Two minds school shoes. Vivienne's

[Eddyraisins]

metro.co.uk/2023/09/06/girl-sent-home-from-school-for-wearing-vivienne-westwood-shoes-19456363/amp/

I am in two minds about this. Speaking from the experience of a teacher with a y11 in my school. My school would not care. All they care about is pupils actually wear shoes. We have a fair few pupils in Viviennes. I would not have known what they are if I didn't have a child in y11.

However I do see the argument that a lot of parents cannot afford £100 on shoes. I guess it's like the kickers of the 90s.

For PE lessons we can't discriminate and dictate labels for trainers.

I am not sure what to think. My dd would like some Viviennes. She is Asd and Adhd and has missed a lot of y10. My school allows them.

Should they? Is the school in the linked article too far or is it fair? I could be persuaded either way.

@sleepyscientist I'm guessing you are a grown up right? Schools have a duty to safeguard teenagers even if their parents are too fuckwitted to. I'm also guessing you are well trained in handling the chemicals you do.

A friend of mine has a 3 inch scar on the top of her foot from an acid burn she got in a chemistry class back in 1986. That wouldn't just be shrugged off these days.

I don't why some schools have these daft rules but if you are going to.send your child to.a school.with such rules you should abide by them

Quite.

I used to know a man who used to work in a school, though he wasn't a teacher. He would say "there's no point in having rules if you're not going to make people follow them", and was absolutely, unquestionably in favour of any uniform policies the school had in place.

He was a complete wet blanket.

I think there's a lack of emotional maturity in some who apply no critical thinking or sensibility, and just automatically assume that if something is within the rules it's good, and if not then there must be "some" reason for it and woe betide if you don't follow them.

I have no doubt this man would have refused to allow the kids to have taken their blazers off in the recent heat, if he hadn't been explicitly given permission to.

It came to the forefront with covid, where some were wringing their hands over the miniature of the guidelines and would literally not leave their house for more than an hour a day.

The thing is - they are horrifically tacky.

If they weren't horrifcally tacky, the kids wouldn't want them!

@DoItAgainPlz Talking of Covid… I remember absolutely despairing in the winter of 2020 when the SLT at my school sent an email round saying that lots of pupils were wearing hoodies because classrooms were colder with all the windows open and it was absolutely imperative that we didn’t let them.

It was 12 degrees in my classroom, everyone’s mental health was all over the place, and their biggest priority was not wearing hoodies.

I think there's a lack of emotional maturity in some who apply no critical thinking or sensibility, and just automatically assume that if something is within the rules it's good, and if not then there must be "some" reason for it and woe betide if you don't follow them.

There was a thread over the summer where someone was trying to start a philosophical discussion by asking whether the reason why we don’t steal stuff is because we empathise with the victim or because we don’t want to get caught. I would say 90% of the responses were just “neither of those, I don’t steal because it’s just wrong”. I was really surprised by how many people a) completely missed the point and b) just accepted that rules were rules and never thought about the reasons behind them.

No way would we use acid if a molarity to scar at GCSE level.

We are told in CPD that if we sweat the small stuff like blazers in the corridors, nails and any other idea that doesn't really affect learning or health and safety. Then research shows that results improve.

If you sweat the small stuff the bigger things are easier school of thought.

Not looked into the study myselfor if indeed there is one. Maybe anecdotally.

It sounds like a similar way of thinking to parenting. If you have a grip of discipline over the mundane bits of life - bedtimes, meal times, personal hygiene etc then it's easier to get a grip over the more rebellious stages. Put that into school terms of uniforms and it sort of makes sense.

@Eddyraisins this was A level and years ago. We used to play with mercury too.

Im pretty sure chemistry still allows burning things and boiling liquids, even at gcse. Tech certainly involves the use of sharp or heavy tools.

We are told in CPD that if we sweat the small stuff like blazers in the corridors, nails and any other idea that doesn't really affect learning or health and safety. Then research shows that results improve.

If you don’t sweat the small stuff, or if you do? As in results improve if you do make a fuss over things that don’t affect health and safety?

But you often hear the opposite - that it’s better to pick your battles, because if you’re just as strict about the little things as you are about things like not running across roads then a) your child will never know which things actually matter and b) you’d be permanently exhausted…

(I’d argue that bedtimes, meal times and personal hygiene all have far greater consequences than uniform in any case though…)

I would imagine that if a study proves that being strict about uniform gets better results behaviourally or academically then it’s due to correlation rather than causation - ie a school that is really strict about uniform is likely to be really strict about everything else anyway (because what school does it the other way round?!). It often happens that a school introduces a new uniform policy, everything improves, and everyone thinks it’s due to the uniform…when actually the school introduced a new behaviour policy at the same time.

I did read a study once that “proved” that uniform was beneficial for pupils because it gave them a sense of belonging and pride in the school…it was funded by a company that made uniforms.

Ex pastoral lead here.

These shoes were a nightmare. Often rubbed, cause blisters so then the wearer "had" to come to school in trainers.

On busy staircases only took someone to catch the back of them with their foot and the wearer would be out of them and potentially stumbling down concrete stairs.

In rainy weather there would be wet feet. Late to lesson because they were "drying their feet" under the hand dryers. Or "couldn't" go to lesson because of wet feet, then parents complaining because we wouldn't let them go home to change their shoes. Or wouldn't let them wear the pair of non-policy fitting trainers that were always in their bags.

Etc.

I commented on the last thread about this, and granted I'm in Scotland and not originally from the UK so I don't really get it, but why can't kids just wear stuff like trainers to school?

I ask this on every thread and noone ever answers. Countless posts about no logos preventing bullying but I grew up in Spain where we generally don't have uniform. I live and teach in Scotland (where there is dress codes but not insane prescriptive ones like England). As far as I am aware uniform has not magically solved bullying.

So my question is the same - everyone that keeps going on about no logos/super strict uniform reducing bullying, what do you think other countries do? Do you honestly think England is just...better somehow because of this?

And even if it is, how do you make sure everyone has equal costing phones/coats/haircuts... Kids aren't stupid. They know there's a difference!

Maybe if SLT explained the rationale behind uniform rules - like you have here - then there’d be less pushback?

As it is I regularly have pupils saying stuff like “if we can’t wear jewellery because of health and safety then why are we allowed to wear a necklace with a religious symbol on?” and “do you actually think I’ll learn better without eyeliner on?” and I can’t help thinking they have a point…

@DistantSkye Totally agree. No-one ever answers me either. Everyone talks as though relaxing dress codes in schools inevitably leads to the collapse of civilisation even though most of Europe seems to be totally fine without uniforms at all. And you’re absolutely right, kids will find something to pick on about someone, uniform or no uniform.

It sounds like a similar way of thinking to parenting. If you have a grip of discipline over the mundane bits of life - bedtimes, meal times, personal hygiene etc then it's easier to get a grip over the more rebellious stages. Put that into school terms of uniforms and it sort of makes sense
Agree with this.

I may be wrong, but I strongly suspect that the parents who buy their 11 year old children expensive designer shoes that are outside the uniforms probably missed the memo about being the grown up, parenting involving boundaries and not giving in to whatever a child demands.

It's normal for secondary aged students to push at the rules. Twas ever thus.

We rolled our skirts and modified the uniform as students, were reminded what was expected, and then got on with life. It's an age old dance between students and teachers.

The new addition is that there's now a group of permissive parents who cave to their children's demands AND then get annoyed and have a tantrum when other adults don't facilitate a permissive approach.

I may be wrong, but I strongly suspect that the parents who buy their 11 year old children expensive designer shoes that are outside the uniforms probably missed the memo about being the grown up, parenting involving boundaries and not giving in to whatever a child demands.

I wouldn’t buy my kids expensive designer stuff for school or otherwise. But I was pretty miffed when my very well-behaved, very hardworking daughter got a massive telling off for wearing a purple hair tie which I hadn’t noticed before she left for school and she didn’t know wasn’t allowed. I don’t doubt some rules are there for a good reason, but sometimes it’s just control-freakery.

Aren’t the parents in these stories usually more annoyed about the disproportionate severity of the punishment than the fact that their child got in trouble? I think the girl in this story was made to sit on a floor for four hours then wasn’t allowed a drink at lunch or something, wasn’t she? And very often kids are put in isolation or sent home, which just seems entirely self-defeating. Why can’t the school just tell them to wear the right shoes tomorrow and get on with their day?

Yes apparently they improve. Well behaviour does so then results.

Like the zero tolerance police initiative in Middlesbrough years ago.

I have been a massive fan of Vivienne Westwood for 30 years. I have a pair of the shoes in question and as lovely as they are they have not much support and they make my feet sweat! I didn’t even realise they were that in style 😆

Add opaque tights and you have a funky feet fest!

It’d be interesting to see if this was done in a controlled way - as in, did they compare schools that were really strict about the small stuff and also strict about important stuff with schools who were more lax with one or the other? Or is it just that a school that sweats the small stuff also sweats the big stuff by default, and that’s what has the improving effect?

Can't imagine sending my 11 year old for their first day at high school, knowing full well that I'd ignored the uniform policy.

Talk about setting them up to fail. No fucking way were my kids going to be the ones held in the hall upset and nervous while their peers got to do all of the first day/week settling in over a pair of shoes.

Whether I agree with the policy or not is irrelevant.

What research is this? I've been a teacher for 15 years and have never been told this in a CPD.

I wonder how the research accounts for all the countries that manage ok without spending hours telling children when they can and can't wear a jacket, or obsessing over trainers?

Have there been any studies about parental involvement and student success/behaviour? Or permissive parenting and behaviour at school? I feel if they were researched first there would then be an argument that there is no purpose to school uniform