School uniform's come a long way. When I was at primary we had to wear proper ties (none of those elasticmabobs), shirts, skirts, jumpers... the boys had to wear proper school uniform shorts - even in the middle of winter. These days even the secondary schools have sweatshirts, the girls get to wear trousers (oh how I would have loved to be able to live in trousers) etc etc. I've gone in probably 40% of the primary schools in the 4 LEAs around here (I live between two counties, both with a city and county council) and I've only ever been in two primary schools that still have ties as part of the uniform.
As for the Mrs thing - it's respect and courtesy - and I tend to just refer to other teachers as Mrs in front of parents just out of habit more than anything else - and because they'll be known to the parents as such from newsletters and contact within the school etc. It's no massive secret what my first name is - the kids generally know, but they know I get called Mrs X by them. (Incidentally I hate smug callcentre people who think they can presume to call my by my first name without asking). I say this as someone who had the most unpronounceable, unspellable pain in the rear to be a teacher with, maiden name known to humanity. For me as well, it's got that benefit of having some separation from my "work me" and my "me me"... that's pretty handy when you're faced with a class that are on the attack and trying to crack you - you can remember they're trying to crack Mrs X... not Jane (my name's nothing like Jane btw). Means I've been able to go through some horrible personal stuff, yet step into my mental Mrs suit and still function as normal with work!
I just don't like these schools where things have gone too far the other way, where staff wear school uniform (I always find something faintly unnerving when greeted by a headmaster wearing an adult-size version of the school uniform), where staff are treated as the children - I don't see anything wrong in an acceptance that there are Adults and Children and that sometimes one group does different things to the others (I'd quite like to go on the climbing frame - but I don't).
To be honest, it is starting to look a little like you've got several axes to grind with the school... I can understand why the head does play cards close to their chest regarding teachers - parents can be incredibly obsessional and very very intrusive over teacher they even SUSPECT might be having their classes the following year (I've mentioned the fact I'm childless - I know it's been muttered about in school gate gossip that I shouldn't be a teacher because of it - the gossip always ends up drifting back into school... wish it didn't, it's a pain in the rear). An example of how odd some people can be about what classes will be taken by who - when I last worked full-time, we were staffing the school summer fair (as you do), and my year group partner teacher was on one of the stalls. Now, at this point - even the STAFF didn't know the following year staffing arrangements - but a bunch of parents had got together, analyzed the pattern they thought they saw of which classes went through which path in the school, and decided they'd second-guessed the head and that they were going to have my year group partner that following year. Three of them walked up to the stall, and stood, staring at her for a good 5 minutes, when asked what was up, replying something like "oh we think you might be our children's new teacher so we wanted to look at you." It was flipping weird, and also completely wrong - teachers moved year groups (some heads like to do this - even, shock horror, moving staff from Y6 to reception... Y6 isn't where the cleverest teachers always go by the way - just generally league tables mean there's more at stake there, and some staff really don't want to go up to Y6), classes had to be allocated according to numbers and floor space (the great legacy of open plan schools - random walls everywhere and strange variations in classroom size), some children moved classes, teachers came and left... their kids got me and not the teacher they thought they'd sussed out.
I think that's the other reason heads do do things like this - because you get lots of people making judgements and trying to second guess. It's always interesting to see how many parents view teachers swapping year groups and going down to reception as some kind of demotion (we don't get paid according to the size of 'em!). It just means that the head wants to put certain strengths in different year groups that year - it might be they want to put a music specialist in to have a push on music in Y6, or they're trying to really focus on Art in the early years; or it might just be that the head doesn't like staff getting in their comfort zone and moves them every two years come what may (how I hate these heads, moving classroom, finding new resources, planning from scratch just when you're really getting into the swing of a year group...). Parents tend to make assumptions and see things in staffing arrangements that aren't necessarily there, and then it gets passed around the school-gate chinese whispers, blown out of all proportion, invariably taken home to stew on on a Friday night and all weekend and you end up with an indignant bunch at the door on Monday morning.
Incidentally - my first degree, which I missed a first in by one flipping mark... was, of all things, Politics. I got onto my PGCE course based on the fact that I was obviously very literate and able to construct elaborate arguments with the English language. I'm still an incredibly good primary teacher (that's from inspection feedback, not me blowing my own trumpet - I'm the most lacking in self-confidence individual you'll ever meet), I just came into teaching through a somewhat unconventional route! (I left school vowing never to set foot in one of those places again as I hated my convent school so much - and got pulled back to it)