Haven't girls uniforms changed??

[ampere]

Just occuring to me now: I don't think girls wear dresses at secondary school anymore, do they? I'm talking about your local comp not posh public schools where they'd've wheeled the boater out by now .

I am getting the impression that:

a) summer dresses no longer happen
b) the girls wear skirts and bike shorts for PE
c)blazers are disappearing in favour of sweatshirts!

I recall when you got in proper trouble if you weren't wearing the summer dress by a certain date, where you wore an artex shirt and green gym knickers to do most indoor sport- and where most gilrs uniforms included a balzer!

The only item in that list that was cast aside too quickly was the blazer. What a handy piece of kit! All those pockets!

AND I recall when people could either
a) spell, or
b) use a spell checker...

I don't think they've changed that much.
No summer dresses at our local secondary but they do have blazers and shorts and artex shirt for PE.

Ah, shorts, not small gym slips and gym knickers? THAT in itself is a huge change!

And no hated summer dresses! Henc eteh need to impose a date deadline to wear the damn thing!

Loving the Artex shirts in particular (ouch)

Wikipedia:
Artex is a surface coating used for interior decorating, most often found on ceilings, which allows the decorator to add a texture to it.

God, our school had a rule that:

Summer dresses must be worn.
Summer dresses must be DOGTOOTH check, not ordinary check.

As nowhere local actually sold dogtooth check dresses, that meant all summer dresses had to be homemade rfom the school's specified fabric.

Lol, Lancelottie. Well spotted

The senior schools (State and Private) around here all have Blazers. My DD1 had a campaign to introduce them to her primary school (I am so proud). Summer dresses are just for the junior schools (even of the private schools) here too. But DCs senior school does swap shirts for House Tee shirts for summer, which actually I like a lot. We are also campaigning to keep the school tie for girls at DCs school rather than an awful coloured blouse.

When I went to school it was no uniform, and "school dress" which was widely flouted at the seniors. I have seen my old school on Teachers TV, and they have a very smart Uniform now!

My school uniform (in the 90's) consisted of skirts as short as you could possibly get them, with coloured lycra cycling short underneath them, oversized polo shirts (with a logo on if you though you would be able to get away with it), oversized sweatshirts and either kickers or pod shoes. With the appropriate designer sports coat.

They now seem to be a bit more stylish and less about labels here. The girls wear fitted shirts/blouses and long cardigans and ballet pumps with those enormous flowers in their hair and never a coat in sight, no matter what the weather is, unless it's one of those tiny, ridiculous cropped leather jackets.

So they have changed, but they have gotten smarter(ish).

We never had dresses at secondary school (nor did any of the state or private schools in the area). Skirt, shirt (short sleeved if desired) and blazer.

Artex as a sports shirt material is very character forming, I think you'll find!

My old school's got rid of ties and replaced them with school branded tank top things. I'm horrified - if we had to endure this fashion trauma, future generations should do too!

Plenty of summer dresses here in primary. Not popular in secondary- and tbh I think if they do go back to them, they should be re-designed: always thought it was creepy to see fully developed young women in little girls' frocks: don't think it's a coincidence that the British have this schoolgirl dress-sex obsession.

I do not remember any secondary schools having summer dresses. Our summer uniform in secondary school was the same was the winter one apart from the fact that you wore an open necked short sleeved blouse with a skirt. We did have a blazer though. In the winter you wore a button up blouse and a tie with a skirt.

I do remember that Neighbours and Home and Away was popular when I was in secondary school and I was quite at the Aussie summer dresses. They were so short!

When I went to secondary school, I did miss the gingham dresses that we wore in primary, but I did not want a really short Aussie style dress.

Summer dresses at secondary went out about 30 years ago I reckon (like when I last wore them). Not even the posh high-acheiving girls indpendent schools wear them in seniors.

Disagree about the blazers though - sweatshirts out, jumpers in; Blazers in; ties being introduced.

Apparently there is going to be a city-wide crackdown on girls short skirts. I'll believe it when I see it!

Disregarding the quaintness of the photo in general, don't you think

these girls blouses look far better than a conventional shirt'n'tie on a girl?

Before tie-gate our winter uniform (all girls convent school) was shirt, tie, jumper (you could kill hours of Maths lessons picking all the stripes out of your tie with the point of a compass). Summer uniform technically had a dress option but no one ever wore it - so you were allowed to wear a V-neck blouse without a tie and your usual school skirt.

Skirts had to be an inch below the knee to an inch above the ankle, and yes, they measured them. Cue a stream of girls leaving school on an evening and rolling theirs up to microscopic levels.

To this day I still won't wear navy willingly after years of it in school.

Private school I worked at had a brown uniform - it was utterly hideously vile beyond all conception of vile.

Oh how I remember the navy blue knickers.

No Skirts and navy knickers any more. The in PE kit item is the scort (skirt/ shorts combination)

When I went to secondary school (mid 70s) we had a hideous summer dress which was black with white flowers.

Year 7s wore them for about 2 weeks in the summer until they could take the taunts from the older girls no more!

I don't think dresses were an option for our secondary school uniform; certainly no one wore them. But then I don't remember anyone wearing them at primary school either. Neither of the two nearest secondary schools have dresses as an option. Both appear to have blazers as compulsory - they're certainly worn a lot. They were an option at my secondary school - each year there would be one poor year 7 (okay, first year, I'm old) boy who wore one, to everyone else's mirth. They do look smart, but I hate sitting and wearing a suit jacket at my desk for work, so I don't particularly like them on practical grounds.

I'm with emptyshell on the navy - school uniform, and my mum liked navy a lot. I would still rather wear black, despite my advancing years!

My particular memory of school uniform is that we had a minimum skirt length, of course, but then very long skirts were fashionable one year, and they introduced a maximum skirt length. Pah - at least with a really long skirt you couldn't see the navy blue tights worn with white ankle socks (uniform didn't actually say you couldn't wear BOTH).

Early 80's my private seconary school had red and white stripe summer dresses. It was uniform until 5th year.

We went to look at a senior private school(for DD) some time ago and they had pale Green (stripe maybe?)short sleeve blouse and matching skirt. Very unusual these days.

I hate the way all the girls school trousers these days are made out of sweaty crotch material. Why can you not get non nylony trousers?

Our compulsory summer dress (girls grammar, circa 1975!) was a pale green tartan with a faint blue and darker green cross/stripe, OR the same arrangement...in pink. It was a shapeless front-button up and belted shirt-waister.

The headmistress who modelled herslef on Mrs Thatcher, only harsher (a quote to a father on parents evening: 'My gels will never need to have to type as they will have their own secretaries...') decided that as everyone disliked the dress, esp the pink, she'd redesign it. HER model, in the green tartan fabric, OR blue OR brick red was completely plain with a high, round neck and a zip up back. Nice. SO no-one wore it, BUT an enterprising woman in the town set up a business making zip up front shirt waisters in the blue tartan which sold like hotcakes. There was hell to pay BUT, being a state school, eventually the school had to back down and the blue became the summer dress!

The girls convent in town who had a brown blazer (!) came up with a good idea.. they got the girls to make their own summer dresses in Sewing using the school fabric which was a discreet blue or pale brown floral. They had to get the pattern approved prior to making it but god, they looked far better than us! It was put to Attila the Headmistress that the grammar might do the same but she responded that her gels were here to learn Russian and physics, not dressmaking...

Needless to say those gels are now in daggy too-short tartan skirts, navy blue but washed out polos and a bottle green sweatshirt.

I yearn for the shirt-waister .

Our local girls schools all seem to have the Aussie style dresses for the summer- would have seemed v trendy to us navy skirt and jumper girls in the 80s.

At my old school we had to have summer dresses - and they had to be made from the approved material. Even in the late 70s many mothers couldn't sew and there was quite a trauma surrounding these dresses. By the 4th year we all refused to wear awful home-made monstrosities and just wore our winter uniform.

At ds's school there has just been a crack-down on the girls' attire. And about time too. Some of the girls look just terrible. Bum-skimming skirts, artfully-laddered tights and totally worn-down ballet pumps. Some girls walk home in no shoes at all! Also black bras under straining shirts. They make Britney Spears's iconic schoolgirl outfit look positively modest. The boys all look all right. I know you have to pick your battles with teenagers, but frankly I'm surprised these girls are allowed to go to school in that get up. (Oh dear, I AM my mother!)

Nah, you're not yer mother yet! You just understand that a school should be doing all it reasonably can to desexualise young girls, swimmingly bravely against the tide of our perverse society that throws up its hands at the sexualisation of children, yet uses 12 year olds to sell womens clothing.

Deep in my soul I think many girls are secretly grateful that via the enforcing of the rules, that's one arena in which they don't have to compete!

Eek. Gramercy, you didn't go to my school, did you (see 'horrid dogtooth check' post above?