Just read the bloody uniform policy!!!

[flingoringo]

I've just read an article about a school in Gateshead where lots of kids were sent home or out in isolation on day one of term because they were wearing the wrong shoes. The offending shoes seem to be mainly a Vivienne Westwood ballet flat (with a big silver VW emblem on the front) and a Nike walking boots. Lots of kids wearing the same, from yr7 to yr11.
Parents are up in arms, obviously. One mentions the CoL crisis so the need to scrimp and save to spend A HUNDRED QUID on the Nike shoes. One mum said her yr7 daughter won't be going back she's finding her a new school.

The school (taken over by an academy in 2019) says the policy is clear, plain black shoes with no logos. That they have done their best to help yr6 parents understand what was to be expected once on yr7.

Now I don't necessarily agree with schools being overly strict with uniform policy. But I do accept that I have to agree to follow the rules at the schools that I chose to send my kids to and if we chose not to then of course they'll be consequences.

AIBU to think it's it's completely ridiculous that this happens every bloody year?!

This! Not every autistic child gets a diagnosis and EHCP and school uniforms are a special kind of hell for those children. I know because I was one.

Now if anything is ignorant tripe, your post is. It's a simple fact, in secondary schools you won't see most girls playing playground games, and making them wear different shoes cannot conceivably change that.

They know who has what. Dehumanising the lot of them is too high a price to pay for having them tease each other about something other than shoes, imo.

I'm not even in favour of school uniform, but to describe asking kids to wear black shoes with no logos as 'dehumanising' or 'a high price to pay' is beyond absurd.

Honestly if I had my way, all uniform would be gone, and the kids would have a dress code similar to an office, smart casual. I lived in Europe for years and there was no uniforms. Most of the kids where dressed perfectly well and felt comfortable.

Uniforms don't separate the haves and have nots! The kids know perfectly well

The parents have to recognise the child's needs and then advocate for the child. This would be the hoop-jumping in question.

Proponents of uniform never seem able to explain how other countries seem to manage so well without them. I suspect the fact that their school staff don't have to spend hours on policing uniform also contributes to the fact that many of those countries' schools do better academically than ours.

Agree.

You would think the magical qualities of blazers and ties would be so blindingly obvious to schools in other countries that they would be falling over themselves trying to get their students into uniforms. Yet they bumble on.

I went to school in the seventies and the boys were not allowed long hair. If the girls had long hair they were required to have it tied back. It’s about hygiene I would have thought.

Ironically enough kickers were banned in my school because then green and red tags violated the school’s all black shoes dress code

And yet in countries with no school uniform tradition, people manage to cope fine with the real world despite not having had the benefit of having to dress up in hideous polyester at school.

Surely every school has much more sensible rules which give their pupils as much training in following them as they can conceivably need?

Exactly! Bullying is rife in both uniform and non-uniform when the culture allows it. I’ve had bullying when I had to wear a uniform and without and none of the ridicule was about what I was wearing. It was about my looks, my hair, having glasses, having braces, being too nice/too friendly, etc.

I’ve seen plenty of parents complaining about bullying in schools here and have friends whose children were being bullied. One friend’s daughter was being bullied over her hair. Nothing wrong with her hair other than this girl not liking it, calling it ugly, and hoping to get a rise out of her.

We lived in mainland EU before and didn't wear uniform and never had issues.

Well quite. It's weird how people seem to forget that in the majority of countries in Europe (and possibly the world), they manage fine without uniform.

Yes. As long as I don’t show actual genitals or nipples and no offensive logos on t-shirts then yes.

most in my office wear jeans and trainers.

Uniforms are inherently dehumanising. Don't blame me, blame Foucault.

Why is it hoop jumping. They are parents, and until the child is old enough to advocate for themselves, isn’t that what they’re there for ? Even more so in the case of disabled children as they generally don’t achieve independence as early as others.

Surely the no branded footwear is there to help parents. You then don't need to spend hundreds on branded shoes!

I don't understand parents getting the hump over buying uniform. You would be spending much more if your kids were going in their own clothes and it puts everyone level. No one is standing out for the wrong reasons.

Way to miss the point. The active girls who do want to play cannot if they are in ballet flats and this trains them out of the exercise habits they would have gotten into had they had proper shoes.

My footballing interest was curtailed by a broken toe incurred kicking a ball in soft shoes. I never got back into it.

No one imposes this forced idlesness on boys. I smell misogyny.

Yeah! Give ‘em an inch and you’ll find this year they’re wearing logo’d shoes and next year they’ll be turning up at the local baths stark naked!

All this is the same back to school stories since my kids started high school in 2007. Probably had been going on long before then as well.

Same complaints - no logos no extreme haircuts, no short skirts etc.
I'm not a pyschic but I predict It'll be the same moans round about this time next year!!!

If only it were that easy. An astonishing number of schools, particular academies, make a big thing of "no exceptions" uniform rules and seem to struggle massively with the concept that obeying the rules - i.e. the law on equality by giving reasonable adjustments - applies to them too.

There is currently very little evidence that uniforms will improves academic performance, behaviour, or attendance..

Source: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit

You would think the magical qualities of blazers and ties would be so blindingly obvious to schools in other countries that they would be falling over themselves trying to get their students into uniforms.

In my experience (lots of exchanges French & German schools), the foreign students find our uniforms and rules about hair etc baffling and/or quaint. They always ask loads of questions about it and I've known some want to buy uniform items as souvenirs because it's such a curiosity!

I can’t get annoyed at our school policy, they can have trainers and the like as long as they are fully black.

Black and white converse are particularly stated as not acceptable, which we owned, but we went out and bought new black shoes anyway. Leggings are out (and understandably so)

I drive to the school daily and the majority of kids are wearing the said converse and see through leggings 😫

The Equality Act was designed to tackle problems like this and requires schools to make reasonable adjustment for children with disabilities/special needs, and this includes uniform issues. And there doesn’t need to be a diagnosis - there just has to be significant difficulty eligible under the Act.

The whole concept of school uniform is absolutely ridiculous imo. As pp have said, everyone knows who the haves and have nots are (phones, bags, where you live etc. etc. etc.) and I believe it only serves to waste teachers time while forcing kids to wear clothing they wouldn't choose. (And tbh, how many adults now go to work in suits and ties?)
With the cost of living crisis, why on earth force parents to spend precious cash on clothing their kids don't want to wear (and certainly won't wear at the weekends, holidays etc. so potentially forcing more clothes to have to be bought).

To be fair its ridiculous draconian rules set by people on a power trip with no clear guidance and the rules 'change' at random.

Our kids school sent out a black and white print out of 'non acceptable' shoes and 'acceptable' shoes... they all looked like identical black blobs on the paper. It said no boots/trainers but then clearly some kinds of boots/trainers in 'acceptable' and identical style shoes like brogues in both acceptable and non acceptable.

There was nothing to distinguish what they where claiming was acceptable or not. The only clear instructions where 'black' and 'no logos'.

If they object to my kids uniform they can deal with it because THEY are the ones that aren't clear what they mean. I'm not buying new shoes every other week because they decided they don't like that black pair this week and need another black pair based on rules they can't even clearly outline.