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

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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?
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Probably as much use as asking where The Library is.
DH can't really speak any French but he knows how to buy a kilo of oranges!!!

I agree it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t ‘teach kids discipline’. What kind of lesson is it to teach them that rules are there just ‘because’? Rules should have a reason behind them.

at my school 20 years ago there was a teacher positioned at the front entrance forcing everyone to remove coats before they were allowed to enter the building, causing a bottleneck every morning. We also had to request permission to remove blazers.

Hardly the end of the world is it, you should be thanking them. Much less of a chance of your child’s blazer getting lost…

Exactly. There's a reason it's called a uniform.

The saying about pennies doesn't extend to looking after, say, rubbish - we all know that looking after the rubbish doesn't help the pounds to look after themselves at all. If anything, it makes the pounds worse off because you are wasting your time wholly unproductively.

In the same way, tackling small things that don't need tackling (like allowing children to decide when it is too hot to wear a blazer) doesn't help in the least with big things; it's a waste of time, and if anything it just makes them worse.

Long thread, so could have missed someone making this comment already.

Blazers tend to be very unique to the school and students don't normally have spare ones to lend out. Ensuring students are wearing blazers around the school (especially in a large secondary school, where no teachers know every student!) therefore supports safeguarding. You can quickly identify anyone external sneaking in - either as a joke (which is still an issue as far as adults knowing where the child is), or for more serious issues (eg. fights).

Wearing blazers in class means they don't get stuffed in bags and are worn around the school.

In our "blazers-on" school, teachers take a common sense approach - a quick "yes, you can all take them off" at the start of lessons on a hot day, for example, means none of the students are in the least but bothered by the rule.

Surely you can see the difference? Your analogy involves something that will affect the comfort of people around you. Taking off your blazer or coat when you are too hot affects no-one but you.

Yes, not a single silly school rule in Scotland

My dd school suddenly did this when they joined an academy.
She has had the same blazer since year 7 and she’s now year 11. It’s knackered because I’ve washed it a million times because she can’t take it off when she’s hot!! So it gets sweaty.

So in defiance we’ve kept this raggedy blazer and the head teacher can big off.

The explanation was that it is supposedly beneficial to give pupils a stupid rule to kick against, otherwise they might kick against sensible rules.

I think it's long been recognised that the logic behind that argument is false. If pupils are presented by adults with a set of stupid rules, not only do they kick against them, their respect for those adults goes down, making it more likely if anything that they will kick against all rules. Present them with a set of sensible rules that you can fully justify if challenged earns respect; yes, they may still kick against them, but you simply ensure you have equally sensible procedures in place to deal with that.

You will be that mum teachers loathe, just go with it, it really won't do your little darling any harm to have some rules they don't like. Support the school and believe in them.

You're Probably being U because I think almost all secondary schools have this rule. Teachers are not inhumane on the whole and they do allow kids to take them off.

I think your arguments about funding and time are U. This does not cost a penny and It's very important in secondary schools to have the behaviour to a good standard otherwise nobody will learn anything and it is hard to keep everyone safe.

Although the discipline measures you mention sound over the top. Don't they do a detention first?

Why should OP believe in a school imposing stupid and pointless rules, when they weren’t needed in the school she originally chose to send her DC to?

Schools aren’t always right. Sometimes rules need to be challenged.

Micromanaging kids and their bodies. How stupid.

Well a lot of them can’t be trusted to decide whether going to school with your knickers on display or arse hanging out of your trousers is appropriate so I would say maybe not.

Parents aren't working in the school, are they? They're not the ones facing the persistent challenges we see in today's schools and they're not the ones in charge of getting children through exams so they can move onto whatever it is they want to do next. They're not the one's whose jobs are on the line if their little darling doesn't get his predicted grades either. Teaching staff - and schools generally - invest way more of themselves in the children they teach than the average parent understands and just want the children they work with to get the very best of them, as teachers, which is increasingly difficult in our schools and actually, increasingly hostile and almost impossible to navigate. I can't stand hearing from a Head of Year that they've just fieled 15 phone calls from angry parents about blazers when we know we need to deal with a child scared to go home tonight because dad keeps beating the shit out of mum. It's trivial. Stop taking up our time so we can help the kids who need to be helped.

We're also arguing here that kids have to ask to take their blazers off like the teachers are always going to say no you can't. Most - and it is very much a majority - will say yes. I never say no - even on a day like today when I've had Year 8 boys playing basketball all lunch so they're boiling but the undertone around school is far from warm. I don't know any of my colleagues who say no. You discuss us as if we're all entirely unreasonable and just out to make children's lives difficult. Actually, what schools are trying to do is gain some control over the shit that is happening within them so kids can learn what they need to learn. Is it the best way to do it? Well, like I say, most schools in my experience who sweat the small stuff have fewer bigger issues. I get that might not be your experience but maybe understand there's method to the madness - we are responsible for hundreds of kids at any given time, we have to do something to make it work.

Try and see a bigger picture, eh?

Sorry, but that argument in itself is asinine. If you are a pupil in one of these schools where it is drilled into you that cannot ever take off your blazer without permission, you will be breaking the rule if you take it off without asking because you are in a room with no teacher around to ask. If a teacher comes in and finds you, they have a duty to punish you because you can't tell them that you were given permission. Sure, some might actually be sensible and exercise discretion in your favour, but there are plenty of reports from teachers attesting to the fact that they have got into trouble with senior staff if they don't enforce these rules rigidly.

It's a ridiculous rule and I'm surprised that so many people agree with that rule.

As an adult, at work, if I'm hot I remove my work jacket or if wearing my own clothes i dress appropriately for the weather, i dont need permission from my manager. I don't understand why someone is not allowed to do so just because they are aged between 11-16, i disagree that it's to stop them being left behind in a classroom on a hot day.

What if they're told they can take the blazer off but get in trouble in the corridor for not wearing it?

That’s completely different from taking a blazer off / putting a coat on.

I genuinely don't think I'd cope in school these days. I have some sensory issues, especially around being too hot, and being forced to wear a blazer constantly (especially because they all seem to be made from wool or polyester - two things I also can't stand!) would be extremely hard for me.

I don't know why schools insist on stupid stuffy uniforms - let the kids wear trousers, a polo or t-shirt and a jumper when it's cold. Much more comfortable, practical and affordable!

Yup but they say they are all about kids have body autonomy these days but impose rules that make no sense that takes that away from them

Dear god. I remember walking out in a fire drill behind a year 10 whose skirt was so short I could see her bum cheeks crease when she walked. I had a very discreet word, for which I’m sure a male teacher would have been called a nonce for ‘looking’. Similarly thongs hanging out above skirts and shirts too short to tuck in. It’s not nice to be around children dressed like that.

That's been around since the 80's though.

I’d be interested to know if the anti-school rules parents have any rules at all at home, and if they do have rules do they justify that it’s different somehow? How do you honestly expect 1200 kids in one space to not become Lord of the Flies without rules?

Its a smidge hyperbolic to start implying a parent who disagrees with one school rule obviously doesn't have any rules at home, encourages their child not to follow the rules at school and that schools are going to turn into a lord of the flies scenario if a child is allowed to take a blazer off. Are you always so dramatic?

Well, no. The poster is saying it did operate well as a cohesive community till the silly head came along and tried to impose a lot of pointless rules. If you didn't understand that, you didn't read the post properly.