To think school uniform has had its day

[Grumpybutfunny]

Okay I'm northern like this poor kid, tho not that close to the Scottish border. Is it unreasonable to say, when schools start saying kids should wear an inappropriate coats, just because it is school uniform that its time for parents to fight back.

I've left for work at 7:30 and it has been minus 2-3 all week. When I'm scraping ice off the car, a kid shouldn't be walking to school in a summer fleece with a rain jacket over the top. I've been freezing in my duvet coat.

Uniforms were a great leveller, but in the age of social media they still see what kids are wearing outside of school or what car the parent does the school run in. Surely what's more important is that they are comfortable and warm.

www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/jesmond-park-academys-uniform-policy-26016890

I agree. The worse the discipline, the stricter the uniform. It’s the only thing they can control.

I fully support uniforms but agree they should be comfortable and suitable for both summer and winter. Our school don’t allow boys to wear shorts in the summer for example.
I came from a poor background growing up and the idea of wearing my own clothes every day would have been torturous, non uniform days were bad enough.
Everyone looks the same in uniform and it takes pressure of the parents who cannot afford to provide the latest trends.

Amazing how other countries manage with non uniform schools!

I don't see the point in a uniform if everybody is wearing a different thing. Our local schools have a variety of options in primary including: grey or black trousers or skirts, grey, black, blue white tights, white socks, polo shirts and shirts in two different colours and jumpers in the choice of two different colours. They all wear there own jackets and often wellies on the way along the road to the point that you can't tell who goes to what school because they all look totally different. They might as well just wear their own clothes imo.

Loved my own school uniform though. It was quite strict in comparison with the tie and blazer etc. I always felt smart, never worried about what to wear, and had a strong sense of identity along with it.

At school I liked school uniform because it meant I knew what to wear. My parents, especially DM, had no sense of fashion or dressing well. This is the problem. It was only after I had left school that I actually started to learn how to choose clothes. I am still not good at it.

Years and years of school uniform taught me to dress badly.

If you look at uniformed services, for the most part the uniform is practical. It is workwear for the job which is to be performed. Especially in the armed forces the uniform has evolved as the job has changed.

Blazers, ties and 6th form business wear look backwards. The only people who voluntarily wear a blazers to work are yacht club commodores. These days in all the offices I have worked in if someone turns up in a suit they will be asked 'interview or court?'

For all the school pals know, he was given the coat by a relative or picked it up in a sale or charity shop. I doubt they care. If their parents can hardly afford to pay for the school one, maybe they would be better off with no school coat so that their parents can actually use that money to pay for something effective? And why do the medical profession have to waste time on these ridiculous issues?

The whole idea of school uniform was so that entitled parents didn't send their children to school in expensive or designer clothes while others have to make do with hand me downs to make all children equal, I suspect you would have been one of those parents (maybe already are)

In my view very strict school uniforms are introduced by head teachers who are essentially quite weak.

That has been my observation. The more the teen's secondary school issued letters whinging about school uniform compliance, the more we'd hear about discipline issues, vandalism, and all-around crappy behavior.

My teen rarely complies with uniform. It's uncomfortable and she hates it. But she is diligent and behaves in class. She keeps turning up for her education, even when she finds the subject material hard. She's polite to her teachers, even when she disagrees with them.

The adult who criticises that girl for not wearing a shitty polyester necktie to her Higher class (a class she attends because she wants to learn, not because anyone is making her go) is an adult who can seriously put themselves in the bin. She's not threatening anyone when she wears branded sports leggings and trainers to school. Her school has threatened to refuse entry to exams unless the pupils are dressed in full uniform. The priorities are little out of whack, to say the least.

I don't remember the uniform at my secondary school being an issue. For girls is was a white blouse or shirt, navy skirt or trousers etc. You had to have a badge on your jumper but you could buy a sew on one. Sometimes people pushed their luck with obvious logos or fashion items ( like wearing rara skirt - this was the 80s) but you accepted the fall out from that and no one would have dreamed of involving a parent. I think that is the difference now.
My family were poor so I wouldn't have wanted to wear my own clothes because they would have been the same everyday.

DC are at a private school with a very strict uniform policy. Fine, we knew this when we signed up for it. They are however, practical and sensible about it when necessary. We had an e mail during the very cold snap a few weeks ago, saying the dress code could be relaxed during the very cold weather at parents discretion. The reality was that the kids wore their far warmer, sports hoodies during lessons, instead of the thin, woollen jumper. Kids wore snow boots to school instead of regulation black shoes, I saw a lot of ski jackets. There is no need for kids to be cold & wet during the school day. Once the weather warms up, it will be back to the usual rules.

6th form uniform/businesswear is ridiculous. I went to a very good 6th form college with intake from about 10 schools, and you only had to be in for your classes as opposed to a school day, in your own clothes. Great prep for uni. We all had weekend jobs with uniforms so had we had them at college I'd have been in uniform 7 days a week at 18. How depressing.

Our uniform included a gabardine for colder weather (private school, 90s). I doubt anyone would want to wear one today though. Haven't seen one in years.

As well as the aforementioned boater, my private school’s uniform included a cloak. This may have been warm in winter but it was hardly practical. In my last year there, the headmistress, in a fit of rule enforcing zeal, introduced ’regulation shoes’, a selection of then-fashionable slip-on low heeled court shoes in styles with names like Ultravox (!). They were neither comfortable nor practical.

The school closed down at the end of that summer term.

We had cloaks at my (boarding) school. They were fantastic, probably the most useful garment we had. They were only for use on the premises, so we'd wear them going between buildings or to the games field. Because the school's heating was useless, we frequently wore them indoors - buttoning them around your waist so that they made a long skirt was popular. We also used them as extra blankets at night. Then there were the times they were used for carrying your stuff in for packing and unpacking, to drape over desks to make tents, to hang on a line when we needed to divide a room in two, etc etc. And they never had to be replaced, what was swirling around your feet in Year 7 ended up somewhere around your knees by Year 11.

I've always absolutely hated school uniform. I went to six different schools as a kid, three with, three without. Guess what - the bullies at the uniform schools still found something to bully me over. I think the best idea is to have trousers/top/sweatshirt dress code without uniform as such.