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?!

@WiddlinDiddlin - or use a locker to switch shoes around in?

Gosh you are naive
It's total hoop-jumping, advocacy and often requires evidence-gathering from medical professionals; on top of god knows what else. And some schools seem unaware of their responsibilities in regard to the EA. All to wear a soft shoe, or a boot, or a short sleeve, or unregulation skirt length. The onus should be on the schools to consider this first and design uniform and policy inclusively, or with a range of inclusive options.

The Vivienne Westwood flats are nothing more than a fashion statement. Take off the badge and they are a shitty plastic dolly shoe. It's all about being seen to be wearing them. And showing off that you have a hundred quid of plastic on your feet.

I just looked up the Vivienne Westwood ones.

I agree with not allowing them.

They are £100 for a pair of ballet flats that have an obvious logo on them. Parents should have checked the policy before buying something like that.

Fashion shoes like that could easily become the 'in' thing with pressure on all the kids to have them, putting poorer families who can't afford them at a disadvantage.

They say plain black shoes without logos for a reason. School uniform is meant to be a leveller.

Personally, I think that if we're going to have school uniform at all, we should do it properly and schools should issue kit to students, boots and all, without parents having to pay for it. Like the army does.

In my DCs' US high school, the school issued unisex PE uniforms - the only item of uniform students were required to wear. Students paid $5.00 at the start of their first year and if they didn't expand too much east and west the same kit would last them for all four years. If you forgot your PE uniform you could rent a spare for 50 cents. The school also issued speedo swimsuits for swimming class and washed and sanitised suits daily.

The uniform-wearing elementary school allowed students to wear any plain navy or navy/white athletic shorts and plain white T-shirt for PE, so I bought all of that at Walmart. Students in kindergarten and first grade wore their PE kit to school on their gym days to eliminate changing time and the hassle of lost uniform items. In winter they wore navy sweatpants.

Students could wear any outerwear they wanted - no hard-to-wash school blazers or expensive crested jackets or coats required. Instead, parents bought whatever they could afford and felt was appropriate for the climate.

I just find it all so utterly pointless. T shirt/ jumper in whatever colour, same with bottoms. Skirt, leggings, trousers, shorts. That should be the rules.

Children know who has money and who doesn't!! They talk. And mostly, at least at primary, don't care.

Then the parents should be taking it higher or threatening legal action - which would be successful if the school were refusing to make adjustment for a condition which qualified under the Act. I don’t necessarily disagree with making school uniform more inclusive but I struggle to see how it could be done, given the varying impact of different disabilities.

This is technically correct but the experience of thousands of SEN parents is that schools (especially many academies) think their policies trump law.

Only when the rules are reasonable.
Luckily, if they are not, there are people who don't follow them, and, sometimes after a prolonged debate, the rules change. This is called social progress. Abolition of slavery, women's rights, accepting LGBT relationships, all that stuff.

Making it bloody obvious to all who can't afford the latest shoes isn't necessary or kind

My experience was that people didn't know how little we had and certainly couldn't not run your face in it all the time - you can't walk past laughing at someone shoes if yours are the same

But school uniforms are ridiculous. Most of countries in Europe appear to be able to run their education systems without demanding OTT uniform policies.

@crochetmonkey74 I don’t know how all those countries in Europe get their children educated without schools policing clothing on a daily basis. Try it and you might like it!

Fwiw most children worldwide are wearing uniforms by the looks of things

All of Africa , aisa , Australia and South America school uniform is the norm

‘Does it matter? Most secondary schoolgirls have no intention of playing playground games anyway.’

that’s whole other issue but starting with shoes the girls can actually run about in would be a good start. They don’t turn 11 and suddenly decide they don’t want to move at anything faster than a running pace…

Walking pace!

I'm not a fan of dressing them like mini accountants (when not even accountants have to dress as mini accountants these days) and the polyester blazers are just minging.

@Rosscameasdoody do you really think the infrastructure is there to handle all the parents of kids with additional needs "taking it higher"? Do you think all of those parents have the time, skills and resources to fight that fight on top of all the other crap they are battling - trying to get an adequate response to bullying, trying to get educational support where there simply isn't any, trying to get access arrangements for exams when the school doesn't want to make an exception?

Why should everything be a battle? Why is it embedded in our culture that children and their families are the enemy, that if you give them an inch they will take a mile, and if schools don't operate like prisons society will collapse? It's ridiculous and needlessly negative. Our local secondary school is literally built on the panopticon model ffs.

I am completely aware that most are not in a position to choose their child's school and therefore have to send them to school's they wouldn't if they had a real choice.

However, life is full of compromises so some will need to, well, suck it up and adjust.

Yes and most people in the UK are in favour of school uniform.

In a 2022 YouGov survey, 65% of people said secondary school students should wear uniform.

I guess if the majority of people in the UK weren't in favour of it, it would eventually be phased out, but that's not the case. Most people want it.

And there are often dress codes in Germany for example and the general society dress code is less brand focussed than the uk

Sort of self imposed uniform rules if you like

But that's also a separate question

If you cared about education over dress code you would tackle uniform rules in a different way . By sending children in the wrong clothes you are basically refusing your own child an education so uniform clearly does affect education.

If school uniform were really a great leveller, British children would be the least class conscious/ least obsessed with clothing and what it signifies of all the children in the world.
The opposite is true, and my impression is that countries without uniform often have young people who are more egalitarian in their outlook.

In my experience, schools and teachers obsessed with uniform exaggerate the importance of appearance in the minds of the children. It was the non-uniform schools my kids went to that fostered a better attitude.

They say plain black shoes without logos for a reason. School uniform is meant to be a leveller.

Why is this important?

How do you think students survive in other countries when they can wear whatever their parents are willing to spend money on?

Do you think British society has become more or less socially mobile as a result of strict uniform rules in schools, or has it remained the same?

Do you honestly believe that taking away an item or class of items that students tease others about will result in no teasing?

I suspect the egalitarian society came first

It was like this when I went to school, back in ye olden days (90s). Some people still kicked off and sometimes got the local paper to run a piece about it with a picture of them looking sad... The rest of us complied with the rules and just got on with it, without the drama.

Actually, if you google VE ballet pumps, some of them are extremely cheap. I’d imagine the school allows plain black ballet pumps which are similarly unsupportive and flimsy.