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?
^

Ah - I'm afraid you are misunderstanding the point of a school blazer. The point of a school blazer is to make the school look like it has smartly-dressed pupils. And, of course, if pupils are smartly-dresssed, they must also be well-behaved and hard-working and get good results. And that all means that the school is a good school.

Because it makes the school look scruffy!!! Because that will ensure a quality education for the children!
If ever there was a good demonstration of just how ridiculous these rules are, you've just provided it!

this ^

Oh yes, silly me! I forgot that private schools were the ones with blazers and they got the best exam results so clearly making everyone wear blazers would mean the local comp could now be considered a 'good school'. Grade 9s all round!

How does all wearing the same clothing safeguard children in a classroom? Or help with identification? Sure when out on school trips, but not back at school. And uniformity; I genuinely don't get what problem having half the class in shirts causes.

Absolutely ridiculous statement. In almost all schools in Europe students can wear tracksuits and trainers, do you seriously think that those schools are zoos, unable to control behaviour??

The irony is, it's often the worse schools which adopt blazers, because a) they think that a more formal uniform might somehow magically improve behaviour (it doesn't) and b) because it's basically marketing to prospective parents. It's window dressing basically, and it's often one of the first things a new Head does when taking over a school thatnot doing well. When my (grammar) school recently introduced blazers, the kids all hated the idea and some of them were saying it made it look like 'a chav school' (apologies - not my words!).

Personally I can’t think of anything worse than having DC in tracksuit and trainers at school. It would turn many schools into zoos just like the one I described upthread.

If you can't think of anything worse than that, you nust have led a very charmed life. Anyway, it's ridiculous. As has been repeatedly pointed out, even very good schools elsewhere in Europe do not have uniforms, and teachers and students alike are in trainers and jeans. They are not zoos

@StrawberrySquash I said in schools , not in the classroom. It helps in several ways.

As you say, school trips for one and other off site events.

Making sure only children going to that school are on the premises.

Kids that are in uniform but not in school when they should be (voluntarily or not) can be easily identified/flagged.

They aren’t realizing it because there’s nothing to realize. What you’ve just written is nonsense.

It is also intellectually dishonest, because there is no way you would be a “senior manager” anywhere if you actually reasoned this way.

If a kid's bunking off school I'm not sure they'll be too bothered about adhering to a blazer on at all times rule. They've already committed a worse offence.

@StrawberrySquash tbf I'm not sure why exactly you're arguing since I'm not pro blazers ,especially not at all times and I have stated that alternatives are available that work just as well.

Besides which, in the winter they'll probably be wearing a coat over their blazer anyway.

Obviously they need a school coat too!

Obviously they need a school coat too!

You joke , but there are some schools where that's a thing.

And even worse, school winter hats and school summer hats.

In my view every school should have a compulsory school logo coat to go over the blazer.

I think we all realised a while ago your opinions are bonkers, so frankly it's irrelevant.

Maybe you should introduce it for your "underlings" though.

I would have absolutely loved that! My mum had three hats, one for each term in her convent school in the 50s and I always wished I did.

I'd love DC to have that but I don't think there's mant state schools that do. There's a primary near us where the girls have a school beret year round.

@TreeSquirrel I actually don't like the idea of random strangers on the street being able to tell what school a child attends - so a compulsory coat with a logo I would hate.
At least logo blazers, polos, jumpers etc can be covered up with a coat.

Sorry, haven’t read the full thread. Schools have brought in more draconian rules because we are dealing with children who have been brought up in entirely permissive homes with very few boundaries. Students no longer understand the basic requirements of behaviour because they are so indulged at home. If you don’t like our rules, start setting some boundaries at home and teach your feral kids some manners, or home educate them so we don’t have to put up with you undermining what we do.

And there you have it! Why I do not automatically say teachers are right., or the school is right. This attitude right here, is why there is no trust. Thank god mine have finished. Pretty certain this attitude is what nearly killed my kid in school.

My Mum was reported to her school by a well-meaning passer-by. They had seen her some three miles away from the school premises, in a street near to her home, without her school hat.

Plus sa change ...

Indeed.

DD2 was never badly behaved at home or at school.

In primary school she always got comments like she was a delight to teach, really kind and thoughtful, wish all the class were like her. Always meeting expectations, sometimes exceeding (always exceeding in PE), always top or second to top marks for effort.

I think we should all be asking ourselves why she and many others like her, who don't have a badly behaved bone in their bodies, felt unsafe and anxious at secondary school and could not learn in that environment and ended up missing years of education.

People seem to assume that kids who struggle with or refuse school were badly behaved or disruptive. Actually at secondary school DD2 was masking like hell to be the very model of an attentive, engaged pupil but after every few days doing that she was absolutely exhausted and burnt out.

Not even medication could help or counselling- there was no trauma to be counselled for, only the daily trauma of school.

I would never, ever model or teach the sort of discipline that is enforced at secondary school these days at home as I believe it is fundamentally and utterly wrong-headed.

DD1 was lucky enough to get into a super selective grammar which had learnt its lesson about hot housing and pushing pupils too far and had centred the education around wellbeing and she thrived there. There was never any nonsense about ridiculous amounts of homework or stupid draconian rules. I thought non-grammars in the area which had a good reputation would be the same but just a bit less academic, but there were ridiculous amounts of homework, a ridiculous number of apps to download for a start which put lots of barriers up to start with, and DD2 was perpetually in fear of getting in trouble.

If I had known that local schools would be so awful for DD2 with hindsight - and how awful and disrupted school would be in 2020-21, we would have planned for private education years before.