Has anyone ever challenged overpriced logo uniform

[GideonMack]

Hello :)

I do appreciate before I start that it is fairly likely the attitude of 'does it really matter' can be used here, but I have a bee in my bonnet about this..

Our DS has just been giving a Academy school (from Infant to junior) the school he presently attends has a logo but in no way enforces that you must wear a logo... and I stupidly presumed this would be the attitude at his new school...

Boy was I wrong! I contacted them about Uniform arrangements and was told by the office manager, that I can only buy the uniform through them and that he has to wear a Jumper with Logo, a Tie with Logo, and in years 5 + 6 a blazer with logo...

initially I thought no problem I will just buy the generic colour of his school, I requested this

I was told that was he to attend without the correct logo on his uniform he would be excluded for the day and everyday until he attended in the correctly uniform with the logo

and no surprise the uniform is high priced.. £20 for a jumper, £15 for the tie, £75 for the blazer

this is crazy, and I asked if they have a legal right to refuse my son education based on him not wearing a logo! they just said it is their policy, but that is a policy, not law!

the problem I have is I obviously don't want to start my DS education at his new school like this with them refusing him entrance etc, but I hate to feel ripped off and it is just a logo for petes sake!

can I write to them and tell them he will be attending in correct uniform but without the logo, or am I flying solo and being pathetic?

Join the club we have the same issues with our School only different prices.

Check with your County Council Education Department as Academy or not they still have to follow certain rules regarding exclusion. We are fighting our School on the same matter and East Sussex County Council advised us that our Academy cannot exclude our twins for the action of a parent and as it's the parents who buy the uniform they cannot do anything about it.
They have threatened to remove clothing so we wrote a letter to the head making a formal complaint regarding the uniform policy and in it we advised the School that clothing was only to be removed from our children for medical or soiling purposes if removed for any other reason then they would hear from our Solicitor!

It's so far done the trick they are leaving us to it but we are still fighting so that nobody has to feel uncomfortable doing what we have done and so we are currently fighting our school and have set up a petition for the Government to change the rules so it becomes UK wide policy to offer Logo free uniform options at all Schools please cut and paste this link chn.ge/1OnfsAQ into your browser and it should take you to the petition.

Hope it goes well for you and if you can please share our petition site on any social media you may be a part of we really need 100,000 signatures to be taken seriously.

Good luck and we are glad we are not the only ones...

I have yet to see any evidence that uniform improves educational outcomes.
yes it looks smart etc etc and I have to admit it's a godsend when trying to get my 4 year old dressed in the morning but the attitude of parents towards discipline and schooling is far more influential.

That said, there is no need of lots of logo uniform and certainly not at those prices! It would be interesting to dig into the financial arrangement. I wonder if the uniform company is connected to the academy or if the academy is receiving a financial bribe?

I'm shocked that the school have threatened to remove the child's clothing, surely that is assault?!

my son goes to a grammar school.

logo blazer £35
logo tie £8

logo sweater optional, can wear plain black.

(pe kit of logo, but that is normal for secondary.)

That is secondary. Your prices and strictness is mad at primary level.
There is another thread around tonight about logo uniform and there are links to the governments own uniform guidelines.
There should never be a solo supplier, and it should be affordable.

I would put it in writing, not our choice of school. We can't afford uniform.
Give them gov guidelines and total cost of their uniform versus total cost of tescos
(by the way, be careful what you wish for, we have tescos uniform and it is appallingly bad quality)

You're missing a trick

You go along to the second hand uniform shop and buy the cheapest, tattiest blazer/tie/sweatshirt

And then you cut the logos off and sew it onto cheap supermarket uniform

And you resew the logoes on every year

Cheap. Simple

There is a petition up and running to nationally change this please read it and if you agree sign it without 100,000 signatures the Govt can still ignore parents as the Schools currently are doing. copy this link into your browser chn.ge/1OnfsAQ

Academies come under the Local Authority rules still for exclusion and most other matters, the only difference is they get to control 100% of their budget whereas when they were under Local Authority they only got something like 75% of control over it. They can tweek the curriculum more and change holidays or times the School opens. Plus the Employment decisions come down to the Academy sponsor instead of the Local Authority too. Only know this as our School recently changed and we looked into the difference between Local Auth run and Academy.