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!)

Just to add, the uniform is all exactly the same regardless of house

Houses are for sporting/other activities

Dd's secondary is different coloured ties. But each pupil gets given one when they start in Y7 (funded by PFTA).

Just a wee badge for blazers.

My kids went to a school with 6 houses. Different ties for each one.

Sew-on coloured badge for the blazer for one school. Different t-shirt colours for charity days for another (any old t shirt, but irritating if you were the afterthought house in orange or purple, rather than blue/green/red).

We only have to have a t-shirt for PE and siblings are usually put into the same house.

Better than when I was younger we had to have embroidered initials in those awful netball skirts in house colour and PE kits. We also had ties.

Everyone just knows.

Junior School had different colour PE tops until they revamped the uniform, then just used coloured sashes for sports day. DS1 Grammar school has different colour stripes in ties. DS2 school does nothing and I'm not sure he even knows which house he's supposed to be in. I certainly don't. 🤣

Dds comp was different ties. Older dds comp had nothing.
I'm just amazed that it's still a thing. Other than for sports day, why is it a thing?
I may just be bitter cos my house at school (Frobisher) came last at everything for the entire 4 years I was there.

Ours have different coloured PE tops.

They do lots of competitions in their PE kit.

Before they changed the houses you had your house colour on your tie, your polo shirt and your rugby shirt. Thankfully my dc were in the same house then so could hand down stuff. Now it's just a badge and the first one is free and you pay £1.50 for a new one of you lose it. The 3 house prefects in year 11 have their leavers hoodies in their house colour too. (The senior prefects have black hoodies, the other prefects have grey ones and the rest of year 11 can choose). I'm glad it's just a badge now as my middle 3 have been/are in different houses.

House colour stripe on the tie (£11.75) and house colour badge on the blazer (£40).

It's ridiculous. They're not allowed to take their ties off so why do they need a different blazer? I quite like it that DS wears a different colour tie and blazer in a mini act of rebellion.

It’s very rare for children to need to move house at the school I work at. The only reason a child may be asked to move house is if people leaving throughout their school career has left a sharp imbalance for inter house competitions. All family members go into the same house so siblings and cousins usually have hand me down house colours.

It's incredibly rare, because houses are normally just for "teams" and the arbitrary sense of working for the same goal.

Only when competitive houses are tied to forms is it an issue. They might be in Yellow7 with 29 other kids and a form tutor, have a major falling out, and be moved to Green7 with a different form tutor - but it's unlikely as most of the time they're in sets, but in reality most forms/groups are not house based.
They're in form 7A, set 7.2 in maths, 7A for drama and in Yellow House which will have a mix of 7A,7B,7C,7D and 7E for sports day or dance competition or reading challenge that kind of thing.

The only distinction between the secondary schools in the trust my kids are at is a different striped tie (and optional logo on the jumper) - to try to keep uniform costs down and as much second hand in circulation as possible. Hence they've completely swerved house systems as well.

I don't know to be honest but I'm sure my kids must have gone in without theirs many times as I have had to take them off jumpers before they went into the wash often enough! I don't recall them ever getting any kind of punishment for it .The only time I've ever seen large numbers of kids from their school together is at prize giving or other public events and I think they probably all had them on, but then the school is fussier about uniform on occasions like that so it's not necessarily representative of what happens day to day.

Just different coloured badges which are pinned to their blazers.

Ties for DD - she and a friend swapped ties for a term and nobody noticed. Different colour T shirts for sports day but not part of regular uniform and could be any appropriate T shirt.
Another local school has embroidery on the sweatshirts in different colours, and I think another just has different colour lanyards.

Different coloured stripes on ties, different coloured PE tops; pin badge (if you receive house colours).

Little coloured pin badges years ago