gillybob if you are sufficiently annoyed then write to the Chair of Governors, as governors may have a different view. It is always possible the people in the office thought the idea would make more work for them...
That is a very kind idea glammanana. Schools do vary in how sensitive they are to this issue. I was always for the lowest budget option until the pupils (secondary) rose up in revolt and said they wanted blazers and ties like the other schools! In my GD's last primary school (in Australia) they had a summer frock that was non standard and cost about £30 each. Even my DIL who is hyper sensitive about what her children wear, bought a second hand one on one occasion.
Getting back to poverty last time I visited GD remarked that her mummy had said they were poor and GD laughed about it - thought it ridiculous. Poverty is these days so much a matter of perception.
I never felt that we were poor, but we were pretty hard up - my mother was supporting her own mother, us two kids and two teenaged sisters on a teacher's salary. My DH's family were similarly hard up and he obviously felt poor - compared to the other kids in the grammar school I think. But somehow it is who the child compares themself to.
DH nephew at aged 12 could not understand what I meant when I said he was "rich" - despite the several 5* holidays every year and the swimming pool in the garden etc. he was comparing himself to even more wealthy classmates that owned fields, horses, quad bikes etc.. One of them had a birthday party in which the boys were driving an adult car on a race track - cost about £80 per child!!!!
Stabbing at a school in Wales this lunchtime.
To think that London, or anywhere else for that matter, does not belong to any one demographic