Uniform - opinions please

[seeker]

My dd goes to a high achieving girls grammar school. Outstanding Ofsted, brilliant behaviour, lots of "school spirit" blahdiblahdiblah. The uniform, which is stricly enforced, is navy blue skirt or trousers, open necked white shirt, navy sweatshirt with the school logo and a navy reversible zip up jacket - fleece on one side, waterproof on the other. Neat, easy, comfortable - no problem.

A new head started this term and her first move is to start the process to change the uniform to blazers and ties. I hate girls in ties and I can't see the point of blazers - expensive, not warm, not comfortable - and look awful over growing bosoms!

I can't see any reason for changing apart from her wanting to make her mark. I can see that in a school that needs "pulling up" then a new uniform might well make a difference, but as I said, that's not the case here. What do people think?

ruby my ds wears shorts all yr.

state infants school

he refuses to wear trousers for some obscure reason

as for blazers for girls

dd's school has blazers and shirts for girls,ties for boys only

not a problem imo

atleast it's black and not red like the relatively new head wanted to change it to.

Message withdrawn

I think it's that the Head is trying to "make her mark" and it seems to be common practice to do that by changing the uniform.

Here the boys grammar has blazers etc (apparently the girls does too but I've never seen one of their girls in a blazer) but the High schools all had sweatshirt/ poloshirt.

One of the High schools went over to blazers a couple of years ago with a new Head and has improved so much that the other High schools were thinking about doing it too.

Some of the kids prefer it because all the primary schools have sweatshirts so it emphasises that they are older- esp for Y7.

My DCs have all had blazers (except DS1 who went to High school) and I don't have a problem with them. All have been machine washable/ easycare

My two have an utterly knobtastic blazer, typical private school vileness. The school must be good, for me to put up with the horridness of the uniform.

Where I work we have blazer, shirt and tie for all, also trousers for all, and skirts for the girls.

Hardly any of the girls wear skirts. No boy has ever tried, so I don't know what we would do if that happened.

When we tighten up on uniform, their overall behaviour improves, as does their learning. Sounds crazy but it is true IME!

oh and the uniform is all available to a number of local shops, is reasonably priced....far cheaper than things the kids would want to wear if we didn't have uniform, and everything is machine washable.

Head at dd's school says; 'I've never found that uniform has much bearing on behaviour in schools.' As it's a very popular over-subscribed school, she may have a point.

DD went to a primary with no uniform as well and I'm glad. When we were poor I'd buy her sets of leggings/sweat pants in bulk (never the same colour, always one navy, one black) which would have been no good for uniform (or rather just one pair would).

Why do heads rarely take into consideration the cost of these things? One woman I worked with bought her dcs uniform to the value of £124 EACH after they joined a school halfway through the year. Then the next year the uniform was changed and she had to pay out even more.

Her dd was a short, well-developed girl. Uniform for girls: grey pleated skirts knee length, no longer, no shorter. So she had to buy a large size which got dd into trouble becaues it was too long. Try shortening a pleated skirt! DD used to roll it around her waist (the way we used to do when we wanted mini-skirts!) whenever she thought a teacher would pick on her for non-standard uniform.

So glad my dd can wear what she likes (within reason).

Seeker, I was a Greenhammy type of your vintage. So indeed was MB. And here we find ourselves, in our 40s, discussing school uniform. Which must mean something or other, but I am not precisely sure what.

Traditional uniforms are coming back into fashion and are apparently much loved by OFSTED inspectors (together with the house system). DS2's school changed from a similar uniform to one involving both sweatshirts and blazers (must be very smelly) though the tie has not yet reappeared.

Turquoise gate - 1984/5.

Can't believe it's such a long time age.

I embraced the base at Molesworth too!