To think asking permission to take off a blazer is utterly ridiculous?

[ShowJumpSally]

My child's school has just moved into a new trust. Clearly it's one of those trusts as the latest email announces how children will be placed in internal exclusion or be suspended if they dare to wear a coat in the building or take their blazer off without asking permission.

Schools consistently moan about funding, there's a teaching retention crisis, teachers are overworked and leaving in their hoards, TAs are underpaid and in short supply, children's mental health is worse than ever, but somehow there's time and money to dish out internal exclusions if child gets hot and dares takes their blazer off without asking?

Aibu to say schools should try focussing their time, attention and money on the real issues instead of nonsense made up ones?
^

If they can't remember to bring equipment to a lesson you will find sanctions make them gear up amazingly - and why should they not, should we lower our expectations for naturally forgetful people or show them how to be less forgetful?

Do sanctions show young people how to be less forgetful or do they just raise anxiety levels. Both my kids have a significant trauma history, one of the impacts of developmental trauma is a real struggle with executive functioning, and another is anxiety about being in trouble. So being in trouble for something they have limited control over is just going to make them hate being in school. And no matter how “trauma informed” schools may think they are, they do not get the ways kids are impacted and why what seems like a basic (eg bring a pen to class) can be really challenging for kids whose brain just isn’t wired that way.

I so so agree with everything you have said!!! The pettiness and dogma drives me absolutely up the wall and it gets worse each term at my GGS's school, eg they can be excluded from the class for wearing the 'wrong' socks (maybe having a small hardly seen logo) of for some similar small uniform indiscretion! 🙄
The obsession with 'attendance' is off the scale and beggars belief, the government has been on their backs about this obviously but we regularly get A4 sized emails concerning this and joyfully detailing how if we have the audacity, for ANY reason, to want to take our children on holiday during term time (a practice which has been successfully held for decades!) this can end up with an actual prison sentence...seriously!!! 😱

When I started work in the early 2000s we needed the prior written permission of an equity partner to leave the building without a suit jacket. I did think at first they were joking - they were not.

Yes, your child should just follow the rules.

Do you really have nothing else going on in your life that you could focus on, rather than this? Does it really matter? It just seems such a trivial issue for you to give so much head space to…

Cheap, constricting polyester blazers are a nightmare for children with sensory issues. There ought to be a rule that headteachers in schools with these policies also have to wear uncomfortable, constricting jackets in the same fabric as the official blazer (so cheap, shiny artificial fabrics) and aren't allowed to remove them until the children are.

This is one of the great myths around school uniform. No-one needs to spend several years wearing school uniform to teach them that, when they're in work, they have to comply with their employer's dress code. All over the world there are people who have never been in a school with uniform who manage perfectly well once in employment, even employment in occupations requiring uniforms.

I started working in a secondary school recently and at first I thought these little rules were petty but I soon realized why schools have them. Some of the kids are constantly pushing back at the rules so if you let the petty things go they look for the next thing and it's more important and then the next and then the behaviour gets worse and worse and it starts not being petty at all.

I work in a lovely school where behaviour has always been very good. The new Head, who has come from a big academy, has introduced blazers (along with rules about where and when they must be worn) and various other new rules, and is generally trying to make the school more regimented. The kids (and most of the staff) hate it and have very little respect for the Head. No positive effects have arisen from the changes.

But it does. They aren't allowed to remove them at all outside the classroom.

Maybe schools are trying to reverse the current crop of late teens entering the work place who seem to find following rules impossible. The ones we have in our office don’t follow instructions, can barely spell (due probably to focusing on rebelling against school rules instead of learning), skip work at the drop of a hat. I think raising children to follow rules and instructions, is a good thing which helps them adapt to workplace instruction when they eventually start work.

When I was in school we had quite casual uniform rules. We didn't have to wear blazers in school, and could decide for ourselves whether we wanted to wear jumpers and/or long sleeved or short sleeved shirts. And, guess what, behaviour was pretty good, as was the teaching - probably because the teachers weren't wasting time faffing about uniform.

What your school needs is effective senior management. It probably needs far better funding, so that it can deal effectively with SEND and other difficulties. Way too many heads think rigid uniform rules constitute an easy fix, mostly because they impress some of the more credulous parents. They achieve nothing in reality.

I totally agree!! I am 76 and it amazes me that apart from having to wear a 'gymslip' instead of a skirt the actual uniform overall has not changed much since I was in Secondary school!! 🙄
I hate even the idea of uniform and always have, it quashes a child's normal personality and has no real positive effect on life after school, the nonsense that it 'levels the playing field' with some kids coming from more affluent families who can afford 'better' clothes is hypocritical nonsense which only shields them from the stark reality of life and is not fully born out anyway as some kids will be wearing George or other cheaper shoes/coats etc and some will have Clarks or other more (very) expensive branded items and kids do notice these things!! 😡

That's not my experience at all. Kids don't 'go looking' for rules to break. They just behave in the way kids tend to behave, and some of those things break the rules! Having a rule about blazers or sitting up straight does not stop kids from bullying, fighting, being disruptive in class or failing to do their homework. The kids who are going to be perpetrators of actual bad behaviour do it regardless of the rules about little things.

I dunno about the 'give them a petty rule' argument. Maybe the pupils are pushing back at petty rules because, well the rules ARE petty. Something they can control, like taking a blazer on or off, is almost asking to be messed around with, tbh. Why give them the opportunity? Why wind them up with pointless instructions?

DD was accused of having 'an attitude' by one teacher (who didn't teach her and was judging on looks) in Yr 11 because - literal quote - 'her blazer sleeves are always rolled up.'

Umm, the blazer she has grown out of, hence the short sleeves, and is not worth spending another 70 quid on because she is leaving?

Andrew Old is notoriously intolerant of silly little things like making adjustments for disability in schools. I wouldn't follow his advice on anything.

It's the same at my daughters school. Absolute bollox if you ask me

Which patently doesn't work as you have greatly contradicted yourself by saying 'due probably to focusing on rebelling against school rules instead of learning'?! 🙄

It isn't a choice if there is no non-uniform school in the area.

My son’s secondary school has a tannoy announcement that sounds when they can take their jumpers off. 😂 Pathetic.

16 year olds, some nearly 17 not being able enforce a personal decision to take their jumpers off. Setting them up great for the future… Don’t think for yourself and obey. 🙃

It reminds me of the time I was viewing a school and asked the students taking us around why there was a table and a chair on the dark (Victorian)stairway. I was informed that it was for when a student was sent to isolation. Suffice to say we didn’t apply for a school place…it just gave me an awful impression of the school.

Agree it’s bullshit. Was the same when I was at secondary school around 2004ish. Was bullshit then too 😄

Children actually learn to follow rules much better when they are sensible rules. No-one learns anything useful from being forced by the threat of disproportionate punishment into complying with stupid ones.

But the answer to this is not to create more and more trivial rules. It's to have a limited set of actually important rules but be very strict about them. The advantage of this is that students see that the school cares about important things and takes prompt and serious action about them. Every time. Rather than obsessing about a load of silly, trivial nit-picky rules and not having the time or will to follow through on them because there are too many and half the teachers think they're ridiculous anyway.

Same here. The same bog standard comprehensive became an academy and moved to blazers and ties. So glad I don't go to school now!