If your child's school has a house system ...

[blamed]

... do they all have different coloured ties, or socks or badges, or ... what?

Our school will be introducing a house system this year and I'm wondering if uniform changes will be next. (Hope not, as they look perfectly smart as they are, and surely the whole point of a uniform is that it's uniform!)

Each child has a house T Shirt - Green, Blue, Red or Yellow depending on house.

Rest of uniform is the same. House T Shirt worn for house events.

Nothing. The house is buried deep in the student profile on one of the bastarding school apps, and each house allegedly has a colour. But the colour is one thing on the school website, another on emails when they want harvest festival donations in house colours, yet another on the app. Chaos reigns.

Nothing at ds school but the kids do seem to paint their faces in house colours at sports day or similar. Ds often comes home with different team colours painted on him as he wanted to be with his mates and teachers don't seem to notice. DS in year 11 now and 6ft 4ins so easy to spot.

Is the badge compulsory? Our school already hands out metal badges for other things (e.g. 100% attendance, achievement/effort etc). Some kids wear them with pride, but mine always keep them in their blazer pocket.

This has adequate me remember.

When I was at Secondary, the boys uniform had pe tops and rugby shirts in the house colour.... but the girls uniform had nothing. We had white PE tops.
Seems strange looking back...

So how do they do inter-house sport competitions e.g. do they have coloured sashes to mark which team they're on?

They used to have coloured tapes with the names of the house which you had to sew onto each jumper. It was a right royal pain so fortunately they ditched it. Now the kids dress in the house colours for sports day - any old (appropriate) clothing, even fancy dress and face paints. That's it!

State schools (in case relevant):

Primary: different colour teeshirts for PE

Secondary: badge with house letter. Although I haven’t seen my y10 son wearing that recently so maybe they don’t have to. Not related to houses: they have different coloured polo shirts and stripe in jumper for each cohort (ie you stay with that colour from y7 to y11).

edit: thinking about it now I’m wondering if colour coding the cohorts is so if a member of the public reports seeing a child smoking (or whatever) they can narrow it down to the year. Or maybe I’m cynical 🤨

Different coloured, thin stripes on ties, a different colour trim on their PE tops. For inter house competitions they have coloured bibs which they wear. House Captains get a pin badge with the house colour as the background.

At primary they just wore their house colour top for PE.

At secondary (state grammar) my boys have different coloured stripes in their ties, infill colour on their games kit and piping on their blazers. In Y7-Y9 their form is their house, and then they are muddled up.

Badges and PE socks at my sons’ school.
Badges where I work.

Just a coloured badge at my DD's school

Different coloured ties.

Nothing at my dc's school. They all just wear the same.

Those whose uniform changes... what happens if they move house? Can you swap the uniform?

Just different coloured pe tops for ours. But their houses are also their forms which is weird to me as my school had a mix of houses within a form. So pre GCSE they have most lessons with their form/house but Games/PE is the whole year group. Then GCSE onwards they are still in the same 'form' but it's only used for registration.

Another with different coloured stripes on tie in secondary. In primary the pe shirt was different colours but it was only mandatory for sports day stuff.

Nothing at DS school, all kids wear standard uniform irrespective of what house they are in.

You dont really move house within schools. Even in boarding schools where houses have more relevance, they only move students as an absolute last resort, or in cases, just don't allow it- they'd let you leave before they let you move house.

Ties and the side panels on PE shirts here

Different stripes on ties, and different colours on the side of PE shirts.

My daughter has moved house at her school!
So just shows that all schools are different

(They do for rebalancing if there are problems, or in the case of DD, their form tutor moved house so the whole form moved with her)

DC primary school have houses for PE so one of four different colours and that's all

It's a state school, I'd imagine there's much more variety/complexity with house colours at private but no idea really

Blazer badge (sew on, like brownie badges). Each house has a specific design and each year has a colour so eg all year 10s have a red badge and all omega house have an omega symbol so red omega is a y10 from omega house.

At both my children’s schools I can’t think of a circumstance when they’d move house - the houses are independent of classes and teaching.