermarket.

Second hand uniform shops are the way forward. Saves money and waste. All 3 schools my kids have been to have run brilliant ones.

@Baconking has any parent dared to challenge the school regarding uniform costs?

We used to sew the badge on the blazer

Uniform came from John Lewis

I found the 6th form uniform a pain as suddenly they had to wear business dress which hadn't been the case the year before- a bit ridiculous imo

@redskyatnight and @Testina the £100 only includes buying 4 tops and DD is in early years. I don’t mind sending her in with tops that have a bit of pen mark/paint on but by feb/March last year they were very grubby, she often gets food down her tops and some of the stains are very hard to get out, especially in the winter months when they can’t always be line dried. I’m not going to send my child into school, or anywhere, stained clothing. They are also very poor quality, supermarket ones are probably better. Or maybe DD is particularly hard wearing on them but after 5/6 months last year several of them had holes and tears in.

They do sound poor quality! DS had five second hand polos when he was little and they were fine for two to three years more. He had three sets in primary. Three polos for year 5/6.

When I worked in hospitality I often used to have 1 skirt for the week, but obviously fresh shirt, tights, etc every day