School uniform

Saying that I do not understand why some state schools insist that plain grey or navy or black trousers or skirts must be bought from expensive uniform suppliers when sup[ermarkets offer them at a fraction of the price. A pair of plain uniform trousers looks the same to me whether it is from John Lewis or Asda or a uniform shop. Thank heavens for second hand uniform sales is all I can say

A school,local to us has no uniform. The school says this is a good thing as it allows pupils to express themselves. But I am not so sure. The school is in what is generally a very affluent area of London, but also has a council estate within catchment so there is great diversity in wealth among its pupils and pressures to wear the right trainers or what have you are common. Uniform is a great equaliser and I think dressing differently from your normal every day clothes to study or work is a good thing in any case as it differentiates between leisure and non leisure time.

Watching the 'Educating Greater Manchester' series recently I was amazed to hear about what a bad school it was and with major discipline issues. All the children wore smart uniforms and were pulled in to a separate room if staff spotted them even wearing trainers. This seemed to be part of the approach to pulling up the schools attainment level. The staff worked so very hard to get children to work at school. There was a large department just to work with individual problem pupils. Staff even gave wake up phone calls or picked them up from home to get them in to school.
The uniform seemed to contribute to a feeling of belonging to a school community as part of this attempt to give these children a chance in life.
By golly the teachers had to put up with unimaginable behaviour from some pupils !

I don't think abandoning school uniforms would be a good idea at all. Can you imagine some of the outrageous outfits some pupils would turn up in?

Having said that my DGD's school uniform is ridiculously expensive and can only be bought from one specialist company. I would like to see more affordable uniforms available from the usual outlets .

I have not noticed schools abandoning uniforms - I wish they would. An unnecessary expense for parents and a focus of wasted time by teachers having to discipline non-compliance.

I have not noticed pupils at our local Sixth Form College failing to learn and achieve excellent results in their everyday clothes.

I would not like to see the end of school uniform. It should be as affordable as possible. Having to wear school uniform at least means that pupils who do not have the money for fancy designer clothes do at least look the same as all the other children and not as if they are the poor relative.

At our convent school it would have been unheard of to show your knickers!

Indianana - I went to a grammar school
and in the first year we had to do gym wearing our navy bloomers! When we actually had to go outside in them and run around the field we cringed with mortification. Then the gym teacher made us stand in a line and you had to turn the waist of the knickers over to show her you had white ones under as a liner. Can you imagine that happening today!

I thought we were in for some fun when I saw the title. Or maybe granjura’s having some fun with us.

Yes half term in UK
but probably not in Switzerland

Yep, half term again

So did I Maw maybe later in the week eh?

Took a quick look at this this and thought “Half term again?”

We had a uniform at my school in the 50s and 60s -

jeans, t-shirt and trainers - or VERY short skirts in late 60s

Marydoll we had a Senior Mistress at our school, back in the 50s. She always carried a ruler. If she thought your skirt was too short you had to kneel ( wherever you were) and the distance to the ground measured, Too short and you got 100 lines. She also had a thing about hitched up bosoms, and would make you lower your bra straps. The fun was to see what you could get away with.

Anyone know the price of a pair of school black pumps??

I went to a school run by nuns. When I was in sixth year, we used to roll our skirts up, so that we would have mini skirts, We used be walking along the corridor, when all of a sudden our skirts would be yanked below our knees by a vigilant nun. Also, we had to wear hats, when outside of school. Often members of the public would call the school to say that they had seen "a convent girl out in public without a hat!"

One thing that I don't like about school uniforms is that are often such dark colours. I see teenagers walking home from school on dark winter afternoons and I worry about them getting knocked down.

Another thing I don't like is when girls have to wear ties, they look ridiculous.

And another thing is blazers as they are such an impractical garment.

I would like uniforms to have a sense of style, keep the children warm in cold weather, cool in hot weather and be visible on dark evenings!

I am bogged down with"affiliation clothing" My granddaughter, who lives with us has school uniform, ballet outfit, guides uniform, and stage school outfit. She starts secondary school this year, so now we also have a new, very fulltime catalogue of new stuff to buy, including official bags for P.E and academic equipment. Be thankful if your school doesn't worry too much!!

Yes, indinana, bit of a misnomer there. I actually had a note to take home as I'd grown so my "shorts" had shrunk. This particular French nun said they looked like "neekers". Well they would certainly approve of the shorts I wear today as they are very modest !

Bellanonna - how can something below the knee possibly be referred to as sports 'shorts'? . Heavens, I thought our nuns were bad enough!!!

Our nuns wouldn't allow the woollen, divided, pleated sports shorts to rise abeve the knee - so immoral - so we had to replace them with the more "seemly" version. Thank goodness for second hand uniform sales.

Yes! And nuns would randomly order girls to kneel to see if their skirt was the right length . Such tyranny!

Yes, for outdoor sports ( pr games, as they were called) we also wore the divided short/ skirt!

Until the 3rd year we wore gym slips, after that the dreaded pleated skirt, when you rolled them up at the top to shorten them, all the pleats went uneven, rather gave the game away! When they were bought you had to kneel on the floor to make sure the hem reached the floor! So they were just under knee length!

J52 our regulation knickers were purely underwear. I think most of us wore them in the first year, but not afterwards. For indoor and outdoor sports we wore divided skirts, airtex shirts and V-necked pullovers. The divided skirts had box pleats front and back - and this was in the days before stay press pleats, so we had to press the pleats back in regularly. The same with our pleated school skirt - we used to roll them and feed them into a stocking to keep the pleats in . And yes, regulation indoor and outdoor shoes too!
Like you I am in favour of school uniform, but it was all a bit extreme in those days, wasn't it?!