Uniform Rules

The new academic year has started, the children have gone back to school and if the press are to believed, a lot of them have promptly been sent home, or put in isolation, because they have infringed school rules on uniform.

Apparently, 75 pupils at Felixstowe Academy were put in isolation and had to have lunch separately from their classmates for breaching school rules on footwear, despite, in some cases, wearing the same shoes as they had before the summer holidays. Meanwhile in Leeds, Allerton Grange sent over 50 students home for wearing clothing that failed to meet the school's new uniform code. In Stoke-on-Trent, Trentham High School, which banned its female pupils from wearing skirts last July on the grounds that their short skirts were embarrassing the male teaching staff, sent home some pupils (male and female) at the beginning of this term for wearing trousers that were deemed to be too tight.

Some schools, including the one that my daughters attended, have such strict uniform policies that parents can only buy the uniform from approved outlets. Anyone who has had to buy new blazers, skirts and the like from such shops will know that this does not come cheap, especially in a child's first year at such a school. We spent a small fortune the first year our younger daughter went to secondary school. Then there are the items like shoes, winter coats and bags that parents can buy elsewhere but must meet the twin demands of school rules and a teenager's fashion preferences.

Shoes in particular are a minefield for parents. They must be durable enough so that they don't have to be replaced every term, fashionable enough to satisfy the wearer but bland enough to meet the very exacting strictures the school set. It seems often, from the newspaper stories at least, that this is where parents most often fall foul of the rules. It has been reported that Ormiston Venture Academy in Gorleston sent a female pupil home because the soles of her shoes were brown, not black; the school suggested that the soles were painted black.

The offending black shoes with brown soles.

Winter coats are difficult too. Must be black, no logos, no fur trim. And bags; no backpacks, must be black, no logos, no shiny buckles or the like. Some years buying a bag for our daughter for school has involved multiple shopping trips and in the end, an element of compromise.

But while it is difficult not to sometimes have some sympathy with pupils and parents who fall foul of school dress codes, the other old faithful that the press love to churn out year in, year out, is the unacceptable haircut. If it isn't hair that has been died it is the "extreme" or unorthodox style. Usually it is boys who have had a severe haircut, normally involving at least part of the head shaved to a short stubble, that fall foul of these rules and it is harder to understand parents allowing this than it is the odd pair of shoes of which a headteacher may disapprove. Given that my blog is called "Rules, Fools and Wise Men" and I largely subscribe to the idea that rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men, then you may think that on the whole I would be on the side of the parents and pupils in matters of dispute over school uniform and hairdos; on this occasion, not. An argument floated by many a parent whose son or daughter has gone to school with the wrong colour coat, or a skirt that is too short, is what does this have to do with academic attainment? Directly, not a lot; indirectly, plenty. In one word it's about discipline.

Blind obedience of the rules is not something I would advocate in all walks of life, but in the military and at school, to give two quite different examples, it is important. You have to know when to challenge rules and there is a world of difference between questioning a rule and wilfully disobeying it. School uniforms do help schools maintain discipline; if you are sloppy about uniform you are likely to be sloppy elsewhere, and uniforms teach an important lesson about life after school, where many employers have strict dress codes . Being a rebel over uniform at school might gain you some kudos with your peers, it won't do you any good when working at Tesco. Oh, and without a uniform, peer pressure inevitably means that parents will end up paying for designer or at least fashionable, up to the minute attire because no child wants to be seen in last year's trainers or last year's hoodie, now do they?

Where I do have a gripe with schools on the uniform issue is, as I have experienced, the necessity of buying a particular outfit from a particular store. My old school uniform was black blazer, dark grey trousers (skirts for girls) and while shirts. These could be sourced anywhere and a tie, blazer badge and PE kit could be bought cheaply at Pollards (there's a name that has disappeared from our High Streets). Apart from the odd "lad" (or "ladette") told to tie their tie properly (the huge knot and tiny length of tie were de rigueur with many pupils in the 1970's, and it appears, to this day).  I cannot recall anyone being sent home for a uniform infraction and discipline at my school was no worse than anywhere else (apart from the time the Bomb Squad were called after a chemistry class made an explosive device, but that's another story).  So while a green blazer for my daughter's school costs £28 from the approved, and only supplier (a case for the Monopolies Commission, perhaps?) [1] a generic, grey blazer can be had for less than half that price from Asda.

Pollards, with another familiar name now absent from our High Streets, Freeman, Hardy, Willis.

The articles about children sent home for uniform violations are beyond parody; they all feature pictures of the child and one of his or her parents staring wistfully at the offending item of clothing accompanied by an article bemoaning the draconian uniform policy adopted by the school. The  thing that interests me about these stories that are so beloved of the newspapers is how they get hold of them.  From parents presumably.

Double whammy. This lad was sent home for having the wrong shoes and an inappropriate haircut.

I'm just imagining the conversation at home when little Jimmy is excluded from school because his shoes have the wrong colour laces. "You've been sent home because of your shoes? Right, where' s the phone number for the Daily Mail?"

---

[1] The Monopolies Commission no longer exists, it is the Competition & Markets Authority now, but the old name has more of a ring to it.