Post the most petty rule your school has for teachers

[MaryBerrysEyelashes]

That might explain the teacher recruitment shortage

Because oh my God, what teachers wear must be up there.

Where I work now is smart business wear: explicitly - no trainers, no denim, no t-shirts, nothing ripped, nothing with a hood, no leggings and no political insignia.
Previously the HT banned linen because it always looked creased!

Re clothes...at one school I was at it was no leggings whatsoever - this included under any longline tunic or dress. Stupid!
I am now an EOTAS Tutor and wear whatever I please!

At ine school I work in (not a teacher) I am not allowed to wear an outdoor coat inside. So I have to carry it from the front door to my desk area and put my coat in outside when i leave. It irrationally annoys me.

Oh yes, true where I work. No leggings, even under a dress or tunic.
The Holy Grail for teachers is of course shoes which are as comfortable as trainers, being on your feet all day, that's an essential. I bought a lovely pair of suede shoes from Clarks, but the sole was white and the HT told me they were like trainers and couldn't be worn!

Tbh, when your kids have to wear business dress to school in order to "maintain an appearance of professionalism" and this includes extensive rules about your socks colour, hair bands, hair cuts and trouser cut, you would expect the actual professionals to adhere to these expectations too.

It was getting to the point at my son's school where he was getting detention for having wallabies with a black indented logo on them , but teachers were coming to teach in a summer dress and filthy converse. Or jeans and a band tshirt.

School I used to work at was bringing back making all students and staff stand up if the head teacher or chief exec of the trust came into the room. I left just before it was brought in. Load of bollocks 😂

We had the no-trainers-no-denim rule in the office I worked in as well. Many of the staff were school leavers.

@ThatSpryShaker What are wallabies? The only ones I know are like kangaroos! 😄

Sorry bad link

Wallabies

a former head teacher insisted:

No jeans
No cargoes
No visible tattoos or piercings
No logos

The HT who replaced her had tatts and piercings so all the rules went out the window, but I have to say the behaviour went down the pan.

One school I worked in briefly had a HT who insisted all staff call him Mr X at all times. He actually pulled someone up for using his first name at another staff members leaving meal.

It was quite indicative of his attitude to staff and went very quickly from a school that had staff that stayed for many, many years to one with high staff turnover.

Another had a rule that everyone had to wear a belt or have something on your waist to attach your lanyard to. The Head felt lanyards round necks were dangerous and banned folks from wearing them that way.

When my dc were in stage 1 they had to wear a collar and tie. When the temperatures reached 80° and staff were coming in wearing spaghetti strap dresses, cargo shorts and tee shirts with flip flops, parents complained and rightly so.

If children have to wear lace up shoes or Mary Jane's, then I see no reason why staff should wear trainers or plimsolls to work.

I was in a primary school last week where one of the teachers had a rock band t shirt with a huge picture of death on the front, leapord print skirt and black adidas trainers. I was actually quite shocked as I didn’t think it looked professional at all and I wondered if that was the norm now. Pub clothes to work.

I’m all about making the lives and workload of teachers easier as it’s a horrendously hard job, but if you want to be taken seriously as a profession, surely you need to look like you take it seriously?

School uniform is mental for both kids and teachers... let them all be themselves!

Simple really. If you want to be treated like a professional, you need to behave like a professional.

Personally I'd ban the rules but for the children too along with banning logo'd polyester.

Having to wear a suit jacket to staff briefing.
I didn't mind having to wear it for parents evening/formal events but having to put one on just for 10 minutes on a Monday morning seemed completely pointless.

You were allowed not to if you had a school branded top/jacket/lab coat which made it even more rediculous because 80% of staff wore those anyway so you were pulled up for not wearing a suit jacket when hardly anyone else was either.

There was an unwritten rule that teachers didn't wear jeans at our school, but nothing else apart from that.

Up until the mid 90s the HT wouldn't allow female teachers to wear trousers until a rather feisty young woman turned up wearing them anx told him he couldn't stop her.

Apparently until fairly recently there was a school in a very conservative village where most families were from a strict religion where, if a teacher's neckline was deemed too low, she would be given a piece of material to insert in her top to preserve modesty.

Another one...
No visible piercings (fine) including nose studs on Asian women. Except not all Asian women, dark skinned Asian women had nothing said. Light skinned Asian women were told to remove theirs. An email reminding them of discrimination in the workplace put a stop to that though.

At schools I've worked at (support staff) the rules for staff were pretty much the same as for the kids. I think that's fair enough really? Otherwise you've got teachers in strappy summer dresses when the kids aren't even allowed to take their blazers off.

I do think if the kids have to adhere to a uniform/dress code because it's not distracting, it's professional etc then the same rules should generally apply to the staff as well as actual professionals.

That being said I don't know any teachers who wouldn't dress professionally for school - more on the casual end for reception and PE teachers, as appropriate.

Some schools require the teachers themselves to wear uniform as well!

Not a teacher myself, but when I was a teenager teachers at my school were not allowed tattoos and had to cover them. My CDT teacher was told he had to have long sleeves to cover a tattoo on his forearm, but his sleeves also had to be rolled up for safety because the class was in a workshop environment with machines etc. So he had to put a bandage round his arm every day. Utterly absurd - as soon as kids saw the bandage they immediately said ‘Have you hurt your arm, Sir?’ and he’d have to say ‘No, it’s to cover up a tattoo because I’m not allowed to to show it at work’, so we all knew he had the tattoo and he might as well have been allowed to show it.

I actually wouldn't have minded that. I loved PE days because it was easy. I'd have been quite happy going into work everyday with black trousers/skirt and a school branded polo or fleece.